Milton Meltzer (1915–2009)

After serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, Meltzer became a radio writer and a public relations executive. At the age of 39, he decided to begin a career writing history books for adults and young people by working with Langston Hughes on A Pictorial History of the Negro in America (1956). In his obituary, The New York Times noted that Meltzer wrote in vivid, concise prose about slavery, witch hunts, the immigrant experience, the Depression, the Holocaust, the civil rights era, and the labor movement, among many other subjects.