MacKinlay Kantor was born Benjamin McKinlay Kantor in Webster City, Iowa, in 1904. He worked as a journalist and wrote more than thirty novels, many of them set during the American Civil War.
His first novel was Diversey (1928). Glory for Me (1945) was adapted as the film The Best Years of Our Lives. Andersonville (1955) won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He died in Sarasota, Florida, in 1977.