Is addiction a disease, a sin, a sign of hypersensitivity, a personal failing, or a unique resource for the creative mind? However it is defined, addiction can have devastating consequences, often shattering lives, sundering families, causing impoverishment, and even triggering suicide. Yet it can also be a source of inspiration. In these frank essays, leading American and Canadian writers explore their surprisingly diverse personal experiences with this complex phenomenon, candidly recoun...

Louisa May Alcott never intended to write Little Women. She had dismissed her publisher’s pleas for such a novel. Written out of necessity to support her family, the book had an astounding success that changed her life, a life which turned out very differently from that of her beloved heroine Jo March.In Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever, the acclaimed author of American Bloomsbury, returns to Concord, Mas...

Even the most devoted readers of nineteenth-century American literature often assume that the men and women behind the masterpieces were as dull and staid as the era's static daguerreotypes. Susan Cheever's latest work, however, brings new life to the well-known literary personages who produced such cherished works as The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden, and Little Women. Rendering in full color the tumultuous, often scandalous lives of these volatile a...

We've all felt the giddy flutter of excitement when our new lover walks into the room. Waited by the phone, changed our plans...But are we in love, or is there something darker at work? In Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction, Susan Cheever explores the shifting boundaries between the feelings of passion and addiction, desire and need, and she raises provocative and important questions about who we love and why.Elegantly written and thoughtfully composed, Che...

In this thoroughly researched and groundbreaking biography of Bill Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, acclaimed author Susan Cheever creates a remarkably human portrait of a man whose life and work both influenced and saved the lives of millions of people. Drawn from personal letters and diaries, records in a variety of archives, and hundreds of interviews, this definitive biography is the first fully documented account of Bill Wilson's life story.Alcoholic...

In Drinking in America, bestselling author Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.Seen through the lens of alcoholism, American history takes on a vibrancy and a tragedy missing from many earlier accounts. From the drun...

From the author of American Bloomsbury, Louisa May Alcott, and Home Before Dark, 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. At the time of his death in 1962, at age sixty-eight, he was, after Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in the United States.E. E. Cummings was and remains controversial. He has been called “a master” (Malcolm Cowley); “hideous” (...

A sympathetic and illuminating account of the stories of John Cheever, and the intersecting life and work of the legendary writer John Cheever, as told by his eldest daughter.The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, brought together some of the finest short fiction ever written. The collection won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, sold millions of copies, and went on to define the American short story and shape generations of writers. ...

Having children transforms us -- by the amazing power of our love for them and theirs for us, by the anger they are able to evoke in us, and because in order to be good parents to our children, we must admit we are no longer children ourselves. In As Good as I Could Be, bestselling author Susan Cheever describes that transformation in passionate, compelling, moving prose.Susan is raising a daughter, 18, and a son, 11; they have all survived divorce, blending families, issue...

Born into a world ruled and defined by the cocktail hour, in which the solution to any problem could be found in a dry martini or another glass of wine, Susan Cheever led a life both charmed and damned. She and her father, the celebrated writer John Cheever, were deeply affected and troubled by alcohol.Addressing for the first time the profound effects that alcohol had on her life, in shaping of her relationships with men and in influencing her as a writer, Susan Cheever delivers an...

“Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives—The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings.”—F. Scott FitzgeraldThe most notable work of fiction from our most beloved modernist poet, The Enormous Room was one of the greatest—yet still not fully recognized— American literary works to emerge out of World War I. Drawing on E. E. Cummings’s experiences in France as a volunteer ambulance driver, this novel takes us through a seri...

This companion book to the HBO documentary of the same name sheds light on the hidden American epidemic of addiction. Blending compelling personal narratives with statistics and expert opinion, all gleaned from over two years of research and reporting, ADDICTION offers a comprehensive and provocative look at the impact of chemical dependency on addicts, their loved ones, society, and the economy. Breaking the stigma that addicts are simply weak and immoral, it delves into new brai...