A fascinating story that is about the authors of Max Perkins as much as it is a biography of Perkins himself. I think the book would be of interest to anyone who enjoys biography, but it's also an important read for writers, editors, and students of writing and literature.

As for me, the nature of biography is to cover absurd amounts of information, and this biography's nature was especially complicated due to the fact that Perkins lived through his authors and so their stories must be told to elucidate his. I struggled with the chronology of the book, which unnecessarily exploded each chapter with dozens of characters of varying levels of consequence. Still, very interesting and often amusing.

I tend to read mysteries and thriller fiction. The best of those keep me up at night reading, and I find myself picking them up at odd times to see what happens next. I tend to seldom read "literature", and had to go to Wikipedia to ensure that Thomas Wolfe and Tom Wolfe were different people. I do like biographies, though, and this biography was hard to put down. It is about the Scribner's editor, Max Perkins, and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald (I have read The Great Gatsby), Ernest Hemingway (read some of his short stories), and Thomas Wolfe (I don't think I've ever read any). This is a great book. I learned about those writers, about publishing and editing, and I found myself picking the book up whenever I had a few moments to read the next couple of pages. My wife got tired of me reading sections to her. This is as attention catching as anything by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, James Patterson, or the others I normally read.

Biographies....

A really interesting biography of Max Perkins, an editor most well-known now for discovering F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe—though he also edited many bestsellers of the 20s, 30s and 40s which are now forgotten. There are times when Berg's coyness in telling anonymous anecdotes, coupled with his seeming desire to excuse Perkins' sexism with sexism, makes for a slightly frustrating read. Perhaps it might also be more enjoyable for people who have an interest in Perkins' most famous authors (I am indifferent to Fitzgerald, can't abide Hemingway, and had never heard of Wolfe), though I was certainly interested in what I learned. All in, however, this is a solid introduction to Perkins, and to the era in which he lived.