Edward C. Mendler grew up in South Bend, Indiana. He served as a Navy radio technician in Guam during the Bikini A-bomb tests in 1946. He graduated from the Lawrenceville School, from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (magna cum laude), and from Harvard Law School. Mendler practiced law in Boston for fifty years. He has studied and written about philosophy, science, law, and government as well as fiction.