Tulane Public Relations · CC BY 2.0

Born James Horowitz, he flew as a career U.S. Air Force pilot before resigning his commission in 1957 after the success of his first novel, The Hunters, drawn from that experience. Writing under the pen name he later adopted legally, he published the acclaimed Solo Faces in 1979 and spent decades as a stylist's writer, receiving much of his critical recognition only late in life for work initially dismissed at the time of publication.