Bernard Ryan

Bernard Ryan, Jr., has authored, co-authored, or ghost-written 36 books in such topics as biography, early childhood education, community service for teens, career guides in the fields of advertising and journalism, courtroom trials, and personal financial planning, including The Secret Service, Condoleezza Rice: Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton: First Lady and Senator, Stephen Hawking: Physicist and Cosmologist, Jeff Bezos: Business Executive and Founder of Amazon.com, Warren Buffett: Capitalist, and Jimmy Carter: U.S. President. His A Boy at the Four Corners: Looking into Small-town America in its Prime evokes pre-World War II days in the village where the author lived, shopped, and went to school. His novel, The Poodle at The Poodle, re-telling the Faustian legend within the advertising business in the 1960's, was greeted by Publishers Weekly as a "well-made book" that "offers great knowledge of advertising" and "descriptions of air travel . . . believable dialogue and a good hook." His Tyler's Titanic is an early chapter book about what happens when a boy finds a way to visit the wreckage of the great ship on the ocean floor. In The Wright Brothers: Inventors of the Airplane, he tells the sixth- to ninth-grade reader the Wrights' life stories and explains how they brought the world the miracle of flight. His Helping Your Child Start School is an introduction to kindergarten for parents. Simple Ways to Help Your Kids Become Dollar-Smart, co-authored with financial planner Elizabeth Lewin, helps parents teach children, ages seven to 18, how to handle money. His The Poisoned Life of Mrs. Maybrick is the biography of an American woman who, in Liverpool, England, in 1889, was the defendant in one of history's great murder trials and whose English husband, according to recent research, may have been Jack the Ripper. Mr. Ryan is the author of 100 descriptions (each from 1,200 to 8,000 words) of important historical courtroom trials (U.S. and worldwide, ranging from the ancient Greek Alcibiades to the Lindbergh kidnapping and O.J. Simpson) published in four major reference books. He has written many shorter pieces for magazine and newspaper publication and he spent many years writing advertising for national brands and retired as Senior Vice President, Public Affairs, at the American Association of Advertising Agencies. He is a graduate of The Rectory School, Kent School, and Princeton University. A native of Albion, New York, he and his wife, Jean Bramwell Ryan, live in Southbury, Connecticut. They have two daughters and two grandchildren.