About Kenneth S. Davis

Kenneth Sydney Davis (September 29, 1912 – June 10, 1999) was an American historian and university professor, most renowned for his series of biographies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Davis also wrote biographies of Charles Lindbergh, Adlai Stevenson, and authored the first biography of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, entitled Dwight D. Eisenhower: Soldier of Democracy.

Davis was born in Salina, Kansas, and raised in Manhattan, Kansas. He was a 1934 graduate of Kansas State University with a degree in journalism, and received a master of science degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1936. During his varied career, Davis was a journalism instructor at New York University, a war correspondent attached to General Eisenhower's headquarters during World War II, a member of the UNESCO Relations Staff of the State Department, and a professor of history at both Kansas State and the University of Kansas. He also worked as speech writer for Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson during the 1956 campaign.