James A. Misko, a writer whose body of work ranged from novels to books on real estate investment, died on December 31 from complications due to cancer. He was 87.
Born in Ord, Neb., Misko had a vast and varied career before ever turning to books, working at different times as a mink rancher, forest service lookout, truck driver, journalist and real estate broker, among others. His first book, How to Finance Any Real Estate (Any Place, Any Time), was published by Square One in 2003 after company president Rudy Shur hired him to write a book on the subject.
After 2003, Misko turned to fiction, publishing his first four novels independently. In February 2017, Square One published The Path of the Wind, which won a number of awards and was nominated for the PNWA Nancy Pearl Contest Award. Misko was also an active member of the Alaskan writing community, having helped establish the Alaska Writers Guild.---
Dennis Showalter, a renowned military historian and author, died on Monday at his home in Colorado Springs, Colo., at the age of 77, the Gazette reported. The cause of death was complications related to esophageal cancer.
Over the course of his career as a historian, Showalter wrote 27 books, including Instrument of War: The German Army 1914-18 and Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth
Showalter was a professor at Colorado College for 47 years, and while his field of study was German military history, he taught classes on everything from African history to Jews in the modern world. He also taught at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the Air Force Academy, West Point Military Academy and the Marine Corps University.
In 2018, Showalter won the Pritzker Military Museum and Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. The award organizers praised Showalter for "his research demonstrating the interrelationship between the military and civil society" and his "long and brilliant record of writing, especially about World Wars I and II."