Salinger - Softcover

A stupendous work of research. . . . hugely impressive . . . I predict with the utmost confidence that, after this, the world will not need another Salinger biography -- (Sunday Times) )

An explosive new biography . . . Shields and Salerno have pulled off several coups . . . impressively non-judgmental (Daily Telegraph) )

A fresh look at J.D. Salinger s triumphant, traumatic, tawdry life . . . [Salinger] presents a decade s worth of genuinely valuable research (Time) )

Eloquently written and exhaustively reported . . . Salinger is an unmitigated success. . . . Shields and Salerno have struck journalistic gold. Salinger is a revelation, and offers the most complete picture of an American icon, a man deified by silence, haunted by war, frustrated in love and more frail and human than he ever wanted the world to know. . . . A startlingly revealing story -- USA Today)

Revealing . . . a sharp-edged portrait (New York Times) )

Unprecedented . . . A masterwork . . . An exquisitely researched and beautifully engineered piece of storytelling about one of modern history s most enigmatic personas -- Maria Popova (Brain Pickings) )

Salinger gets the goods on an author s reclusive life . . . It s the most common story in the world, and it strips away the sheen of his exceptionalism, trading in his genius for something much more real (Los Angeles Times) )

David Shields and Shane Salerno crack open the mythos of the reclusive author. . . . Salinger is the thorny, complicated portrait that its thorny, complicated subject deserves. . . . The book offers the most complete rendering yet (The Washington Post) )

Engrossing (The Wall Street Journal) )

Taken as a whole the memories, the documents, the pictures the book feels as close as we'll ever get to being inside Salinger s head (Entertainment Weekly) )

Providing by far the most detailed report of previously unreleased material, the book . . . both fleshes out and challenges aspects of the author s legend. . . . [Salinger] has new information well beyond any possible posthumous fiction (Associated Press) )

Refreshingly frank . . . thrillingly told . . . Salinger amply documents the author s youthful arrogance and selfishness, his infatuation with his own cleverness and his inability to see the world from the perspective of anyone who wasn t a lot like himself (Salon) )

An explosive biography (People) )

Thoroughly revealing . . . This book helps defend the affirmative response and whets the appetite for the Salinger books to come --(Kirkus Reviews)

David Shields is the author of two novels, Dead Languages and Heroes; a collection of linked stories, A Handbook for Drowning; and three previous works of non-fiction. He is a professor in the English department at the University of Washington.