Norman Lewis

Norman Lewis (born December 30, 1912 in Brooklyn, New York – died September 8, 2006 in Whittier, California) was an author, grammarian, lexicographer, and etymologist. Lewis was a leading authority on English-language skills, whose best-selling 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary published by Pocket Books in 1971 promised to teach readers "how to make words your slaves" in fifteen minutes a day. Lewis sold his first non-fiction work—a quiz on the varieties of manias—to Leisure magazine for $1 in 1939. A fifteen-year magazine writing career followed. A self-confessed "terrible student," Lewis spent nine years dropping in and out of City College of New York before earning a master's from Columbia University. While a student at Columbia he wrote his first book: a sixth-grade textbook entitled Journeys Through Wordland in 1941.