[3] When Wouk was 13, his maternal grandfather, Mendel Leib Levine, came from Minsk to live with them and took charge of his grandson's Jewish education.

[7] In 1934 he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the age of 19 from Columbia University, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.

[12][13] In off-duty hours aboard ship he started writing a novel, Aurora Dawn, which he originally titled Aurora Dawn; or, The True history of Andrew Reale, containing a faithful account of the Great Riot, together with the complete texts of Michael Wilde's oration and Father Stanfield's sermon.

Wouk sent a copy of the opening chapters to philosophy professor Irwin Edman, under whom he studied at Columbia,[14] who quoted a few pages verbatim to a New York editor.

Wouk claimed[citation needed] it was largely ignored amid the excitement over Norman Mailer's bestselling World War II novel The Naked and the Dead.

Three years later Warner Bros. made it into a movie of the same name starring Natalie Wood, Gene Kelly and Claire Trevor.

[15] In the 1960s, he wrote Youngblood Hawke (1962), a drama about the rise and fall of a young writer, modeled on the life of Thomas Wolfe; and Don't Stop the Carnival (1965), a comedy about escaping mid-life crisis by moving to the Caribbean, which was loosely based on Wouk's own experiences.

Although they were made several years apart, both were directed by Dan Curtis and both starred Robert Mitchum as Captain Victor "Pug" Henry, the main character.

Each had three layers: the story told from the viewpoints of Captain Henry and his circle of family and friends; a more or less straightforward historical account of the events of the war; and an analysis by a member of Adolf Hitler's military staff, the insightful fictional General Armin von Roon.

Wouk devoted "thirteen years of extraordinary research and long, arduous composition" to these two novels, noted Arnold Beichman.

"The seriousness with which Wouk has dealt with the war can be seen in the prodigious amount of research, reading, travel and conferring with experts, the evidence of which may be found in the uncatalogued boxes at Columbia University" that contain the author's papers.

[21] The Lawgiver (2012) was an epistolary novel about a contemporary Hollywood writer of a movie script about Moses, with the consulting help of a nonfictional character, Herman Wouk, a "mulish ancient" who became involved despite the strong misgivings of his wife.

[22] Wouk's memoir, titled Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author, was published in January 2016 to mark his 100th birthday.

[23][24] NPR called it "a lovely coda to the career of a man who made American literature a kinder, smarter, better place."

The two fell in love and after Wouk's ship went back to sea, Betty, who was born a Protestant and was raised in Grangeville, Idaho, began her study of Judaism and converted on her twenty-fifth birthday.

Wouk later dedicated War and Remembrance to him with the Biblical words "בלע המות לנצח – He will destroy death forever" (Isaiah 25:8).

[15] The Wouks lived in New York, Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, where he wrote Don't Stop the Carnival, and at 3255 N Street N.W.