Born on October 19, 1950, Marc Aronson lives in Maplewood, New Jersey. His grandfather, Solomon Aronson, was the heir to a long line of rabbis in Kiev dating back to the Middle Ages. Currently, he teaches Library and Information Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He also writes non-fiction history works targeted to young adults, mostly specializing in American history. Some of his most notable works are Sir Walter Raleigh and the Quest for El Dorado, Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry, and Race: A History Beyond Black and White. He married novelist Marina Budhos in 1997, and they have two sons.