Tony Judt was born in London in 1948, but spent most of his career in America. He studied history at Cambridge and then earned his doctorate in . His first major writings were about 's historical left-wing movements, particularly the French Socialist Party. Judt started working on Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 in 1989 when he was employed by New York University. Published in 2005, it went on to win numerous honors; in 2006 it was shortlisted for the nonfiction Pulitzer Prize and captured the Arthur Ross Book Award. Judt built a storied career as a public intellectual on the back of this success, and died in 2010 after a very public battle with the degenerative and fatal neurological disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.