But like many readers, I totally snored through my incredibly dull, lecture-based high school and college history classes. Like many other readers, I’m intensely interested in history. I don’t think it’s overstating things to say that these were world-changing writers. This is especially apparent when you walk into any used bookstore - as I did just last week - and find more Uris and Michener books than just about any other author not named Stephen King. Uris died in 2003 and Michener in 1997, and while much of their huge catalogs is still in print, these novels seem to be sliding slowly off the radar of most readers. Indeed, I’m starting to think the original masters (not counting Tolstoy or Margaret Mitchell, of course) of the historically hefty novel, Uris and James Michener, are dying slow, torturous second deaths.

Certainly, The Simpsons’ target demographic doesn’t exactly overlap with historical fiction-reading book nerds, so I started wondering then how many people knew Leon Uris from Leonardo DiCaprio.Īnd that’s a question I’ve been thinking about even more lately. Trinity is in my Top 5 favorite books of all time and I’ve read every word Leon Uris has ever published. ** When that episode first aired in 2001, I had a near melt-down of excitement - the kind of giddiness you only experience when you get a really obscure reference. “Nothing cracks a turtle like Leon Uris,” says Cletus, the Slack-Jawed Yokel, in a memorable Simpsons episode.

Trinity novel leon uris