Peter Viereck was born in New York City in 1916. He attended the eliteHoraceMann School for Boys and Harvard, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1937. While at Harvard, he won both the Garrison medal for the best undergraduate poetry and the Bowdoin prize for the best philosophical prose—one of the few Harvard students ever to accomplish that. After doing some graduate work atOxford University in England, Viereck returned to the United States and completed a Ph.D. in history in 1942. He enlisted in the U.S. Army after completing his Ph.D. and worked in the Psychological Warfare Intelligence Branch, earning battle stars and also helping to monitor the wartime broadcasts that the eminent poet Ezra Pound made from Italy.

Upon returning to the United States, Viereck began teaching, first at Harvard and Smith and then, in 1948, at MountHolyoke, a women's college in South...