Fortitude

American writer and journalist born on September 14, 1929, in West Hartford, Connecticut, and died on June 20, 2005, in Fréjus, France, one of the countries where he lived, along with England and the United States of America.
After graduating from Yale University in New York in 1951, he worked in advertising and later joined the U.S. Army, being assigned to serve in France in 1954. There he met Dominique Lapierre, with whom he became great friends and with whom he would co-write several works. bestsellers, who combined journalism with literature.
In 1956, Collins began working as a reporter at the Paris bureau of the American news agency. United Press International, being transferred the following year to Rome, Italy. A year later, he became a correspondent for the magazine. Nesweek in the Middle East.
In 1965, Collins and Lapierre published what would become the most important book of their careers, Is Paris burning? (Is Paris Burning Already?The book, which addresses the issue of Hitler's order to burn Paris before the arrival of Allied forces in August 1944, was disobeyed. The work was adapted into a film the year after its release, starring actors such as Frenchman Alain Delon and Americans Kirk Douglas and Glenn Ford.
The Collins/Lapierre duo released it in 1972. JerusalemOh Jerusalem), about the founding of Israel, and in 1975 a book about the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, among other works. Collins and Lapierre worked together until the former's death in 2005. His last book was Is New York brûle-t-il?, a thriller published in 2005 that featured George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon, Osama Bin Laden, Condoleezza Rice, and Saddam Hussein as protagonists.
Collins also produced solo work, notably including titles such as Fall From Grace, thanks to which he won the literary prize at the Deauville Film Festival in 1985, Maze, which earned him the Mannesman Talley award in 1989, Black Eagles and Fortitude.