Burton Rascoe was born in Kentucky and moved with his parents to Shawnee in 1903. Burton delivered papers for the Shawnee Herald and spent hour after hour listening to the newsmen prepare their stories. At the age of 14, he wrote an editorial challenging the claim of an Eastern physician that consumption engendered genius and so impressed the city editor that he was given a regular column in the newspaper (1908-1911). After his high school graduation in 1911, Rascoe moved to Chicago, Illinois, and became a University of Chicago campus reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where he later worked as an editor and literary critic. His talented writing ability took him to the heights of his profession and included distinguished work in such magazines as The Nation, McCall’s, The New Republic, and Vanity Fair. By the age of 30, Rascoe was literary editor of the New York Tribune and was regarded in the Yale Review as one of the three most important literary critics in America. He was also the celebrated author of many books including, The Joys of Reading(1937), Belle Star: The Bandit Queen (1941), and his controversial autobiography, Before I Forget (1936).