Mario Puzo (1920–1999) was an American author and screenwriter who wrote crime novels about the Italian-American and Sicilian Mafia. His best-known book, The Godfather (1969), was adapted by Francis Ford Coppola into a film trilogy, and Puzo won Academy Awards for the screenplays of the first two films. He also wrote the original screenplay for Superman (1978) and its 1980 sequel, and his other novels include The Last Don, Omerta, and The Sicilian, the second Godfather book. His final novel, The Family, appeared posthumously in 2001.
