Anthony Arthur
A few words of self-introduction might be appropriate, because I come at Sinclair not as a social activist but as a writer. I attended Penn State for two years after graduating from Sharon High School, in western Pennsylvania, in 1954. I then spent three years in the army, during which I was trained at the Army Language School in Monterey, California (now the Defense Language Institute) for a year as a Korean linguist. After graduating from Allegheny College in 1960, I worked for a year as a newspaper reporter in southern Arizona. I returned to Penn State for my MA in English in 1961 and then worked as a business writer in New York. I began teaching English at a community college on Long Island in 1964. In 1970 I got my Ph. D. in English at State University of Stony Brook, and took a position at California State University, Northridge, as it was renamed in 1972. During my academic career I was a Fulbright scholar in Hungary, an exchange professor in Germany, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of English at the U. S. Air Force Academy. I retired in 2002 to concentrate on writing full time. I’ve written four earlier non-fiction books—details of these are on the Works page. My wife and I live in suburban Los Angeles—as did Sinclair. We have two children, a daughter who is an editor in New York, and a son who teaches middle-school English in California.
I'll post interviews, lectures, and book-store appearances under EVENTS.
Reviews of
Radical Innocent are posted on this site's Home page, in the upper left margin. Please use the e-mail link provided in the right margin to contact me with your comments on the book, or the Random House site if you prefer.
DELIVERANCE AT LOS BAÑOS (1985)
“A superb job of telling a splendid story” (Stephen Ambrose,for the History Book Club newsletter)
“engaging style” (
Booklist)
“taut account of heroism . . . the stuff of high adventure” (
Los Angeles Herald Examiner)
BUSHMASTERS (1987)
“Prose that has the rare and . . . invaluable qualities of both clarity and restraint. . . . a superb piece of writing” (
Los Angeles Times)
“Distinguished . . . The final chapter stands by itself as a short classic” (
Publishers Weekly)
“One of the liveliest unit histories of WWII I’ve ever read” (Dee Brown, author of
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee)
THE TAILOR-KING:The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster (1999)
“Arthur deftly uses primary sources to craft a story that reads like a good thriller” (
Booklist)
“a riveting story” (
Library Journal)
“vividly written . . . entertaining history with implicit contemporary relevance” (
Publishers Weekly)
LITERARY FEUDS: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels—from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe (2002) (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
“Readable, engaging look at memorable fights . . . Arthur maintains a lively enthusiasm . . . also provide[s] a rich background in different literary epochs” (
Kirkus Reviews)
“fresh and piquant” (
London Times Literary Supplement)
“engaging, light-handed” (
Wall Street Journal)
“A brilliantly executed joyride” (Amazon)
CLASHES OF WILL: Great Confrontations that Have Shaped Modern America )(2004) (Pearson/Longman, with John Broesamle)
" . . . the most imaginative contribution to teaching American history I have read in years. Students will be enthralled by the brilliantly rendered conflicts between titanic figures who took ideas seriously" (William E. Leuchtenburg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Revised, expanded, and reissued in a trade edition by Sourcebooks in March, 2006, as
Twelve Great Clashes That Shaped Modern America.
