"A man who wants time to read and write must let the grass grow long.""It is impossible to treat a child too well. Children are spoiled by being ignored too much or by harshness, not by kindness.""Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders."
Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, Wilson graduated from Harvard University in 1942. He served in World War II, serving in the United States Coast Guard, commanding a naval trawler on the Greenland patrol and an army supply ship in the Pacific Ocean.
After the war, Wilson worked as a reporter for Time-Life. His first book, Voyage to Somewhere, was published in 1947 and drew on his wartime experiences. He also published stories in The New Yorker, and worked as a college professor at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Wilson wrote fifteen books, including the best-sellers The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955) and A Summer Place (1958), both of which were adapted into motion pictures. In his next novel, A Sense of Values, protagonist Nathan Bond was a disenchanted cartoonist caught up in adultery and alcoholism; it was not well received. In Georgie Winthrop, an over-the-hill 45-year-old college vice president takes up with the bohemian 17-year-old daughter of his childhood love. The novel The Ice Brothers is loosely based on Wilson's experiences in Greenland while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. The memoir What Shall We Wear to This Party? recalls his experiences in the Coast Guard during World War II and the changes to his life after the bestseller Gray Flannel was published.
Wilson was an advocate for integrating, funding and improving public schools, and became assistant director of the National Citizens Commission for Public Schools as well as assistant director of the 1955-56 White House Conference on Education.
He suffered from alcoholism throughout his life, and Alzheimer's disease towards the end. In addition to novels and magazine articles, he supported himself in his later years by writing commissioned works such as biographies and yacht histories. He was living in Colonial Beach, Virginia at the time of his death.
Wilson was married twice, first to Elise Pickhardt in 1941, then to Betty Stephens in 1962. He had four children. His daughter Lisa is a published author, and his son David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionary biologist. His daughter Rebecca is a nurse.
A copy of one of Wilson's books, Ice Brothers, was used to conceal a bomb by the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. On June 10, 1980 the president of United Airlines, Percy Wood, received a parcel in the mail at his home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which contained a copy. When he opened the book, a bomb concealed inside exploded, severely injuring him.
