Famous Lithuanian geographer, politician and writer Kazys Pakštas was born in 1893 in Užpaliai, Utenos region. For one year he studied at the Kaunas Theology Seminary. In 1914, he emigrated to the United States and in 1918, earned a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Fordham University.

He had a very active social life: from 1916 to 1918, he worked at the “National Fund” that collected money for the Lithuanian victims of the First World War as well as the support of the Lithuania political aims. He participated in the historic visit of the Lithuanian-American delegation to President Woodrow Wilson during which he expressed the will of Lithuanian nation to seek independence.

In 1991, he returned to Lithuania and worked at the Ministry of National Defence but soon left for Switzerland, where he defended his thesis on the Lithuanian climate at Fribourg University and earned a Doctorate. Later, he returned to the USA where he worked in Lithuanian newspapers as editor. In 1925, the newly founded Lithuanian University in Kaunas invited him to lecture and he remained there (until 1939). In 1934, together with the colleagues, he established the Lithuanian Association of Geographers. In 1939, he moved to Los Angeles to lecture. As the Soviet occupation prevented him from returning to Lithuania, he lectured at various American universities and actively participated in social life until his death in 1960.

In 2005, the publishing house “Versus aureus” republished the K. Pakštas’ work, “The Baltoscandinavian Confederation”. The Institute of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago had published it for the first time in 1942.