Merle Miller

Merle Miller noted author and biographer of US presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Three years before his best-selling book Plain Speaking, An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1974), he wrote a personal account "What It Means to Be a Homosexual" published in The New York Times Magazine January 17, 1971.

Born May 17 1919 in Montour, Iowa, he grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa, attended University of Iowa and London School of Economics; Served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as an editor of Yank (1942-1945); Editor of Time and Harper's magazines (1945-1949). Author of That Winter (first published novel, 1948); The Sure Thing (1949); Only You, Dick Daring! (1964); On Being Different (1971); Lyndon: An Oral Biography (1980). Died in Danbury, Connecticut of complications of abdominal surgery June 10 1986.

links

• Des Moines Register Famous Iowans

• Harry S. Truman Library Merle Miller Papers

• University of Iowa Library Manuscript Register: Papers of Merle Miller