*Nelson Algren Abraham was born March 28, 1909 in Detroit , Michigan , though his family was originally from Chicago , Illinois and Black Oak, Indiana , where his grandparents owned a trading post.

*Nelson and his family returned to Chicago in 1913, where they lived in an Irish Protestant neighborhood on the South Side on 71st and Cottage Street. Here Algren attended Park Manor School and frequented the ice cream parlors and movies that were nearby.

*In 1921, Nelson and his family relocated to the Northwest Side of Chicago on 4834 North Troy Street , where his father opened a tire and battery shop and his older sister Bernice attended Chicago Normal College . Nelson spent the majority of his time attending Hibbard High School , playing pool, gambling, and organizing the Uptown Arrows basketball team at Albany Park .

*Nelson elected to pursue a further education and began schooling at the University of Illinois – Urbana in 1927. In studying sociology, Nelson became fascinated with the various lifestyles in Chicago, specifically those of the lower class. Because of this, he spent a lot of his time on Walnut Street , the Polish neighborhoods east and south of North Troy , and the Great Lakes Memorial Veterans.

*The summer after Nelson's graduation from college in 1931, he elected to hitchhike and travel in order to find a job with his newly acquired journalism license. He travels through the Midwest , ending up in Milwaukee, where he works at the YMCA for a brief period of time before heading back to Chicago.

*In the fall of 1931, unable to situate in one place, Nelson keeps traveling again, this time heading south. Journeying along the Mississippi River , Nelson eventually ends up in New Orleans , where he is fascinated by the amount of poverty-stricken individuals present. Nelson stays in New Orleans into 1932, earning money as a door-to-door salesman for Standard Coffee and Watkins Pharmacy.

*Following his stint in New Orleans , Nelson takes what little money he has earned and heads to South Texas where he picks oranges and grapefruit. He attempts to renovate a gas station, but this fails to neither hold his attention nor make a profit, so he begins wandering again, traveling throughout Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma.

*Towards the end of 1932, Nelson moves back to Chicago . Upon his arrival, he becomes an avid member of the John Reed Club, which was an organization created for the purpose of arranging art exhibits, writing strike pamphlets, sponsoring speakers that were in favor of leftist thought. This group included writers such as Carl Sandburg and Richard Wright and met at 1427 South Michigan Avenue.

*In 1933, Nelson elected to travel southwest again, where he visited the towns of San Antonio , El Paso , and Juarez before settling in Alpine, Texas . Nelson used this sleepy town as inspiration for his work, “An American Diary.” Upon leaving Alpine, Nelson attempted to steal one of their many, seldom used typewriters, only to find himself the object of a month long trial. He was found guilty but was told he could spend his two years of punishment wherever he elects.

*Arriving in Chicago again in June 1934, Nelson became a fixture in a literary circle that met on Rush Street in Chicago 's North Side. During this period, he wrote his first major novel, Somebody in Boots, which, despite delays, was published in March 1935.

*In 1935, due to poor reception of Somebody in Boots and difficulties with his current girlfriend, Nelson attempted to commit suicide and later moved in with his friend Lipton to 737 Rush Street , while receiving psychiatric treatment at the University of Chicago Psychiatric Center.

*After acceptable recovery at the hands of the psychiatric center, Nelson moved in with his girlfriend Amanda to a small apartment on the South Side of Chicago on 35th and Cottage Grove. He gets a job with the government writing program, the Federal Writers' Project. During this period, he frequently visits East St. Louis, where he befriends several prostitutes and junkies.

*Nelson and Amanda move during May 1940 to the “Polish Triangle” of Chicago , living on Milwaukee and Division Street. During this period, the two family members closest to Nelson, his sister, Bernice, and his father pass away. The impact of their deaths, as well as his location in the Polish portion of Chicago inspire his novel Never Come Morning , which, despite several good reviews, is banned from Chicago libraries due to it's potentially offensive depiction of Czech and Polish communities.

*In November 1943, after pressure to join, Nelson becomes a member of the infantry and moves to Texas for training, after which, in the spring of 1944, he is sent to Europe . Here he experiences the poverty in Marseilles , France , which he explores as voraciously as he did in Chicago.

*Upon his return to the United States in November 1945, Nelson moved to another Polish neighborhood, this one on Wabansia and Bosworth. Here, Nelson spent the majority of his time at the local YMCA, writing stories, and reading everything available. It was during this time that Nelson became romantically involved with Simone de Beauvoir (pictured on the right), taking her to places such as Maxwell Street or Chicago 's Bowery on West Madison , where they would immerse themselves in the lives of the prostitutes and junkies who lived there.

*With the urging of Simone, Nelson moved into the Brevoort Hotel in Greenwich Village, New York with her in April 1947. This lasted briefly, however, Nelson was eager to get back to Chicago , and Simone felt the same way about Paris .

*With Simone in Paris, Nelson immersed himself even more immensely in his work writing and observing the impoverished of Chicago and, in the summer of 1948, published Man With a Golden Arm, a novel focusing on the relationships of people who know the pains of addiction firsthand. 18