[3] Storm was born in Bloomington, California to German parents who may have been refugees fleeing anti-socialist fervor following the failed Revolutions of 1848.
[3] Storm died of accidental electrocution on December 11, 1941, a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, while rushing to complete a large radio transformer for the Army Signal Corps in a laboratory in San Francisco.
[2] The tyrant of the title is based on Augusto Leguía, President of Peru from 1919 to 1930, "whose rule was marked by rebellion, suppression of his opponents, and widespread corruption.
"[1] His next novel, Made in the USA (1939) is a "social fable"[2] about a tramp steamer full of passengers that becomes stuck on a sandbar in the South Pacific.
"[2] Wilson also thought that it showed "what seemed internal evidence of having been written earlier," giving off the air of "one of those autobiographical novels that young men begin in college and carry around for years in old trunks.