Jennings married and divorced three times. During the Korean War, he served as a war correspondent for the Army, and was awarded a Bronze Star. He was also managing editor of two men's magazines, Dude and Gent. He studied at the Art Students League in New York and worked as a commercial artist and as a newspaper reporter. Jennings was self-taught and never went to college. He was born in 1928 in Buena Vista, Va., the son of a printer. In addition to his nine novels, most of them for adults, one written under the pseudonym Gabriel Quyth, he explored linguistics in ''The World of Words: The Personalities of Language,'' and wrote 10 nonfiction books for younger readers. They usually revolved around a picaresque central character who comes of age at a crucial historic moment. Jennings's novels were mostly sprawling historical works, sometimes reaching 500,000 words, packed with research, violence, braggadocio and vivid sex scenes. The cause was heart failure, said his brother, Hiram. Gary Jennings, a prolific writer whose books included the best-selling novel ''Aztec,'' about the Aztec war against the Spanish conquistadors, died on Saturday at his home in Pompton Lakes, N.J.
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