W. A. Swanberg

William Andrew Swanberg (1907–1992) was an American biographer. He may be known best for Citizen Hearst, a biography of William Randolph Hearst, which was recommended by the Pulitzer Prize board in 1962 but overturned by the trustees. He won that Pulitzer in 1973 for a biography of Henry Luce and he won the National Book Award in 1977 for a biography of Norman Mailer.
Life
Swanberg was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1907 and earned his B.A. at the University of Minnesota in 1930. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1960. He died of heart failure in Southbury, Connecticut in 1992.
With grudging and only partial help from his father (who wanted his son to be a cabinet maker like himself), Swanberg obtained his degree only to find that employment as a journalist with the local dailies, the St. Paul Daily News or the Minneapolis Star, was not to be. Staffs at those papers were shrinking, not expanding and the new graduate instead was lucky to find...