Dreiser

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating book about a unlikeable man
Review: Swanberg was a master biographer and his books almost always are well-researched and well-written. This one certainly is. And I found it greatly worth reading though one cannot help but be appalled by the subject: an adulterer many times over, quarreling with his friends as well as all his publishers, a man of unbelievable crudity, an admirer of both Stalin and Hitler, a rabid anti-Semite, a vicious anti-Catholic. While few books can equal the merit of Swanberg's classic Sickles the Incredible, this biography is eminently readable and holds one's attention to the last page. It is the ninth book by Swanberg I have read, and I admit I read this because I knew Swanberg did such a good job with his books, not because I was so interested in Theodore Dreiser.