Age: 58
Born: Chicago, IL
Lives: Arkansas
Family: Wife, one adult son
Professional experience: U.S. Army, four star general, NATO Supreme Allied Commander, 1999-2000

The latest entrant into the Democratic field of presidential candidates, Gen. Wesley Clark brings a formidable biography to the race, if a lack of political experience.

Clark was born Dec. 23, 1944 in Chicago, Ill. His father, Benjamin Kanne, was an Orthodox Jewish attorney and Democratic Party politician. Kanne died when Clark was 5 years old, and his mother, Veneta Kanne Clark, moved the family back to her native Arkansas, where she remarried former banker, Victor Clark.

Clark was raised as a Baptist (he converted to Catholicism during Vietnam), and attended the local public schools. Clark has said he was influenced as a young man by a World War II veteran, Jimmy Miller, who coached swimming at a local Boys Club.

Clark was first in his class as a 1966 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York. After a brief stint working for a national poverty program in New York City, Clark studied at Oxford University in London, where he was a Rhodes Scholar -- an honor he shares with a fellow Arkansan who ran for president, Bill Clinton. Clark was at Oxford from 1966 to 1968, and earned a master's degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

After graduating from West Point, Clark entered the United States Army, where he would serve for 34 years and eventually rise to the rank of four-star general. Clark served in Vietnam, where he was an infantryman in command of a mechanized company. Clark was wounded four times in Vietnam and was awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star.

After graduating from the National War College, as well as the Ranger and Airborne schools, Clark became a White House Fellow, a post he held from 1975 - 1976. In that post, Clark served as a Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He later became a professor of social science in the United States Military Academy.

From June 1996 through July 1997, Clark served as Commander-in-Chief for the U.S. Southern Command, Panama, where he commanded U.S. forces in Latin America and the Caribbean.

From 1997 - 2000, Clark was NATO Supreme Allied Commander and Commander in Chief of the United States European Command. In that role, Clark commanded Operation Allied Force, NATO’s first major combat action, which intervened in the ethnic conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. The successful operation was followed by the arrest and indictment of former Servian President Slobodan Milosovic in the Hague on charges including crimes against humanity.

Clark retired from the Army in 2000.

Clark has received several U.S. and foreign military honors, including the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart, which he received after being wounded in Vietnam. He has received honorary Knighthoods from the British and Dutch governments and was made a commander of the French Legion of Honor. In 2000, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Now in the private sector, Clark is chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic advisory and consulting firm. He also serves on the boards of several private corporations and nonprofit organizations, and comments regularly on politics, diplomacy and public affairs.

Clark became known to many cable television viewers as a commentator on CNN during the major combat phase of the Iraq war.

He is also the author of the best-selling book, "Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat," and the chairman of the board for the nonprofit group, "Leadership for America," a nonpartisan educational organization dedicated to fostering a national dialogue about America's future.

Clark is married to the former Gertrude Kingston of Brooklyn, N.Y. The two married during the Vietnam War, where Clark was injured and eventually received a Purple Heart. The couple live in Little Rock, Ark., and have one son, who lives in New York.