

Exodus was a worldwide bestseller, translated into a dozen languages, and was made into a feature film in 1960, starring Paul Newman, as well as a short-lived Broadway musical in 1971. Marines in the Pacific and The Angry Hills, a novel set in war-time Greece.Īs a screen writer and a newspaper correspondent, he became intensely interested in Israel which led to his best-known work, Exodus, which is about Jewish history from the late 19th century through the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. The result was the best seller Battle Cry, graphically showing the toughness and courage of U.S. In 1950, Esquire magazine bought an article from him and this encouraged him to work on a novel. While recuperating from malaria in San Francisco, he met Betty Beck, a female Marine sergeant.


He served in the South Pacific as a radioman at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and New Zealand from 1942 to 1945. At the age of seventeen Uris joined the United States Marine Corps. Uris attended schools in Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, but never graduated from high school, having failed English three times. He derived his surname from Yerushalmi, meaning "man of Jerusalem." (His brother Aron, Leon Uris' uncle, took the name Yerushalmi) "He was basically a failure," Uris later said of his father. William spent a year in Palestine after World War I before entering the United States.

His father, a Polish-born immigrant, was a paperhanger and then later a storekeeper. Leon Uris was born in Baltimore, Maryland the son of Jewish-American parents Wolf William and Anna (Blumberg) Uris. His two bestselling books were Exodus, published in 1958, and Trinity, in 1976. Leon Marcus Uris was an American novelist, known for his historical fiction and the deep research that went into his novels. Where-Shelter Island, Long Island, New York.
