Susan Cheever

A brilliant, controversial, and fascinating biography of those who were, in the mid-nineteenth century, the center of American thought and literature. Concord, Massachusetts, 1849. At various times, three houses on the same road were home to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry and John Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. Among their friends and neighbors: Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman,...

A major reassessment of the life and work of the novelist, painter, and playwright considered to be one of America's preeminent twentieth-century poets. Cummings was and remains controversial--called "a master" or "hideous." In Susan Cheever's rich biography we see his idyllic childhood years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his sternly religious father and his loving, attentive mother. We see Cummings--slight, agile, playful, a product of a nineteenth-century...

Susan Cheever's comprehensive and definitive biography sheds new light on of life of Louisa May Alcott, whose work has inspired generations of women. Cheever laces this provocative biography with musings on the genesis of genius, and her identification with Jo March when she was a rebellious girl in the throes of puberty.

A commemorative hardcover edition of the only collection ever published of the celebrated novelist's shorter works.
Here is a treat for devoted fans of John Irving. First published twenty years ago, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by the author, beginning with three memoirs. The longest of the memoirs is "The Imaginary Girlfriend," his candid account of his twin careers in writing and wrestling, which, as

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