Leonid Kossman is a philologist, writer, and teacher whose language textbooks have helped millions of people. Born in Moscow in 1915, as a child in Riga, Latvia, he spoke German and Russian at home and Latvian in the neighborhood. After graduating from a German high school he studied law at the University of Latvia and worked as a drama critic for a Latvian newspaper, Tsinia.

When the Nazis occupied Riga he escaped into Russia, soon joined the Soviet army, and was severely wounded. He spent the rest of the war in Kazakhstan where he slowly regained sight and movement.

After the war he studied English and Western literature at Moscow State University, graduated, and taught English and German at the Maurice Thorez Linguistics Institute (which later became the Moscow State Linguistics University, or MGLU). During this period his two textbooks for Russians learning German were published.

With his wife and two children he emigrated to the US via Israel in 1972, and worked here as a college languages teacher and as a writer for the German-American Daily Staatszeitung and for the German-Jewish American weekly, Aufbau. In the late 1970s he started writing books to help other Russians in learning English.

In authorized--and pirated--editions these books have circulated very widely, and have even been adopted by American university Russian courses.

Most recently he has been writing short stories, and he published a historical novel, Above Water in 2003.