People like Eugene Burdick

Eugene Leonard Burdick (December 12, 1918 – July 26, 1965) was an American political scientist, novelist, and non-fiction writer, co-author of The Ugly American (1958), Fail-Safe (1962), and author of The 480 (1965).

He was born in Sheldon, Iowa, the son of Marie Ellerbroek and Jack Dale Burdick. His father was a socialist who named his son after Eugene V. Debs. His family moved to Los Angeles, California when he was four years of age. One of his pastimes growing up was surfing.

He was an undergraduate psychology major at Stanford University, but his graduate studies were interrupted by World War II during which he served in the United States Navy, after which he pursued his graduate studies at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar in 1948. He worked at the department of political science at the University of California.