Theodore Dreiser Books

I've never read a book so gripping or heart wrenching. My condolences to you and your family Mr. Walsh; my heart breaks for you.

John Walsh has decided he is the voice for victims everywhere. The problem is, fewer and fewer people want him to be. Why? Because of things like this book.

He seems to ignore reality in favor of what he wants us to think.

I agree that this book is very sad and heart breaking. I can only begin to feel the sadness and heart break that this man and his wife went through. This book reveal that. I could only somewhat feel his pain because I have never been through it. This book proves that something good can come out of tragic happenings.

This book is more political then I thought. This man has accomplished a lot Worth the buy.

AS A MAN YOUR NOT SUPPOSED TO CRY, BUT I DID, READING WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS SON AND THINKING OF MY OWN SON I JUST COULDNT HELP IT! ITS A GREAT BOOK AND MAKES YOU WONDER WHAT YOU WOULD DO IF IT HAPPENED TO YOU!

Tears of Rage is such a brilliant book. It is very touching, tragic, and even insightful. Not only did I truly enjoy it, but also I found it hard to put down. Such hard times for this fellow after the sadistic murder of his lovely child Adam. Yet he does not give up and he battles and battles for justice for Adam. It was not easy and the police unit were not very helpful and competent with handling his son's case. And it broke John's heart. But he never ran out of fuel to find justice for his beloved son. I admire that. I fully admire his heroic deeds in becoming the host of AMW and has been contributing immensely to snatching sick predators that cannot linger around in the world any longer and especially caring about missing children. If John Walsh have not audaciously fought for our safety, how much worser will the country be in right now? Thank you John Walsh. And I am glad that Adam Walsh bill was successful and was made into law recently.

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.

Clare Eby has written something new and provocative about Dreiser. This book is elegantly written, and argued with style and wit. Those who are interested in American studies, in Dreiser, and in Veblen while find some revelatory analysis. Professor Eby's book will stay relevant for many years to come.

This biography of the life of Arthur Henry could have been reviewed in our literary section, but is featured here for its far-reaching and lively presentation. Author Theodore Dreiser's shocking first novel Sister Carrie might never have gained such fame were it not for his closest friend, one Arthur Henry, who prodded him to write fiction and helped him create his first novel. Henry's life also touched many social reformers and other authors of his time: he deserves his own coverage and thanks to new material recently revealed, the Walkers have at last created a biography following his career and influences.

An exquisite little book, less than 150 pages, containing very short stories or vignettes, both of Africa and of England, hence the title. The Africa here is Kenya, while it was British East Africa, and Powys depicts the land as cruel and the British settlers as even crueler. And a gem of a short story called "The Wryneck" is simply a shocker. Powys was a lifelong atheist, having no belief in any sort of life after death, and the Africa he sees sustains this belief entirely. It is harsh and unforgiving. England doesn't seem much better. The only sweetness and light in the book comes from his descriptions of nature, which are beautiful, and something he obviously loved. He makes himself sound like a womanizer, yet he certainly was nothing to look at, and also a life-long comsumptive. But his writing is fine - he embraces life.

This item was received in perfect condition and was really much better than the description. It arrived in a very timely manner and I would definently order something again.

I have to disagree with the Publishers Weekly reviewer who states that Loving doesn't seem interested in finding out what made Theodore Dreiser tick. I walked away from this hurricane of a book feeling I knew TD inside out (and incidentally more than a bit about Loving as well)! A difficult figure to classify, Dreiser has been cursed for decades by having a friend like HL Mencken, a man who praised him to the skies on the one hand, but on the other let the whole world know his real opinion, that Dreiser was an oversexed drunk who couldn't write his way out of a paper bag. Mencken's tributes to Dreiser's "power" were like Norman Mailer's tributes to Muhammad Ali, to be honored more in the breach than in the observance. And thus generations of students and readers have only picked at Dreiser warily, feeling that some of his low-class trashy ways might rub off on them.

Loving at least has no fear, and walks in like an angel into a landscape littered with the corpses of previous biographers. He focuses Dreiser's development right at the mirror stage, as it were, with his intense relationship with Sarah, his mother, and a brooding, quarrelsome batch of siblings. Among them was the Indiana songbird, Psul Dresser (who changed his name from "Dreiser" for show biz reasons) who wrote many hit tunes for Tin Pan Alley before an untimely death. For some reason Loving feels it necessary to state, more than once, that Paul Dresser is forgotten today, but how true is that? Not very! And a film like "My Gal Sal," with Victor Mature and Rita Hayworth, Phil Silvers and Carole Landis--a Fox biopic of the songwriter--is every bit as good a film as the more portentous pictures drawn from Dreiser's own writings. I love Wyler's CARRIE and Stevens' PLACE IN THE SUN, but even Dreiser's greatest fans would admit theu're heavy sledding.

Loving takes particular pains with the first half of TD's life, the formative years, and lets the last half of his life slip by in a mere hundred pages, so he's actually skimming a bit, but one feels that the balance is essentially correct. I can't imagine a better biography of our weirdest novelist. Loving makes you want to read even the later books, like THE STOIC and THE BULWARK, books that haven't been cracked open since 1947. He explains the reasons why Mencken turned on Dreiser--basically Dreiser came to Baltimore to visit at a time when Mencken's mother was very sick, on her deathbed, upstairs, and he didn't even have the politesse to ask after the old woman. He was self-centered, true. Loving is also very good about explaining how old two fisted Dreiser wound up editing women's magazines at the turn of the century and how he changed their course, and how the demands of the profession changed his own writing, perhaps required him to spend more time thinking about women. Loving states that Dreiser was the first important US writer to have descended from a country other than England. Interesting, but it sort of negates the achievements of some black American novelists I think.

During my youth, in the 1950s and 1960s, I scoured used book stores for the book that would "talk to me" without the usual gloss of hypocrisy. I'll always remember the day fondly when I found this one. I've read it three times, and whenever I need a bracing renewal of wholesome opinion I turn to selected entries in this book. It captures something refreshing about the 1920s that has been lost. I should warn you that the two books that claim to be a sequel to this one are pathetic documents of editorial cowardice possibly pandering to a descent in intellectual taste. Don't buy them (I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Certain Eminent Men and Women of Our Time, edited by Clifton Fadiman, 1939 and Living Philosophies: The Reflections of Some Eminent Men and Women of Our Time, edited by Clifton Fadiman, 1990). When I read The Great Roob Revolution by Roger Price I understood the underlying currents of regressive climate of opinion that accounts for the loss of intellectual honesty. Long live the one and only 1931 version, Living Philosophies: A Series of Intimate Credos.

Lou Zanine has a gift for writing non-fiction. Very Insightful and involving.

HIGHLY recomended!

This biography is worth reading because it will open your eyes to how our ancestors were not all innocent Puritans. Many interesting details of Dreiser's life are combined with fascinating information about New York 100 years ago. I did not want this book to end. If you are a woman and you've never read "Sister Carrie," read it!