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LIFE Leon Uris was born in Baltimore , Maryland , the son of Jewish -American parents Wolf William and Anna (Blumberg) Uris. His father, a Polish -born immigrant, was a paperhanger and then later a storekeeper. William spent a year in Palestine after World War I before entering the United States. He derived his surname from Yerushalmi, meaning ''man of Jerusalem''. "He was basically a failure", Uris said later of his father. "He went from failure to failure." Uris attended schools in Norfolk , Virginia , and Baltimore but never graduated from high school, having failed English three times. At the age of seventeen Uris joined the United States Marine Corps . He served in the South Pacific as a radioman at Guadalcanal , Tarawa , and New Zealand from 1942 to 1945 . While recuperating from Malaria in San Francisco , he met Betty Beck, a Marine sergeant. They married in 1945. In 1950 , '' Esquire '' magazine bought an article from him and this encouraged him to work on a novel. The result was the best seller '' Battle Cry '', graphically showing the toughness and courage of U.S. Marines in the Pacific and '' The Angry Hills '', a novel set in war-time Greece . As a screen writer and a newspaper correspondent, he became intensely interested in Israel which led to his best-known work, '' Exodus '', which is about the founding of the state of Israel . Later works include '' Germany , '' Trinity '', an epic novel about Ireland 's struggle for independence, '' QB VII '', a chilling novel about the role of a Polish doctor in a German Concentration Camp , and '' The Haj '', with insights into the history of the Middle East and the secret machinations of foreigners which have led to today's turmoil. He also wrote the screenplays for '' Battle Cry '' and '' Gunfight At The O.K. Corral ''. TRIVIA Curiously in some of his books a likeable character is associated with the number 359195: for example, Danny Forrester's (''Battle Cry'') and Clinton Loveless's (''Armageddon'') service numbers and Dov Landau (''Exodus'') registration number in Auschwitz . SELECTED TITLES
Many of Uris's fans are of the opinion that his last two books, ''A God in Ruins'' and ''O'Hara's Choice'', were so poorly written and so different in style from any previous work that they must have been written or heavily edited by someone else. SEE ALSO |
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