Bierce, A: Devil's dictionary

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913?) was one of the leading men of letters in nineteenth-century America and a Civil War veteran. He served as a first lieutenant in the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment. After the war he became a regular columnist at The San Francisco Examiner and one of the most influential journalists on the West Coast. In addition to his journalistic work, he wrote piercingly about the ghastly things he had seen in the war and was a pioneer of the psychological horror story. At the age of seventy-one Bierce disappeared while joining Pancho Villa's army as an observer of the Mexican Revolution, and, in spite of multiple investigations, his ultimate fate remains unknown.