Robert B. O'Connor is the author of the WWII novel Jeep Show - A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge and the non-fiction Gumptionade - A Booster for Your Self-Improvement Plan. Two radically different books about morale.O'Connor lives and writes in Memphis, Tennessee. He is married to a physician-scientist and has three grown sons and a grandson. O'Connor's father, a WWII veteran, instilled in him a love of reading, his mother a love of sports. O'Connor was a die-hard Yankees fan in his youth (lean years for the Bronx Bombers), then lost interest after they regained their winning ways. Strangely, he is a supporter of Wigan Athletic, a third-tier English soccer club.

Starting with Yogi - The Autobiography of a Professional Baseball Player, O'Connor read mostly biographies in his younger years. He went through a Winston Churchill phase, including cigars. He still thinks that The Path to Power, Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, reads like poetry.Now O'Connor reads mostly fiction. He read War and Peace twice (necessary because every character has at least three different Russian names). A Perfect Spy, Ragtime, Huckelberry Finn and Close Range: Wyoming Stories are also at the top of O'Connor's fiction list. Recently, North Woods and This Is Happiness have delighted him.O'Connor's wrote his first book, Gumptionade, after life punched him in the mouth.

As he was helped up off the mat, O'Connor read the Stoics, the Bible, undertook psychoanalysis, and started a small business. These and other experiences and influences revealed to him the power of gumption. Willpower alone is not enough.Jeep Show began at Procter & Gamble, when O'Connor was told the Oxydol Circus legend. The promoter of that ill-fated circus, Jim Hetzer, inspired the protagonist of Jeep Show, Jim Tanzer.