Former Belvedere resident and current Florida resident Michael T. Jackson spent 15 years as the chairman and chief executive officer of Emerging Growth Management in San Francisco. He is the founder of SFG Asset Advisors in San Francisco, near Belvedere. Beyond his work, Michael T. Jackson is an avid reader, and his favorite novel is Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction stands as one of the literary world’s most renowned honors. Despite the significance and high profile of the award, in numerous years, no prize has been awarded in this category, most recently in 2012.

In 1941, the Pulitzer Prize committee made a unanimous decision to recognize Ernest Hemingway’s fifth novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, as the year’s most deserving work of literature. The committee’s decision was upheld by the Pulitzer Board, typically the last stage in the award process.

However, Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler, an advisor of sorts to the board, found the novel’s content offensive and urged the board to withdraw its support. The Pulitzer Board ultimately agreed to Butler’s demands and did not give an award for fiction in 1941.

Eleven years after this Pulitzer controversy, Hemingway wrote one of his most enduring works, The Old Man and the Sea. This novel was awarded the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an acknowledgment not only of the book’s literary quality but also Hemingway’s lengthy, accomplished career as a writer.