nt "as though it were the most important subject in the world," he read obsessively in his free time, even reading to his daughters every night. Max Perkins briefly, though often enough, mentions Perkins's family life; his five daughters were very important to him-- the only reason he would ever leave work early or even at the typical five o'clock hour would be to spend time with them. Berg discusses the life-long tension in the Perkinses' marriage because of Louise's obsession with acting and neglect of wifely duties. Letters between Perkins and his long-time friend and soul-mate, Elizabeth Lemmon were referred to and quoted. And many important familial events are listed. The book, though, largely accounts the relationships Perkins had with his authors. He supported new talents, sometimes risking his position at the conservative publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons; he argued and pushed the manuscripts of new voices, rallied support from other young editors in the house and eloquently made his points of argument at the monthly meetings which for the most part won him the right to publish these important, new writers. He proved himself a man of great instinct when many of these manuscripts became best-sellers and/or turned out to be the products of literary genius. Perkins became known as an editor who nurtured new artists and supported them as they developed. Berg does a wonderful job of revealing the extent to which Perkins did this by including authors' book dedications to Perkins and giving actual dialogue and quoting letter correspondence between editor and authors. Many writers were blessed with Perkins as their editor including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, the latter perhaps would have never been published or known if it wasn't for Perkins. Both of these writers take up a lot of space in Perkins's life as well as in Berg's Max Perkins. This is the great weakness of Max Perkins. Berg bogs us down with many detailed...
