William Lawrence Shirer, historian and novelist, was born in Chicago to Seward Smith Shirer, a United States assistant district attorney, and Josephine Tanner Shirer. After his father's death in 1913, Shirer's family moved to Cedar Rapids,Iowa, where Shirer graduated from Coe College in 1925. Following graduation Shirer went to Paris with a friend for the summer, planning to return to the United States in the fall to work, but his enthusiasm for Paris, which seemed intellectually stimulating and less personally restrictive than the United States, led him to apply for jobs with the European editions of two American newspapers in Paris. His experience as editor of his college paper and as sports editor of the Cedar Rapids Republican was probably a factor in his being hired as a copywriter for the European edition of the Chicago Tribune, usually called the Paris Tribune.

Among Shirer's coworkers at the Tribune when...