The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) was an American novelist, journalist, and cultural critic born in Long Branch, New Jersey, to a Jewish family. He achieved early fame with his debut novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), a WWII bestseller hailed as one of the finest American war novels, and later won Pulitzer Prizes for The Armies of the Night (1968, nonfiction) and The Executioner's Song (1979, fiction). A pioneer of New Journalism, he authored over 40 books, co-founded The Village Voice, and was a prominent public intellectual.