In literature, author of the New York Times bestseller Before I Fall Lauren Oliver, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Philip Roth, Canadian-born Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature winning writer Saul Bellow, political philosopher, literary critic and author of the New York Times bestseller "The Closing of the American Mind" Allan Bloom, ''The Good War" author Studs Terkel, American writer, essayist, filmmaker, teacher, and political activist Susan Sontag, analytic philosopher and Stanford University Professor of Comparative Literature Richard Rorty, and American writer and satirist Kurt Vonnegut are notable alumni.