All this and I'm not even a fan....

"Young people ought to seek that experience that is going to knock them off center."
On February 3, 1907, James Michener was born in New York City. Abandoned at birth, he was adopted by a Quaker family and raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He ran away from home as a teenager and eventually became a teacher. While serving as a naval historian in the South Pacific in WWII, he began his writing career. After winning the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, "Tales of the South Pacific," (later made into the play and movie "South Pacific") he embarked on a highly successful 50-year literary career that was noted for epic documentary novels about exotic locations. Michener liked to say that was not a great writer, but "one of
the world's great rewriters."