Kenneth Eugene Silverman was born in Manhattan, New York on February 5, 1936. He received a bachelor's degree in English in 1956 and a master's degree in English in 1958 from Columbia University. He taught for a year at the University of Wyoming before receiving a doctorate in English in 1964 from Columbia University. He was a specialist in Colonial American literature and spent his entire academic career at New York University, retiring in 2001. After editing the anthology Colonial American Poetry, he wrote Timothy Dwight and A Cultural History of the American Revolution. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather received the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in 1985. His other biographies included Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance, Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse, Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage, and Houdini!!!: The Career of Ehrich Weiss, American Self-Liberator, Europe's Eclipsing Sensation, World's Handcuff King and Prison Breaker - Nothing on Earth Can Hold Houdini a Prisoner!!! He died from complications of a respiratory illness on July 7, 2017 at the age of 81.
