Along with Truman Capote, Mailer is considered the innovator of literary journalism. Of Jewish origin, he lived his childhood in New York. He studied Aeronautical Engineering at Harvard University and already interested in literature, he began publishing at eighteen. After the interruption of World War II, where he served in the army, he studied literature at the Sorbonne.

He co-founded the newspaper The Village Voice, and worked several years as a political reporter. For several years he wrote screenplays in Hollywood, but without great success. Arrested in 1967 for his involvement in anti-Vietnam demonstrations, Mailer was also a committed activist anti-system: many of his works, including Armies of the Night, are political in nature. Later inluso raided it, opting for mayor of New York but did not succeed. He was also the author of novels, essays, biographies and much appreciated as Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso and Lee Harvey Oswald; and went on to receive two Pulitzer prizes for The Armies of the Night (1968) and The Executioner's Song (1980).