David Shankbone · CC BY-SA 3.0

David Mamet won the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross, a play built from the clipped, overlapping dialogue that became his signature, and followed it with a run of screenwriting credits including The Verdict, The Untouchables and Wag the Dog. He also wrote and directed House of Games and his biggest commercial hit, Heist. Beyond drama, he has written on Jewish subjects directly, including The Old Religion, a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank, and a study of antisemitism and Jewish self-hatred, The Wicked Son.