In addition to journalism and novels, Kantor wrote the screenplay for Gun Crazy (aka Deadly Is the Female) (1950), a noted film noir. He also saw combat during the Korean War as a correspondent. Nevertheless he was decorated with the Medal of Freedom by Gen. After flying on several bombing missions, he asked for and received training to operate the bomber's turret machine guns (this was illegal, as he was not in service). Kantor's first novel was published when he was 24.ĭuring World War II, Kantor reported from London as a war correspondent for a Los Angeles newspaper.

Kantor started writing seriously as a teen-ager when he worked as a reporter with his mother at the local newspaper in Webster City.

His mother, a journalist, encouraged Kantor to develop his writing style.

Kantor was born in Webster City, Iowa, in 1904. He wrote more than 30 novels, several set during the American Civil War, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1956 for his 1955 novel Andersonville Acclaimed as the greatest novel ever written about the War Between the States, this searing Pulitzer Prize-winning book captures all the glory and shame of America’s most tragic conflict in the vivid, crowded world of Andersonville, and the people who lived outside its barricades.Based on the author’s extensive research and nearly twenty-five years in the making, MacKinlay Kantor’s bestselling masterwork tells the heartbreaking story of the notorious Georgia prison where 50,000 Northern soldiers suffered - and 14,000 died - and of the people whose lives were changed by the grim camp where the best and the worst of the Civil War came together.Here is the savagery of the camp commandant, the deep compassion of a nearby planter and his gentle daughter, the merging of valor and viciousness within the stockade itself, and the day-to-day fight for survival among the cowards, cutthroats, innocents, and idealists thrown together by the brutal struggle between North and South.A moving portrait of the bravery of people faced with hopeless tragedy, this is the inspiring American classic of an unforgettable period in American history.Winner of the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Benjamin McKinlay Kantor, was an American journalist, novelist and screenwriter.

Andersonville by mackinlay kantor