Skip to main content
The Top Book List
Cover of Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg

Book · Adult

Max Perkins: Editor of Genius

Editor of Genius

by A. Scott Berg

528 pages · 2008

Honors

Get the book

We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects which books we recommend. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

About the book

The National Book Award winner from Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg is now celebrating its 40th anniversary.

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 Perkins'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."

The basis for the Major Motion Picture Genius, Starring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, and Jude Law.

For parents

No age or grade range recorded.

Grade ranges are editorial guidance. Every reader is different.