Jeffrey Gusfield

I learned my most important lessons about writing narrative history from my cousin, Pulitzer Prize winner Mackinlay Kantor (Mack wrote Andersonville, about the Confederate prison camp during the Civil War). I've been a dedicated Capone era researcher for over forty years, but my obsessive interest began when I was five, when famed Chicago photographer Anthony Berardi showed me a picture he took of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929. I assume that most children would have been scarred; I was liberated.

I have a BFA from Drake University, where I learned from my mentor, Dr. W.S.E. "Doc" Coleman, that history was the best theater. I have an MLS from Lake Forest College, where my mentors Rosemary Cowler, Carol Gayle, and Dan LeMahieu reanimated my brain. My wife, Ann, and my son, Sam, are my other two-thirds.