M. R. (Morris Robert) Werner

Born in 1897 and active as both a journalist and author, he wrote in the fields of history, biography, and current events. Archival and reference sources describe him as an American journalist and writer, and note that he lived in New York City for many years.

Before settling into literary work, he spent time in China as a sales agent for chemical dyes and later worked as a foreign correspondent for a British newspaper and for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. His career also included contributions to major American periodicals, and collections of his papers and correspondence show the breadth of his reporting and nonfiction work.

He is especially remembered for books that took a fresh look at famous American people and institutions, including Barnum, Brigham Young, Tammany Hall, and Bryan. Those works helped build his reputation as a writer interested less in hero worship than in careful, readable re-examination of public lives and American history.