birth_date: 1926-08-03 00:00:00
avg_rating: 3.89
name: Gerald Astor
about: Gerald Morton Astor, a native of New Haven, grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y. After his Army service in the Second World War, he received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. He was the picture editor of Sports Illustrated in its early years and worked as an editor for Sport magazine, Look, The Saturday Evening Post and Time.Besides his accounts of the Battle of the Bulge and the air war in Europe, Mr. Astor wrote of World War II in books including “The Greatest War: Americans in Combat, 1941-1945,” “June 6, 1944: The Voices of D-Day,” “Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II” and biographies of Maj. Gen. Terry Allen, a leading combat commander in both North Africa and Europe, and the Nazi medical experimenter Dr. Gerald Morton Astor, a native of New Haven, grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y. After his Army service in the Second World War, he received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. He was the picture editor of Sports Illustrated in its early years and worked as an editor for Sport magazine, Look, The Saturday Evening Post and Time.Besides his accounts of the Battle of the Bulge and the air war in Europe, Mr. Astor wrote of World War II in books including “The Greatest War: Americans in Combat, 1941-1945,” “June 6, 1944: The Voices of D-Day,” “Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II” and biographies of Maj. Gen. Terry Allen, a leading combat commander in both North Africa and Europe, and the Nazi medical experimenter Dr. Josef Mengele.He also wrote “The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in the Military” and “Presidents at War,” an account of presidents’ evolving assertion of authority to take military action in the absence of a Congressional declaration of war.Mr. Astor edited “The Baseball Hall of Fame 50th Anniversary Book” and wrote a biography of the heavyweight champion Joe Louis, “And a Credit to His Race.” He collaborated with Anthony Villano, a former F.B.I. agent who recruited informants from the Mafia, in “Brick Agent.” ...more
death_date: 2007-12-30 00:00:00