At age seventeen, while in his senior year of high school, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Uris enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Uris attended schools in Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, but never graduated from high school, after having failed English three times. He derived his surname from Yerushalmi, meaning 'man of Jerusalem.' (His brother Aron, Leon Uris' uncle, took the name Yerushalmi) 'He was basically a failure,' Uris later said of his father. William spent a year in Palestine after World War I before entering the United States. His father, a Polish-born immigrant, was a paperhanger, then a storekeeper. Leon Uris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Jewish-American parents Wolf William and Anna (Blumberg) Uris. His two bestselling books were Exodus, published in 1958, and Trinity, in 1976. 'He went from failure to failure.' Uris a Leon Marcus Uris (AugJune 21, 2003) was an American novelist, known for his historical fiction and the deep research that went into his novels. Leon Marcus Uris (AugJune 21, 2003) was an American novelist, known for his historical fiction and the deep research that went into his novels.

Trinity by Leon Uris