According to the author bio on another of his books, "The Past That Would Not Die," Lord was born in Baltimore, where he "received his early schooling," then "in 1939 he was graduated from Princeton University. During World War II he was with the Office of Strategic Services, and he worked in London in 1944 and 1945. He took his law degree at Yale, then did editorial and advertizing work in New York City, where he still lives" as of 1965. As an aside the OSS was the forerunner of the modern CIA, and his senior thesis for Princeton in 1939 was "The Rise and Fall of the Collins Line," according to Alexander Crosby Brown's book "Women and Children Last."