Max Perkins: Editor of Genius

by MR Andrew Ashcroft

Overview

Now the Major Motion Picture Genius, Starring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman and Jude Law.

The National Book Award winner from Pulitzer-Prize winning author A. Scott Berg.
 
The talents he nurtured were known worldwide: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and numerous others. But Maxwell Perkins remained a mystery, a backstage presence who served these authors not only as editor but also as critic, career manager, moneylender, psychoanalyst, father-confessor, and friend.
 
This outstanding biography, a winner of the National Book Award, is the first to explore the fascinating life of this genius editor extraordinare—in both the professional and personal domains. It tells not only of Perkin’s stormy marriage, endearing eccentricities, and secret twenty-five-year romance with Elizabeth Lemmon, but also of his intensely intimate relationships with the leading literary lights of the twentieth century. It is, in the words of Newsweek, “an admirable biography of a wholly admirable man.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399584831
Publisher:	Temple Publications International, Inc.
Publication date:	06/07/2016
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	74,389
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

A. Scott Berg is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of five biographies: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, winner of the National Book Award; Goldwyn, for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship; Lindbergh, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Kate Remembered, his biographical memoir of Katharine Hepburn; and Wilson, the definitive biography of twenty-eighth president Woodrow Wilson.

Table of Contents

Part 1

I The Real Thing 3

II Paradise 10

III Provenance 24

IV Branching Out 40

V A New House 60

VI Companions 87

VII A Man of Character 109

VIII A Little Honest Help 128

Part 2

IX Crises of Confidence 151

X Mentor 167

XI Lamentations 185

XII The Sexes 204

XIII Triumphs over Time 228

Part 3

XIV Going Home Again 257

XV Critical Times 275

XVI The Letter 297

XVII A Sad Farewell 322

XVIII By the Wind Grieved 337

Part 4

XIX To Everything a Season 359

XX Diminutions 389

XXI Portrait in Gray and Black 408

XXII A Toss of the Hat 433

Acknowledgments 452

Sources and Notes 456

Index 485

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for A. Scott Berg’s Max Perkins: Editor of Genius

“A highly readable work of literary history.” —New York Times Book Review

“An extraordinarily fine and moving portrait of the man who assembled America’s finest literary gang.” —Russell Baker

“Talented, intelligent, and marvellously researched... A work that does honor to the subject.” —Chicago Tribune

“A. Scott Berg has…(perhaps just in the nick of time) rescued Perkins from permanent obscurity.” —Atlantic Monthly

"In the history of American publishing there is no more legendary -- and elusive -- figure than Maxwell Evarts Perkins.... Now the mystery has been solved in Scott Berg's exhaustive, penetrating, and wholly satisfying biography... Scrupulous, thoughtful, touching, memorable, and eminently rewarding." —Jonathan Yardley, The Miami Herald

"A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius seems such a natural that it makes you wonder why no one ever thought of writing such a book before. [Among] the virtues of this biography is that Perkins emerges from the shadows... The details enrich the legend." —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"Max Perkins was the best of hte best. This book brings him back alive." —Erskine Caldwell 

Praise for A. Scott Berg’s Lindbergh

“Berg’s book is an extraordinary achievement. In his authoritative chronicle, Berg has allowed the inconsistencies, nuances, and tribulations of Lindbergh’s life to speak for themselves without judgment or speculation. In doing so, he has given us the definitive account of a dramatic and disturbing American story.”--Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Charles Lindbergh is the ultimate American life, and Berg’s new biography is the ultimate exploration of that life. In an astonishing biography of a man who personified the future tense, no sentence is overwritten, no passage overwrought.”--Boston Sunday Globe

“Berg’s monumental new biography is a richly detailed and deeply nuanced examination of a historic life in all its complexity. This is fall’s must-read biography.”--Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Berg turns that historic flight into a cogent and thoroughly gripping account that conveys all the magic, danger and courage of the young pilot’s achievement. A similar narrative prowess informs Berg’s account of the 1932 kidnapping of Lindbergh’s infant son and the subsequent trial of Hauptmann – an account that reads, at once, as a  harrowing thriller and a sobering study in the unreckoned consequences of fame.”--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“A superb biography.”--Time Magazine

“The most outstanding piece of nonfiction that I have read this year. Berg does a spectacular job of establishing why Lindbergh proves such a powerful icon for the 20th century. A substantial piece of history that illuminates an important figure in world history. It’s the kind of book that took almost a decade to create. And it’s worth it.”--USA Today

“Berg brings us about as close as I suspect we will ever get to the man himself.”--The New York Times Book Review

Russell Baker

An extraordinarily fine and moving portrait of the man who assembled America's finest literary gang.

Editorial Reviews

A work that does honor to the subject.

Chicago Tribune

A. Scott Berg has...(perhaps just in the nick of time) rescued Perkins from permanent obscurity.

Atlantic Monthly

A highly readable work of literary history.

New York Times Book Review

Berg nailed the National Book Award for this portrait of the house of Scribner's legendary editor. Perkins's close, personal relationships with Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe are well documented by literary scholars, but he also was a force behind other noted authors, including Pulitzer Prize winner Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, convincing her to write The Yearling, and James Jones, whose From Here to Eternity was the last book Perkins edited. Anyone with a healthy interest in these writers generally are curious about Perkins as well, since he looms large in their legends, and will want to read this. Academic collections certainly should own a copy, but public libraries also should invest. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A highly readable work of literary history.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Berg has told this story unobtrusively and with great feeling, and he has (perhaps just in the nick of time) rescued Perkins from permanent obscurity.”—The Atlantic
 
“[An] exhaustive, penetrating, and wholly satisfying biography...Scrupulous, thoughtful, touching, memorable, and eminently rewarding.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Miami Herald
 
“Talented, intelligent, and marvelously researched...A work that does honor to the subject.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“Berg’s whole narrative is first-rate—filled with humor and feeling. Max would have published it in a minute.”—Newsweek
 
“Although Perkins would have been embarrassed by the attention, Berg’s tribute would have touched him.”—Time
 
“A book about Maxwell Perkins? Of course! Why didn’t someone think of it before?...Berg has done very well...It’s a fascinating and illuminating story.”—Chicago Sun-Times
 
“As complete a Max Perkins as we will ever need. It’s an extraordinary vivid portrait.”—Webster Schott, The Washington Post Book World
 
“Perkins turns out to have been as fascinating, dark, complex, and sad as any of his golden boys. A lovely book about the age of giants and the extraordinary man in the shadows behind them.”—Russell Baker
 
“Max Perkins was the best of the best. This book brings him back alive.”—Erskine Caldwell
 

From the Publisher