William Christopher Barrett entered the City College of New York when 15 years old. He received his PhD from Columbia University at age 22. In the late 1940s to early 1950s, he was a journalist and associate editor at the Partisan Review and later the literary critic of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. He was a professor of philosophy at New York University from 1950 to 1979. He was well-known for writing philosophical works for nonexperts. Perhaps the best known among these were *Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy* and *The Illusion of Technique*.