Walt Rostow,was a son of immigrant parents. He was born in New York on October 17, 1916. He entered Yale on full scholarship at the age of 15 and was a Rhodes Scholar heearned a PhD from Yale in 1940 . During World War II, he served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and after the war, he became a professor of economic history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1960, he became President Kennedy's Deputy Special Assistant for national security affairs, and was appointed a counselor to the State Department in 1961.
A strong anti-communist, he became special assistant for National Security to President Johnson in 1966, and his was an important voice urging the President to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. From 1969 until he died in 2003 he was a Professor of Economics at the University of Texas, Austin
His books include The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960), Politics and the Stages of Growth (1971) and The World Economy: History and Prospect (1978).
America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War