Leonard E. Read was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut on December 19, 1913. He graduated from Yale University in 1934, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. During his military service in World War II he served as a commander of tank destroyers in Europe
Read more
Following the war, Mr. Read worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Germany where he met his wife, Ursula Engelhardt, whom he married in 1949. Mr.
Read received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1950 and joined the faculty of George Washington University's School of Business Administration in 1950 where he taught until his retirement in 1979. He received the Order of the Rising Sun from Japan's Emperor Hirohito in 1965 for his service to international relations between nations during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
His other major writings are The Way to Wealth through Reading (1937), The True Believer (1951), The Natural Law (1977), and Our Own Masterpiece (1985). Mr. Read died on January 14, 1986 at the age of seventy-six.