Robert zacks author biography outline

Richard Zacks Biography

Richard Zacks was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1955 but grew up in New York City. As a teenager, he gambled on the horses, played blackjack in illegal Manhattan card parlors and bought his first drink at age fifteen at the Plaza Hotel.

He also attended elite schools such as Horace Mann ('73), University of Michigan ('79) and Columbia Journalism School ('81). He was a Classical Greek major at the University of Michigan and studied Arabic in Cairo, Italian in Perugia, and French in the vineyards of France.

After completing Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, he wrote a syndicated column for four years carried by the NY Daily News, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News and many others.

His first book, History Laid Bare (1994) packed unusual accounts of love and sex from Joan of Arc to Mark Twain.

His next title, An Underground Education (1997) took the same no-holds-barred approach