Chester Aaron was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 1923 and graduated from Butler High School in 1941. After working in steel mills for two years, he enlisted in the US Army, where, until the end of the Second World War, he served as a heavy machine gunner in a Heavy Weapons Company of the 20th Armored Division. He participated in the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau. After the war, he attended UCLA for three years then earned his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and his Masters Degree at San Francisco State University. After working for ten years as Chief X-Ray Technician at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, he accepted a position as a professor in the English Department at Saint Mary's College of California. Retired from Saint Mary's College, he is currently professor emeritus. While at Saint Mary's, he was also a garlic farmer. For more than thirty-five years, he grew approximately sixty varieties of garlic from twenty different countries. He has published three books-one with Mostly Garlic magazine, two with Ten Speed Press-about garlic-farming. Two of those books were memoirs. One, The Great Garlic Book, is currently published by Random House. The other, Garlic Kisses and Tasty Hugs, currently resides at Zumaya Eclectic. His most recent book on the subject of garlic, The Marriage of Mushrooms and Garlic, co-written with noted mushroom expert Malcolm Clark and beautifully illustrated with photographs by Roger Adams, also includes recipes from Suzanne Adams and Surachet (Pic) Sangsana. It, too, is published by Zumaya Eclectic In addition to the short stories in Wars and Peaces, he has written novels for both adults and young adults.