Novelist and journalist Philip Caputo passed away at his home in Norwalk, Connecticut, on May 7, 2026.
He was born June 10, 1941, in Chicago and educated at Purdue and Loyola Universities. After graduating in 1964, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps for three years, including a 16-month tour of duty in Vietnam. He has written 19 books, including two short-story collections, two memoirs, five works of general nonfiction, and ten novels.
In winter 2026, Arcade Publishing released Caputo’s latest effort, WANDERING SOULS, a collection of powerful stories that explore war, love, nature, life, and death. In its starred review, Booklist Magazine wrote, “Caputo brilliantly examines the lingering moral and psychological costs of conflict, in which memory functions as both wound and tether. A searing yet deeply compassionate story collection that explores the fragile borders between survival, guilt, and redemption.”
Previous to that, Caputo published MEMORY AND DESIRE, a story about love and the persistence of love, about desire and desire remembered, and the reunion of a fifty-year-old man with a son he fathered out of wedlock in his youth. Read about Caputo’s other nine novels here.
In 2013, Caputo published the travel/adventure memoir THE LONGEST ROAD: Overland in Search of America from Key West to the Arctic Ocean. A New York Times bestseller, it describes an epic road trip from the southernmost point in the U.S., Key West, Florida, to the northernmost that can be reached by road, Deadhorse, Alaska, on the Arctic Ocean. The journey took 4 months and covered 17,000 miles. Though it bears Caputo’s unique stamp, the narrative fuses elements of John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, William Least Moon, and Charles Kuralt. Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are like in the 21st century.
His first book, the acclaimed memoir of Vietnam, A RUMOR OF WAR, has been published in 15 languages, has sold over 1.5 million copies since its publication in 1977, and is widely regarded as a classic in the literature of war. It was adapted for the screen as a two-part mini-series that aired on CBS in 1980. Henry Holt & Co., its original publisher, brought out a 40th anniversary edition in August 2017.
In addition to books, Caputo has published dozens of major magazine articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces in publications ranging from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post to Esquire, National Geographic, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Topics included profiles of novelist William Styron and actor Robert Redford, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the turmoil on the Mexican border.
Caputo’s professional writing career began in 1968, when he joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, serving as a general assignment and team investigative reporter until 1972. For the next five years, he was a foreign correspondent for that newspaper, stationed in Rome, Beirut, Saigon, and Moscow. In 1977, he left the paper to devote himself to writing books and magazine articles.
Caputo has won 10 journalistic and literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 (shared for team investigative reporting on vote fraud in Chicago), the Overseas Press Club Award in 1973, the Sidney Hillman Foundation award in 1977 (for A Rumor of War), the Connecticut Book Award in 2006, and the Literary Lights Award in 2007. His first novel, HORN OF AFRICA was a National Book Award finalist in 1980, and his 2007 essay on illegal immigration won the Blackford Prize for nonfiction from the University of Virginia.
He and his wife, Leslie Ware, a retired editor for Consumer Reports magazine, and now a painter and novelist, divide their time between Connecticut and Arizona. Caputo has two sons from a previous marriage, Geoffrey, a professional guitarist with a day job as an electrician, and Marc, a political reporter based in Florida.
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