Life
Ogburn was the son of lawyer Charlton Greenwood Ogburn and writer Dorothy Ogburn née Stevens and the nephew of the sociologist William Fielding Ogburn. He was raised in Savannah and New York, graduated from Harvard in 1932 and wrote and worked in publishing. During World War II he joined military intelligence, leaving with the rank of captain. He returned to the US to begin a career with the State Department. He married Vera M. Weidman in 1951.
After the success of his story "Merrill's Marauders", a Harper's Magazine cover story in 1957, Harper & Bros. offered an advance for a book and he quit the government to write full-time in 1957.
He was among the first State Department officials to explicitly oppose the growing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war.
Ogburn's papers are archived at Emory College.
Read more about this topic: Charlton Ogburn
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I have lifted the veil. I have created life, wrested the secret of life from life. Now do you understand? From the lives of those who have gone before, I have created life.”
—Edward T. Lowe, and Frank Strayer. Dr. von Niemann (Lionel Atwill)
“They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,
“And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death:
Now tell me the reason, I pray.”
“I am cheerful, young man,” Father William replied;
“Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remembered my God,
And He hath not forgotten my age.””
—Robert Southey (1774–1843)