This comprehensive biography of prolific critic, essayist, historian, and novelist Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) posits, quite successfully, that the subject lived a life as romantic and chaotic as his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald's. Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown and the tragic death of his second wife (he was married four times, among them, Mary McCarthy); had affairs with numerous beautiful women, including Edna St. Vincent Millay; and was friend to literary giants such as John Dos Passos, Vladimir Nabakov, and W.H. Auden.
