Alan Morris Cedric Strauss-Schom (born 9 May 1937 in Sterling, Illinois), known as Alan Schom and legally Alan Strauss-Schom is an American historian and biographer. Specialising in French History, his work on Napoleon saw him receive Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations. Biography Alan Morris Cedric Strauss-Schom, also known as Alan Schom was born in Sterling, Illinois, on May 9, 1937. Religious affiliation, Episcopalian. His father Irving (died 1983). His mother was Matilde, née Strauss Stoler. He had one sister, Faith Sharon Schom, was a psychologist, who died in 2002. He was married in London in 1963 to The Hon. Juliana Leslie Cotton Hill. They divorced in 1984. Education He attended Beverly Hills High School and received his A.B. in French/ European History from University of California, Berkeley in 1965. He continued his education at the School of Oriental Studies, Durham University, where he completed his doctoral research (including one year course in Arabic, where he was a member of the Hatfield College Middle Common Room and completed his PhD on the French soldier and administrator Hubert Lyautey, entitled A study of Marshal Lyautey's Protectorate administration of Morocco, 1912-1925, in relation to the administration of the country, in 1968.). Career Schom taught French and Modern European History at Southern Connecticut State University and at the University of California, Riverside. He served as the President and Founder of the French Colonial Historical Society (1974–76), and founded its research journal, French Colonial Studies. In 1977 he left academia to become a full-time writer and speaker. In 1997 Schom prepared the first of two reports for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles on the policies of the Swiss Government toward Jewish refugees during World War II that revealed the presence of up to 80 forced labor camps reserved for Jewish refugees. The reports – actually prepared by Schom and his research assistant], but authored by Schom only – were criticised by a Swiss diplomat in the United States, Thomas G. Borer, who accused Schom of 'shoddy scholarship' in a letter sent to the Los Angeles Times, a completely fraudulent accusation in order to protect his country's historical interests at a time when the Swiss Government was being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars for looted Jewish funds. In Switzerland itself reaction was also highly negative, with President Flavio Cotti denouncing the conclusions of the reports, denying the presence of camps,