The definitive biography of one of the best-known writers of mid-20th-century America. Chicago journalist Mary Wisniewski interviewed dozens of Algren's inner circle, including photographer Art Shay and the late Studs Terkel, and examined Algren's unpublished writing and correspondence, including hundreds of letters he received from lover Simone de Beauvoir, to craft an account as entertaining as it is meticulously researched. Algren reveals new details about the writer's life, work, personality, and habits, digging beneath the street-crawling man's man stereotype to show a funny, sensitive, and romantic but self-destructive artist. Wisniewski shows how, initially celebrated then savaged by literary critics for his continued preoccupation with prostitutes and drug addicts in his fiction, Algren was haunted by insecurity about his work and practically gave up writing fiction after 1956, and how he finally found a sense of community and acceptance in the artist colony of Sag Harbor before his death in 1981. This fresh look at the man whose tough but humorous style and compassionate message enchanted readers and fellow writers and whose boyish charm seduced many women is indispensable to anyone interested in 20th-century American literature.