With this masterly and original work, <i>Bellow: A Biography</i>, National Book Award nominee James Atlas gives the first definitive account of the Nobel Prize–winning author's turbulent personal and professional life, as it unfolded against the background of twentieth-century events—the Depression, World War II, the upheavals of the sixties—and amid all the complexities of the Jewish-immigrant experience in America, which generated a vibrant new literature.<br><br>Drawing upon a vast body of original research, including Bellow's extensive correspondence with Ralph Ellison, Delmore Schwartz, John Berryman, Robert Penn Warren, John Cheever, and many other luminaries of the twentieth-century literary community, Atlas weaves a rich and revealing portrait of one of the most talented and enigmatic figures in American intellectual history.<br><br>Detailing Bellow's volatile marriages and numerous tempestuous relation-ships with women, publishers, and friends, <i>Bellow: A Biography</i> is a magnificent chronicle of one of the premier writers in the English language, whose prize-winning works include <i>Herzog</i>, <i>The Adventures of Augie March</i>, and, most recently,<i> Ravelstein</i>.