Author

Walter P. Ellsworth

Walter P. Ellsworth writes the kind of books that get read out loud. He has a long-standing weakness for the ordinary, specific details of American life — the price of a gallon of gas the year you first got your license, the show the whole street watched on the same night, the toy every kid begged for one Christmas and had forgotten by spring.

Those small, exact memories are the raw material of his Milestone Birthday Trivia series. Each book walks one person back through the decades of a life, a few questions at a time, and leaves plenty of room for the stories the questions can only hint at. He builds them in genuine large print, keeps the answers close at hand, and scores them so that every result comes out kind — because the point was never the score.

He is quietly convinced that the finest storyteller at any gathering is usually the one being celebrated. He lives in the American Midwest, keeps more old almanacs than any reasonable person needs, and still believes a good question asked across a dinner table is worth a hundred asked on a screen.