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James Michael Ullman

American journalist and author

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ6139720 ↗
Source-derived summary

James Michael Ullman (1925–1997) was an American novelist and newspaper writer/editor known for his work in and about the Chicago area.

Education, employment, war service

Ullman served in World War II and the U.S. Navy for two and a half years, and also served as an Air Force civilian employee on Guam.

Ullman became a newspaperman soon after. He served as police reporter on the La Porte, Indiana Herald-Argus, was editor of the Skokie, IL News and served as head of the United Press Bureau's Chicago desk.

Ullman was educated at Chicago's Wright Junior College and De Paul University, eventually receiving a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University in 1954.

He won a prize in the Ellery Queen Magazine's 1953 contest with his first story Anything New on the Strangler? His short stories continued to appear in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine through the early 1960s when he turned to novels.

Novels

Ullman's first novel The Neon Haystack won Simon & Schuster's Inner Sanctum Mystery Award in 1963. The story centers around Steve Kolchak, who arrives in "a mid-western city" in search of his brother who disappeared exactly one year earlier. Kolchak takes the same hotel room, walks into the same dive bars and befriends the same shady characters who last saw his brother before his disappearance.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “James Michael Ullman” is american journalist and author. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through James, Michael and Ullman, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1925, 1997, 1954, 1953—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1925-01-01. For this dossier, James, Michael and Ullman is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american journalist and author” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6139720. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 1997, 1954 and 1953.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “James Michael Ullman”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow James Michael Ullman primary sources, James Michael Ullman archive and James research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “James Michael Ullman”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “James Michael Ullman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.