Wortman, Marc

views updated

Wortman, Marc

PERSONAL:

Married; children: two. Education: Graduated from Brown University; Princeton University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New Haven, CT.

CAREER:

Writer, editor, magazine journalist, educator, and aviation historian. Served as a writer and editor at Yale University. Princeton University, instructor. Conducted a college program for inmates at Rahway State Prison, NJ.

WRITINGS:

(With Joel Krass) Poker Night: Dealer's Choice A-Z, BradyGames (Indianapolis, IN), 2005.

The Millionaires' Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented America's Airpower, PublicAffairs (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Marc Wortman is a freelance writer and magazine journalist based in New Haven, Connecticut. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University. An aviation buff since childhood, he is an independent researcher and historian on World War I military, aircraft, and aviation. He has been a writer and editor at Yale University, and once taught literature and writing to inmates at the maximum-security Rahway State Prison in Rahway, New Jersey, the rugged penal institution made famous in the harrowing 1978 anticrime documentary Scared Straight.

Wortman is a poker enthusiast, and is a founder of the Home Poker Web site. Wortman started the site as a hobby in 1998, with the intention of gathering together as many home poker variants as he could, and then offering those variants to players around the world, stated a biographer on the Home Poker Web site. The site was successful in this initial goal, and it quickly evolved to include other material for the large and growing community of home poker players. Wortman soon began offering information on topics such as poker strategy, protection against poker cheats, the legal aspects of home poker, and more. Wortman also established tutorials for beginning home poker players. Among the Web site's other offerings, he also provided material on other games such as home craps and home blackjack, the Web site biographer stated.

Wortman marshaled his expertise in poker for his first book, Poker Night: Dealer's Choice A-Z, written with Joel Krass, a partner in the Home Poker Web site. Wortman and Krass offer advice for enthusiastic poker players seeking to start a regular home poker game. They provide lists of what's needed, including cards, chips, tables, and other necessary items, with sugges- tions on where to find and purchase these necessities. The authors include information on hundreds of poker games and variants, including draw poker, stud poker, guts poker, and Texas Hold 'Em poker. They also offer basic rules, strategy tips, suggestions on the best time to hold or fold, information on interpreting bluffs, wagering, and more.

During his tenure at Yale University, Wortman became interested in the military involvement of the wealthy students and supporters of Yale. This interest led to research in the university's background where Wortman discovered the story of a group of young, rich Yale students whose interest in aviation led to the founding of the one of the earliest air corps units in World War I. Wortman tells the complete story of this unit and its members in The Millionaires' Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented America's Airpower. Wortman draws on diaries, letters, and other materials from these aviators who transformed the Yale Flying Club into a pioneering military unit that provided much-needed air support during the war. Their wealth, social standing, and high-placed connections allowed these young fliers to purchase and maintain their own aircraft and to take flying lessons, leading to their nickname "The Millionaires' Unit." Wortman describes the process they endured as they were shaped into a combat unit by stern instructors, how they reacted to the dramatically different weather in Europe, and what it took to enable them to effectively challenge the Germans. Some, such as Kenneth MacLeish, brother of renowned poet Archibald MacLeish, did not return from the war, but others returned to take up influential positions in business, government, and academia.

Wortman's account is a "fascinating story of one aspect of the Great War that has received little attention," observed a Contemporary Review writer. Library Journal reviewer Diane Fulkerson called The Millionaires' Unit a "well-written and engaging account." Wortman "has researched thoroughly and written clearly, thereby enhancing our knowledge of aviation history, Yale," and the first World War, remarked Roland Green in a Booklist review.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2006, Roland Green, review of The Millionaires' Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented America's Airpower, p. 68.

Contemporary Review, spring, 2007, review of The Millionaires' Unit, p. 131.

Library Journal, May 1, 2006, Diane Fulkerson, review of The Millionaires' Unit, p. 100.