

Collins took the offer from United Press and was soon picked up by Newsweek to be their correspondent in the Middle East. Two days before reporting to the new job, the United Press offered him a job as caption writer at their Paris office, for much less money than offered by Procter & Gamble. When Collins was discharged he was offered a job with Procter & Gamble. One day in the cafeteria he met a young American corporal, Larry Collins, a Yale graduate and draftee.

After one year in the tank regiment, he was transferred to the SHAPE headquarters to serve as an interpreter. On his return to Paris after his honeymoon, he was conscripted into the French army. When they returned to France, Lapierre wrote his second book, Honeymoon around the Earth.Ĭollaboration with Larry Collins They worked their way across Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Lebanon. Lapierre sold the Chrysler for $400 in San Francisco and bought two tickets on the SS President Cleveland for Japan. The prize included a case of soup, which was their only food for three weeks. In Los Angeles, they won another $300 in a radio game show for Campbell Soup.

With only $300 in their pockets, they had just enough to buy gas, sandwiches, and cheap rooms in truckers’ motels. They were married in New York City Hall on his 21st birthday and drove to Mexico in the old Chrysler for their honeymoon. That year he bought a 1937 Chrysler convertible for $30 and fell in love with a fashion editor. When Lapierre was eighteen, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study economics at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he was graduated in 1952. It became one of the best sellers of postwar France and other European countries. His twenty thousand miles of adventure beginning with just thirty dollars in his pocket led to his first book A Dollar for a Thousand kilometers. The Chicago Tribune paid him $100 for his exclusive story. He found the driver before the police did. One day a truck driver who picked him up on the road to Chicago stole his suitcase. living an adventurous existence, wrote articles, washed windows in churches, gave lectures, and even found a job as a siren cleaner on a boat returning to Europe. Later, he received a scholarship to study the Aztec civilization in Mexico.

Lapierre renovated a 1927 Nash that his mother gave him and decided to travel across the United States during his summer holidays. He developed interests in travelling, writing, and cars. He attended the Jesuit school in New Orleans and became a paper boy for the New Orleans Item. with his father who was a diplomat (Consul General of France). At the age of thirteen, he travelled to the U.S. Dominique Lapierre (30 July 1931 – 2 December 2022) was a French author.ĭominique Lapierre was born in Châtelaillon-Plage, Charente-Maritime, France.
