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Mailer, 1968 (credit: Newsweek photo by Bernard Gotfryd, Copyright Newsweek, 1968)

(born Jan. 31, 1923, Long Branch, N.J., U.S.died Nov. 10, 2007, New York, N.Y.) U.S. novelist. He studied at Harvard University. He drew on his wartime service in the Pacific for his novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), which established him as one of the major American writers of the post-World War II decades. A flamboyant and controversial figure who enjoyed antagonizing critics and readers, he became best known for journalistic works that convey actual events with the richness of novels, an approach known as New Journalism; these works include The Armies of the Night (1968, Pulitzer Prize), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), Of a Fire on the Moon (1970), and The Executioner's Song (1979, Pulitzer Prize). His novels include An American Dream (1965); Harlot's Ghost (1991), about the Central Intelligence Agency; and The Castle in the Forest (2007), about Adolf Hitler.

For more information on Norman Mailer, visit Britannica.com.

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