James A. Michener was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in 1907. He earned a B.A. at Swarthmore College in 1929, studied for two years at the University of St Andrews and took an M.A. in education at the University of Northern Colorado.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for Tales of the South Pacific (1947), his first book. Later books include Hawaii (1959), The Source (1965), Centennial (1974), Chesapeake (1978), Texas (1985) and Alaska (1988). He sold an estimated 75 million copies worldwide, and he died in Austin, Texas, in 1997.
Source: Wikipedia