Robert Slater was born in New York City on October 1, 1943, and grew up in South Orange, New Jersey. He graduated from Columbia High School in 1962 and graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966, where he majored in political science. He received a masters of science degree in international relations from the London School of Economics in 1967. He worked for UPI in the US (1969 to 1971) and in Jerusalem (1973-1974); and for TIME Magazine in Jerusalem from 1976 to 1996. Among the 26 books he has written are three Israeli biographies (Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir, and Moshe Dayan) and numerous books on American business leaders, including Jack Welch, George Soros, and Donald Trump. He has also written, with his wife Elinor, Great Jewish Women and Great Jewish Men; and on his own, Great Jews in Sports. His latest book, published in October 2011, is a textbook on how to defend against suicide bombing; his two co-authors are former Israeli police foreign press spokesman Gil Kleiman and former NYPD homicide detective Mordecai Dziikansky. Slater has three children and six grandchildren, all of whom live in Israel. Slater passed away in Jerusalem in March 2014.