most acclaimed works. An Episcopalian, Cozzens attended the Episcopal Kent School in Connecticut from 1916 to 1922, and after graduation attended Harvard University. A few months later, ill and in debt, he withdrew from school and moved to New Brunswick. From there, Cozzens went to Cuba to teach children of American residents, and there began to write short stories and gather material. After a year he accompanied his mother to Europe, where he tutored a young polio patient in order to earn money. During World War II, Cozzens served in the U.S. Army Air Forces, at first updating manuals, then in the USAAF Office of Information Services, a liaison and "information clearinghouse" between the military and the civilian press. One of the functions of his office was in controlling news, and it became Cozzens's job to defuse situations potentially embarrassing to Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the chief of the Army Air Forces. In the course of his job, he became arguably the best informed officer of any rank and service in the U.S., and he had achieved the rank of major by the time he was discharged at the end of the war. He met Sylvia Bernice Baumgarten, a literary agent with Brandt & Kirkpatrick, whom he married at city hall in New York City on December 27, 1927, and who successfully edited and marketed his books. She was his apparent antithesis — Jewish and a liberal Democrat — but their marriage lasted successfully until both died in 1978. They had no children. During 1958, they relocated to another country home near Williamstown, Massachusetts. Cozzens was on the Harvard Board of Overseers's Visiting Committee for the English Department from 1960 to 1966. Except for military service during World War II, the Cozzenses lived in semi-seclusion near Lambertville, New Jersey, and shied away from all but local contact. James and Bernice Cozzens spent their last years in relative obscurity in Martin County, Florida, where they lived in Rio, but used a Stuart post office box as their address. After Bernice's death in January 1978, Cozzens's health deteriorated rapidly. He died on August 9, 1978, of complications from spinal cancer and pneumonia, 10 days short of his 75th birthday. Bibliography Bracher, Frederick. (1959) The Novels of James Gould Cozzens New York: Harcourt Brace. Bruccoli, Matthew J., ed. (1984) James Gould Cozzens, A Time of War: Air Force Diaries and Pentagon Memos 1943–45