Guide to Kulchur was composed by Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (1885 - 1972). Pound was known widely as a renowned intellectual of the modern period, and also as a poet and central figure within Modernism, a cultural and artistic movement in the first part of the 20th century. Pound was born in the United States but became an expatriate and lived most of the rest of his life in Italy, including World War II. He became infamous at this time because he supported the Axis powers, especially Mussolini.