Writer; born in New York City. He was self-educated and read voraciously after recovering his sight at age 15 being temporarily blind. At 18 he went to California and worked in restaurants and as a migrant fieldworker; from 1943 he worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco for twenty-five years. His writings, starting with The True Believer (1951), include The Passionate State of Mind, The Ordeal of Change, and The Temper of Our Time and they won recognition for their pungent, aphoristic style and perceptivity. Hoffer retired from the docks in 1967 but continued to be the celebrated "the longshoreman philosopher.