Irving Wallace (1916-1990) was a best-selling novelist and screenwriter, the husband of novelist Sylvia (née Kahn) Wallace, and father of writers David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace. Born in Chicago to Russian Jewish parents, Wallace was raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where his parents ran a general store. In 1935, he moved to Berkeley, California to attend writing school at the Williams Institute, dropping out after two semesters. Wallace relocated to Los Angeles in 1936 to devote himself to writing short stories and nonfiction articles for The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Collier’s, and other periodicals. In 1942, Wallace enlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit, Army Air Forces, where he wrote scripts for training films. Following his discharge from military service, Wallace returned to freelance writing. At this time, he also began a decade-long stint as a Hollywood screenwriter. Wallace wrote screenplays for Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Universal, R.K.O., and Paramount. His film credits during this period include Split Second, Young Wives' Tale, The Holy Grail, The West Point Story, Meet Me at the Fair, and The Big Circus.

By the early 1950s, Wallace grew disillusioned with screenwriting and began turning his full attention to books. His first published book of nonfiction, The Fabulous Originals, appeared in 1953, and his first novel, The Sins of Philip Fleming, appeared in 1959. Wallace’s first popular success came with the publication of The Chapman Report (1960), a novel about the sex lives of suburban women in Southern California. Subsequent novels The Prize (1962), The Man (1964), The Seven Minutes (1969), The Word (1972), and The Fan Club (1974), all published by Simon and Schuster, greatly extended Wallace’s popular and commercial reach, making him one of the most widely read writers of the twentieth century. In addition to his own books, Wallace also collaborated with his daughter Amy and son David. Among the Wallace family’s collaborations were The People's Almanac (1975), The Book of Lists (1977), The People's Almanac No. 2 (1978), and Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (1981). Characterized by extensive research, carefully constructed plots, and such controversial themes as race, sex, and religion, Wallace’s books sold in excess of 200 million copies worldwide, were translated into multiple languages, and were frequently adapted for film and television. Irving Wallace continued to write until the end of his life, publishing his last novel, The Guest of Honor, in 1989. He died on June 29, 1990 of complications from pancreatic cancer.

Wallace married Sylvia Kahn Wallace (1917-2006), a magazine editor, in 1941. Born in New York City, Sylvia Wallace began working in the mailroom of Dell Publishing at age 16. At 23, she moved to Los Angeles to become Dell’s West Coast editor. In the 1940s, Wallace worked as an editor for the Hollywood fan magazines Modern Screen and Photoplay, but eventually put her career on hold in the late 1950s to care for her two children. Following her husband’s string of successful novels in the 1960s-1970s, Sylvia Wallace likewise turned her attention to writing. Starting at the age of 59, she published two works of popular fiction: The Fountains (1976) and Empress (1980). Sylvia Wallace died on October 20, 2006.

Amy Wallace (1955-2013) and David Wallechinsky (1948-) were born and raised in Los Angeles. Both collaborated with their father, Irving Wallace, on the Book of Lists and People's Almanac series. In 2003, Amy Wallace published her memoir, Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda, about her relationship with the anthropologist Carlos Castaneda. David Wallechinsky, a writer and popular historian. He was a founding member and president of the International Society of Olympic Historians.