James A. Michener

James Albert Michener was an American writer whose life ran through much of the twentieth century, from his birth in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 1907, to his death on October 16, 1997. He later wrote that he did not know who his biological parents were, or exactly when or where he was born. He was raised in Doylestown by his adoptive mother, Mabel Michener, as a Quaker. That beginning, marked by both local rootedness and personal uncertainty, was followed by a career built on wide travel, patient study, and an unusual appetite for the long view.

Michener graduated from Doylestown High School in 1925 and from Swarthmore College in 1929, summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and history. He played college basketball and belonged to Phi Delta Theta. After Swarthmore, he studied for two years at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. During the Great Depression, he spoke of hoboing, riding freight trains for free. He later taught English at The Hill School and George School, earned a Master of Arts degree in education at Colorado State Teachers College, and taught at the university level. In 1939 he served for a year as a guest lecturer at Harvard University, then joined Macmillan Publishers as a social studies education editor.

World War II changed the course of his work. As a Quaker, Michener could have qualified as a conscientious objector and avoided the draft, but he enlisted in the United States Navy. As a lieutenant assigned to the South Pacific as a naval historian, he traveled on various assignments. He later turned his notes and impressions from that service into Tales of the South Pacific, published in 1947 when he was 40. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948. Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted it as the Broadway musical South Pacific, which opened in New York City in 1949, and the musical was later adapted as feature films in 1958 and 2001.

Michener went on to write more than 40 books, many of them long fictional family sagas set in specific places and built around detailed history. His novels sold an estimated 75 million copies worldwide, and many were bestsellers chosen by the Book of the Month Club. Among his best-known books are Hawaii, The Drifters, Centennial, The Source, Chesapeake, Caribbean, Alaska, Texas, Space, Poland, and The Bridges at Toko-ri. His nonfiction included Iberia, about travels in Spain and Portugal, The World Is My Home, and Sports in America. He also wrote Presidential Lottery, published in 1969, condemning the United States Electoral College system.

Research was one of the marks of his method. Hawaii, published in 1959 as Hawaii became the 50th state, drew on extensive study, and he used similar historical, cultural, and even geological research in many later novels. Some books ran beyond 1,000 pages. In My Lost Mexico, he wrote that he could spend 12 to 15 hours a day at his typewriter for weeks, using so much paper that his filing system struggled to keep up. That discipline helps explain why his work still speaks to readers: Michener joined big historical movement to individual lives, and he did it with the patience of a teacher, traveler, editor, and witness.