Background
Cook was born in 1932 in Chicago. His family moved often as a child, his father being a train dispatcher with frequent new assignments.
journalist literary critic writer
Cook was born in 1932 in Chicago. His family moved often as a child, his father being a train dispatcher with frequent new assignments.
He earned a degree in literature from Loyola University (Chicago). He served as a translator in the United States. Army in Frankfurt, Germany, in the late 1950s and also did public relations work. He joined the editorial staff of the National Observer in Washington, District of Columbia, in 1967 and covered movies, books, and music
When that newspaper folded, he became book editor of United States of America Today, the Detroit News, and then the Los Angeles Daily News (from 1984 to 1990).
He was a senior editor at Newsweek. In the meantime, he was writing as a free-lance, selling to such publications as the National Catholic Reporter.