Allan W. Eckert was an historian, naturalist, novelist, poet, screenwriter, and playwright. The author of forty published books-plus one, The Infinite Dream, available the fall of 2011 by Jesse Stuart Foundation-he was nominated on seven separate occasions for the Pulitzer Prize in literature and, in 1985, was recipient of an honorary degree as Doctor of Humane Letters from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. In 1998 he received his second honorary doctorate, also in Humane Letters, this time from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. In addition to his, he wrote and had published over 150 articles, essays, and short stories, as well as considerable poetry, a major outdoor drama, and screenplays for several movies.