author
Howard Vincent O'Brien
1888–1947
A sharp, lively voice from early 20th-century Chicago, remembered for blending journalism, fiction, and memoir with wit and polish. Best known for his Chicago Daily News columns and the memoir Wine, Women and War, he wrote with the ease of someone equally at home in the newsroom and the literary world.
1 Audiobook
Thirty
by Howard Vincent O'Brien
About the author
Born in Chicago in 1888, he became a novelist, critic, and newspaper columnist whose career stayed closely tied to the city. Sources on his life consistently note that he earned a BA from Yale University in 1910, served in World War I, and was widely known for his work at the Chicago Daily News, especially the columns "All Things Considered" and "Footnotes".
He wrote more than a dozen books in the 1910s through the early 1930s, moving between fiction, commentary, and memoir. His best-known book is Wine, Women and War, which helped fix his reputation as a witty, observant writer who could turn personal experience into engaging prose.
Howard Vincent O'Brien died in 1947. Even now, he stands out as one of those versatile newspaper-era writers who could review, report, reminisce, and tell a good story in the same unmistakably confident voice.