Don Robertson was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist.

Robertson was born in Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

 and attended East High School. He briefly attended Harvard and Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

) before working as a reporter and columnist for The Plain Dealer, the Cleveland News and the Cleveland Press.

Robertson is probably best known for his trio of novels featuring Morris Bird III: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, The Sum and Total of Now, and The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened.

A movie adaptation of The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened aired on NBC in 1977 starring Jimmie Walker

Jimmie Walker

James Carter "Jimmie" Walker is an American actor and stand-up comedian, known for portraying J. J. Evans on the television series Good Times, which ran from 1974 to 1979...

 and James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones is an American actor. He is well-known for his distinctive bass voice and for his portrayal of characters of substance, gravitas and leadership...

.

In 1987, Stephen King

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

’s Philtrum Press

Philtrum Press

Philtrum Press is a small publishing house run by Stephen King.Primarily the work of Stephen King's personal assistant, Marsha DeFillipo ,conducting small press operations from his front business offices in Bangor, Maine....

 published Robertson’s novel, The Ideal, Genuine Man.

Robertson won the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1966. The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature presented him with its Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

 Award in 1991. The Press Club of Cleveland's Hall of Fame inducted Robertson in 1992, and he received the Society of Professional Journalist's Life Achievement Award in 1995.

Robertson died on his birthday in 1999, aged 70. He's buried in Logan, Ohio

Logan, Ohio

As of the census of 2000, there were 6,704 people, 2,790 households, and 1,768 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,175.2 people per square mile . There were 2,948 housing units at an average density of 956.5 per square mile...

.

In April 2008, HaperCollins Publisher reissued The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread in paperback. Berkley Trade (a division of Penguin Books) reissued "The Sum and Total of Now" in August 2009, and HarperCollins Publisher reissued "The Greatest Thing that Almost Happened" in September 2009. The rest of Don Robertson's books are currently out of print.

Novels

• The Three Days (1959)
• By Antietam Creek (1960)
• The River and the Wilderness (published as Game Without Rules in the UK) (1962)
• A Flag Full of Stars (1964)
• The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread (1965)
• The Sum and Total of Now (1966)
• Paradise Falls (1968)
• The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened (1970)
• Praise the Human Season (1974)
• Miss Margaret Ridpath and the Dismantling of the Universe (1977)
• Make a Wish (1978)
• Mystical Union (1978)
• Victoria at Nine (1979)
• Harv (1985)
• The Forest of Arden (1986)
• The Ideal, Genuine Man (1987)
• Barb (1988)
• Prisoners of Twilight (1989)

External links

• The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History