George W. S. Trow

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George William Swift Trow Jr. (September 28, 1943 – November 24, 2006) was an essayist, novelist, playwright, and media critic. He worked for The New Yorker for almost 30 years, and wrote numerous essays and books. He is best known for his essay "Within the Context of No Context", first published on November 17, 1980 and later released as a book.

Trow was born in Greenwich, Connecticut. He studied at the Phillips Exeter Academy, and graduated from Harvard University in 1965. He was president of the Harvard Lampoon and later served as an editor for its offshoot, the National Lampoon. He took a position at The New Yorker, writing articles and publishing short fiction, in 1966.

Much more has been written about George in death, than in life. George would have enjoyed the irony, and he would have understood it.

He lamented what he saw as the disintegration of culture in his most famous work, "Within the Context of No Context". In it, he indicted television as a culprit of what he felt was a decline in American discourse and a rise of celebrity worship. His other works include Bullies (1980), a compilation of short stories, The City in the Mist (1984), a novel, and criticism, My Pilgrim's Progress: Media Studies, 1950–1998 (1998). An essay of his, "The Harvard Black Rock Forest", was first published in 1984 and then republished in 2004. His plays include The Tennis Game, Prairie Avenus, and Elizabth Day, and his screenplay credits include collaboration on Savages (1972) and The Proprietor (1996).

In 1994, he angrily left The New Yorker in protest of editor Tina Brown's invitation to Roseanne Barr to oversee a special issue on women. He left his home in Germantown, New York and traveled around North America, living in locations such as Texas, Alaska, and Newfoundland. Several years before his death, he moved to Naples, Italy, where he died of natural causes in 2006.