FRANK E. SMITHA dropped out of high school and joined the Marine Corps in 1951. He was honorably discharged in 1954 and worked as a laborer. He found it terribly boring and soon began taking courses, including remedial English, at a community college. He saved his money, traveled abroad, read a lot of books and in 1963
entered UCLA as a junior majoring in sociology. On January 1, 1965 he followed his UCLA companion to Berkeley. There for six years he worked part-time on the U.C. campus, sitting in on classes and attending lectures. He wanted to spread his interest rather than focus as his friends had to do. He had no interest in an academic career and began writing and received sweet rejection slips. He traveled again and married. His wife insisted on his acquiring a degree, and in 1977 he graduated from California State University, Hayward, with Dean's List honors and a B.A. in History. He worked as a writer-editor in and around the city of Palo Alto (Silicon Valley). In 1987, freed by the personal computer, he began writing the historical narratives that first appeared in 1997 as Antiquity Online. He now lives in central Ohio.