Michael Shaara
Michael Shaara | |
---|---|
Michael Shaara ca. 1970 | |
Born | (1928-06-23)23 June 1928 Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S. |
Died | 5 May 1988(1988-05-05) (aged 59) Tallahassee, Florida, U.S. |
Occupation | Novelist |
Education | Rutgers University (BA) |
Period | 1952–1988 |
Genre | Science Fiction, historical fiction, sports fiction |
Notable works | The Killer Angels |
Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Fiction |
Children | 2, including Jeffrey Shaara |
Michael Shaara (June 23, 1928 – May 5, 1988) was an American author of science fiction, sports fiction, and historical fiction. He was born to an Italian immigrant father[1] (the family name was originally spelled Sciarra, which in Italian is pronounced in a similar way) in Jersey City, New Jersey, graduated in 1951 from Rutgers University, where he joined Theta Chi, and served as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division prior to the Korean War.
Before Shaara began selling science fiction stories to fiction magazines during the 1950s, he was an amateur boxer and police officer. The stress combined with cigarette smoking led to a heart attack at the early age of 36. He managed to recover completely and later taught literature at Florida State University while continuing to write fiction. His novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. Shaara died of a heart attack in 1988 at the age of 59.
Shaara's children, Jeffrey and Lila,[2] are also novelists. In 1997, Jeffrey Shaara established the annual Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, awarded at Gettysburg College.
Works
Novels
- The Broken Place (1968)
- The Killer Angels (1974), Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. Later, used as the basis for the film Gettysburg in 1993.
- The Noah Conspiracy (1981), also known as The Herald.
- For Love of the Game (1991), made into a film in 1999.[3]
Short story collections
- Soldier Boy (1982)
Short stories
- "Orphans of the Void" (1952)
- "All the Way Back" (1952)
- "Grenville's Planet" (1952)
- "Be Fruitful and Multiply" (1952)
- "Soldier Boy" (1953)
- "The Book" (1953)
- "The Sling and the Stone" (1954)
- "Wainer" (1954)
- "The Holes" (1954)
- "Time Payment" (1954)
- "Beast in the House" (1954)
- "The Vanisher" (1954)
- "Come to My Party" (1956)
- "Man of Distinction" (1956)
- "Conquest Over Time" (1956)
- "2066: Election Day" (1956)
- "Four-Billion Dollar Door" (1956)
- "Death of a Hunter" (1957)
- "The Peeping Tom Patrol" (1958)
- "The Lovely House" (1958)
- "Citizen Jell" (1959)
- "Opening Up Slowly" (1973)
- "Border Incident" (1976)
- "Starface" (1982)
- "The Dark Angel" (1982)
References
External links
- Michael Shaara at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Analysis of Soldier Boy
- Biography at jeffshaara.com
- Michael Shaara prize details
- Works by Michael Shaara at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Michael Shaara at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- v
- t
- e
- His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
- The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919)
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921)
- Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922)
- One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923)
- The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924)
- So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)
- Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined)
- Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928)
- Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
- Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930)
- Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
- The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932)
- The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933)
- Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934)
- Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
- Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937)
- The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938)
- The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940)
- In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
- Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943)
- Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
- A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945)
- All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947)
- Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948)
- Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
- The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)
- The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
- The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952)
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953)
- A Fable by William Faulkner (1955)
- Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956)
- A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958)
- The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
- Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960)
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961)
- The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
- The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963)
- The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965)
- The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966)
- The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967)
- The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968)
- House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969)
- The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970)
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972)
- The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973)
- No award given (1974)
- The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)
- Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976)
- No award given (1977)
- Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)
- The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979)
- The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980)
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981)
- Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982)
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)
- Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984)
- Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985)
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
- A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987)
- Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988)
- Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989)
- The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
- Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991)
- A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992)
- A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993)
- The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
- The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995)
- Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996)
- Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997)
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998)
- The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)
- Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002)
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003)
- The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004)
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005)
- March by Geraldine Brooks (2006)
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008)
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009)
- Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010)
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
- No award given (2012)
- The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013)
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014)
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015)
- The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017)
- Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018)
- The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020)
- The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021)
- The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022)
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023)
- Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (2024)