Jeffrey Zaslow

— Jeffrey Zaslow commenting on the difference between men and women, after writing The Girls from Ames

Zaslow died on February 10, 2012, at age 53 in a car accident on M-32 in Warner Township, Michigan while on tour for his non-fiction book The Magic Room. Former co-author Chesley Sullenberger was among those who eulogized Zaslow at his funeral on February 13.

In 2011, Zaslow collaborated with Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, on their memoir, Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope. In January 2012, Zaslow released The Magic Room: A story about the love we wish for our daughters, a non-fiction narrative set at a small-town Michigan bridal shop, and looked at the lives of a handful of brides and their parents who journeyed to the store's "Magic Room." (www.magicroombook.com)

In September 2007, after he attended the final lecture of Carnegie Mellon University Professor Randy Pausch, he collaborated with Pausch on writing The Last Lecture, released in 2008. The book by Pausch and Zaslow, translated into 48 languages, was a #1 New York Times best-seller, spending more than 110 weeks on the list. Media coverage included The Oprah Winfrey Show and an ABC special hosted by Diane Sawyer. More than five million copies of the book are in print in the U.S.

Zaslow first worked at the Orlando Sentinel, as a writer for that newspaper's Florida magazine. He then was a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal from 1983 to 1987 and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times from 1987 to 2001.

Jeffrey Lloyd Zaslow (October 6, 1958 – February 10, 2012) was an American author and journalist and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

Zaslow was born in 1958 in Broomall, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, one of four children of Naomi and Harry Zaslow. His father was a real estate investor. His family was Jewish. He attended Marple Newtown High School, where he was student council president his senior year. He wrote for the school paper and was in school plays while in junior high, starring in You Can't Take It with You. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 1980 with a degree in creative writing, Zaslow began his professional writing career at the Orlando Sentinel.

The Girls from Ames is a nonfiction book about a group of eleven women friends who grew up together in Ames, Iowa, remaining friends for forty years. It was billed by the publisher (Gotham Books) as "the inspiring true story of eleven girls and the ten women they became." (www.GirlsFromAmes.com) It spent 26 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, rising as high as #3. Highest Duty was co-written by Zaslow with Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, who successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. The book debuted at #3 on the New York Times list.