Some context: Ludendorff was born on 9 April 1865 in Kruszewnia near Posen, Province of Posen, Kingdom of Prussia (now Poznan County, Poland), the third of six children of August Wilhelm Ludendorff (1833-1905). His father was descended from Pomeranian merchants who had achieved the prestigious status of Junker. Erich's mother, Klara Jeanette Henriette von Tempelhoff (1840-1914), was the daughter of the noble but impoverished Friedrich August Napoleon von Tempelhoff (1804-1868) and his wife Jeannette Wilhelmine von Dziembowska (1816-1854), who came from a Germanized Polish landed family on the side of her father Stephan von Dziembowski (1779-1859). Through Dziembowski's wife Johanna Wilhelmine von Unruh (1793-1862), Erich was a remote descendant of the Counts of Donhoff, the Dukes of Duchy of Liegnitz and Duchy of Brieg and the Marquesses and Electors of Brandenburg.
In 1885, Ludendorff was commissioned as a subaltern into the 57th Infantry Regiment, then at Wesel. Over the next eight years, he was promoted to lieutenant and saw further service in the 2nd Marine Battalion, based at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, and in the 8th Grenadier Guards at Frankfurt on the Oder. His service reports reveal the highest praise, with frequent commendations. In 1893, he entered the War Academy, where the commandant, General Meckel, recommended him to the General Staff, to which he was appointed in 1894. He rose rapidly and was a senior staff officer at the headquarters of V Corps from 1902 to 1904.  Next he joined the Great General Staff in Berlin, which was commanded by Alfred von Schlieffen, Ludendorff directed the Second or Mobilization Section from 1904-13. Soon he was joined by Max Bauer, a brilliant artillery officer, who became a close friend. By 1911, Ludendorff was a full colonel. His section was responsible for writing the mass of detailed orders needed to bring the mobilized troops into position to implement the Schlieffen Plan. For this they covertly surveyed frontier fortifications in Russia, France and Belgium. For instance, in 1911 Ludendorff visited the key Belgian fortress city of Liege.  Deputies of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which became the largest party in the Reichstag after the German federal elections of 1912, seldom gave priority to army expenditures, whether to build up its reserves or to fund advanced weaponry such as Krupp's siege cannons. Instead, they preferred to concentrate military spending on the Imperial German Navy. Ludendorff's calculations showed that to properly implement the Schlieffen Plan the Army lacked six corps.  Members of the General Staff were instructed to keep out of politics and the public eye, but Ludendorff shrugged off such restrictions. With a retired general, August Keim, and the head of the Pan-German League, Heinrich Class, he vigorously lobbied the Reichstag for the additional men. In 1913 funding was approved for four additional corps but Ludendorff was transferred to regimental duties as commander of the 39th (Lower Rhine) Fusiliers, stationed at Dusseldorf. "I attributed the change partly for my having pressed for those three additional army corps."  Barbara Tuchman characterizes Ludendorff in her book The Guns of August as Schlieffen's devoted disciple who was a glutton for work and a man of granite character but who was deliberately friendless and forbidding and therefore remained little known or liked. It is true that as his wife testified, "Anyone who knows Ludendorff knows that he has not a spark of humor...". He was voluble nonetheless, although he shunned small talk. John Lee, states that while Ludendorff was with his Fusiliers, "he became the perfect regimental commander ... the younger officers came to adore him." His adjutant, Wilhelm Breucker, became a devoted lifelong friend.
Is there anything interesting about his Pre-war military career?
A: In 1885, Ludendorff was commissioned as a subaltern into the 57th Infantry Regiment, then at Wesel.

Some context: Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 - November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burke was best known for his analyses based on the nature of knowledge. Furthermore, he was one of the first individuals to stray away from more traditional rhetoric and view literature as "symbolic action." Burke was unorthodox, concerning himself not only with literary texts, but with the elements of the text that interacted with the audience: social, historical, political background, author biography, etc.
He was born on May 5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Peabody High School, where his friend Malcolm Cowley was also a student. While he attended Ohio State University to pursue courses in French, German, Greek, and Latin, he later dropped out to move closer to New York City where he enrolled at Columbia University. During his time there, he was a member of the Boar's Head Society. Due to the constraining learning environment, however, Burke also left Columbia, never receiving a college diploma. In Greenwich Village he kept company with avant-garde writers such as Hart Crane, Malcolm Cowley, Gorham Munson, and later Allen Tate. Raised by a Christian Science mother, Burke later became an avowed agnostic.  In 1919, he married Lily Mary Batterham, with whom he had three daughters: the late feminist, Marxist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock (1922-1987); musician (Jeanne) Elspeth Chapin Hart (b. 1920); and writer and poet France Burke (b. ~1925). He would later marry her sister Elizabeth Batterham in 1933 and have two sons, Michael and Anthony. Burke served as the editor of the modernist literary magazine The Dial in 1923, and as its music critic from 1927-1929. Kenneth himself was an avid player of the piano. He received the Dial Award in 1928 for distinguished service to American literature. He was the music critic of The Nation from 1934-1936, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935.  His work on criticism was a driving force for placing him back into the university spotlight. As a result, he was able to teach and lecture at various colleges, including Bennington College, while continuing his literary work. Many of Kenneth Burke's personal papers and correspondence are housed at Pennsylvania State University's Special Collections Library. However, despite his stint lecturing at Universities, Burke was an autodidact and a self-taught scholar.  In later life, his New Jersey farm was a popular summer retreat for his extended family, as reported by his grandson Harry Chapin, a contemporary popular song artist. He died of heart failure at his home in Andover, New Jersey.
Did he write any books with anyone else?
A: