
J.D. Salinger was born in 1919 in New York to a Jewish father and a Scottish born mother. Growing up he was clearly intelligent but did not do well in school; so, after flunking out of the McBurney School, he was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. After graduating he spent several months in Vienna, ostensibly learning business and language but mostly just learning language. After returning to the U.S. he began publishing short stories and other works in various magazines, but soon after Pearl Harbor was drafted into the army, where he served from 1942/44. This clearly had an effect on J.D., and definitely had an impact on his later work. In 1951, five years after returning to New York, he published Catcher in the Rye, the book gaining him a level of fame and success that he was not prepared to handle. Salinger moved to rural New Hampshire, where he lived the rest of his life.