Erma Bombeck (1927 - 1996) was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban home life from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s. Bombeck also published 15 books, most of which became best-sellers. From 1965 to 1996, Erma Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns chronicling the ordinary life of a midwestern suburban housewife with broad, and sometimes eloquent humor. By the 1970s, her columns were read, twice weekly, by thirty million readers of the 900 newspapers of the U.S. and Canada.