Publication Order of Forrest Gump Books
| Forrest Gump | 1986 |
| Gump & Co. | 1995 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Better Times Than These | 1978 |
| As Summers Die | 1980 |
| Only | 1984 |
| Gone the Sun | 1988 |
| Such a Pretty, Pretty Girl | 1999 |
| El Paso | 2016 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Conversations with the Enemy: The Story of PFC Robert Garwood (With: Duncan Spencer) | 1983 |
| Gumpisms: The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump | 1994 |
| The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Cookbook | 1994 |
| Shrouds of Glory: From Atlanta to Nashville: The Last Great Campaign of the Civil War | 1995 |
| The Crimson Tide: An Illustrated History of Football at the University of Alabama | 2000 |
| A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918 | 2002 |
| 1942: The Year That Tried Men’s Souls | 2005 |
| Patriotic Fire: Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite at the Battle of New Orleans | 2006 |
| Vicksburg, 1863 | 2009 |
| Kearny’s March: The Epic Creation of the American West, 1846-1847 | 2011 |
| Shiloh, 1862 | 2012 |
| Ronald Reagan: Our 40th President | 2012 |
| The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight | 2013 |
| The Generals: Patton, MacArthur, Marshall, and the Winning of World War II | 2015 |
| The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II | 2018 |
| The Patriots: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America | 2020 |
About Winston Groom
Winston Groom (1943 to 2020) was an American novelist and historian from Alabama, the author of “Forrest Gump” (1986). The 1994 film of the novel, directed by Robert Zemeckis with Tom Hanks in the title role, won six Academy Awards and turned the book into a bestseller. Groom wrote eight novels and a long run of popular histories of American wars.
Groom was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Mobile, Alabama, where he attended University Military School. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1965, having dropped his plan to become a lawyer like his father while editing a campus literary magazine. He served in the US Army from 1965 to 1967, including a tour in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division. Afterwards he worked as a reporter for the Washington Star, covering the courts, before leaving journalism to write novels.
His first novel, “Better Times Than These” (1978), follows a rifle company in Vietnam. “As Summers Die” (1980) was adapted for television in 1986. “Conversations with the Enemy” (1983), written with Duncan Spencer about an American soldier who is charged with desertion years after escaping a prisoner of war camp, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
In 1985 Groom moved back to Mobile and wrote “Forrest Gump” in six weeks, drawing on a story his father had told him about a boy he knew in childhood. The narrator, a man with a low IQ, passes through college football, the Vietnam War, ping-pong championships and shrimp boating. Groom was paid $350,000 for the film rights and later disputed Paramount’s accounting of the profits. The sequel, “Gump & Co.” (1995), carries Forrest through the 1980s.
From the mid-1990s Groom wrote mainly history, beginning with “Shrouds of Glory” (1995), on the last great campaign of the Civil War, and going on to books on the Western Front, the Battle of New Orleans, Vicksburg and Shiloh, and group biographies such as “The Aviators” and “The Generals”. “El Paso” (2016) was his first novel in nearly twenty years. He received the Harper Lee Award in 2011 and entered the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame in 2018. He died at his home in Fairhope, Alabama, on 17 September 2020, aged 77. “The Patriots”, on Hamilton, Jefferson and Adams, was published after his death.