(1907 – 1997) Novelist whose first book, Tales of the South Pacific (1946), earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 at age forty. Tales drew on Michener’s experience during the Second World War as a naval officer posted to the region. In 1949 the work was converted into the Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway musical, South Pacific, and ran for 1,925 performances. After this first publication, Michener covered much of the world with his stories—Hawaii (1959), Iberia (1967), Chesapeake (1978), Alaska (1985) and Caribbean (1989)—and even reached the final frontier, Space (1982). Part of Michener’s appeal lies in the way he combines fact and fiction to condense complex and sometimes unsettling histories into singular and monumental narratives.