William Craig (1929-1997), a native of Concord, Massachusetts, was educated at Columbia University. His first book, The Fall of Japan, was a documentary account of the last weeks of the Second World War in the Pacific. His first novel, The Tashkent Crisis, a thriller about espionage and international politics, was published in 1971.

His Enemy at the Gates, an examination of the battle for Stalingrad, marked the culmination of five years of research, during which he traveled on three continents, studying documents and interviewing hundreds of survivors of Stalingrad.