I began my full-time working life as a social studies teacher.  For a year, I taught at a parochial high school on the south side of Chicago, and for seven years thereafter I was, with one small exception, the entire social studies department of a private college-prep school in Davenport, Iowa.

I then attended law school, and worked as a trial lawyer and later as in-house counsel for insurance firms.  But never lost my love of history, and have read mostly non-fiction for most of my life.

My other interests are photography, classical music, old movies, baseball (I’ve been a member of a fantasy baseball league since 1984), and traveling with the wonderful woman who married me in 1970.