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Double Lives: American Authors' Friendships

"A fascinating discussion of the choreography of friendship, of the roots and routes of rivalry. [Lingeman] is a reliable and amiable companion on this journey…perceptive and revealing."

--Kirkus Reviews

"Richard Lingeman, in his definitive biographies of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, established himself as a top literary historian. In Double Lives, he comes through as a major literary critic, revealing surprising truths in the celebrated friendships and feuds of writers whose lives and art intersected."
--Studs Terkel

"Friendship is the sine qua non of our lives, and Richard Lingeman’s delightful Double Lives is the story of seven representative literary friendships, rivalrous and fragile, sustaining and enabling. Told with great charm, it's also a story for all of us: poignant and bracing and chock-full of fresh insights about the writers — and friends — we thought we knew."
--Brenda Wineapple, author of Hawthorne: A Life

"Richard Lingeman’s survey of seven eminent literary friendships, each deftly sketched, is remarkably absorbing, given its brevity across two centuries and the fact that its cast of characters changes every 30 pages or so."
—Roy Blount Jr, New York Times Book Review