Samuel Hynes

Samuel Lynn Hynes (August 29, 1924 – October 9, 2019) was an American author. He won a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for The Soldiers' Tale in 1998.

Biography

Hynes was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended the University of Minnesota and Columbia University.^[1]

Hynes served as a Marine Corps pilot from 1943 until 1946 and in 1952 and 1953. In a memoir, "Flights of Passage," Hynes explored in detail his pilot training and subsequent service in the Pacific during World War II. ^[2] He received the Distinguished Flying Cross.^[1] He also discussed his experiences as a pilot in the documentary series The War by Ken Burns (2007).^[3] Burns interviewed Hynes again for The Vietnam War (2017), where Hynes discussed his experiences at Northwestern University during its anti-Vietnam War protests.

Hynes was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature emeritus at Princeton University. His other books include On War and Writing (University of Chicago Press, 2018), A War Imagined,^[4] The Growing Seasons^[1] and The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in October 2014.^[5]

Family

Alex Preston (born 1979), British author and journalist, and his brother Samuel Preston (1982) lead singer of English band The Ordinary Boys, are among his grandsons.^[6][7]

Death

Hynes died of congestive heart failure at the age of 95 in his home in Princeton, New Jersey, on October 9, 2019.^[8]