Max Eastman

In his later years, Max Eastman (1883–1969) sold a portion of his papers to the new Lilly Library at Indiana University, a welcome addition to his slender income. His first biography, The Last Romantic—that is, the first after his own pair of autobiographies—was completed in 1978, just in time for the biographer, the late William L. O'Neill, who identified himself less as a biographer than a historian, to meet Eastman in person. However, he was not granted full access to the Eastman papers. Now Christoph Irmscher, an Indiana University biographer of figures as diverse as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Louis Agassiz, has employed his full access to the collection to offer a total life, beginnings to end. His focus on Eastman the man is tighter than O'Neill's, producing less a history than an expanded diary, with almost equal weight given to Eastman's work—and he did work hard—and his not-so-private life

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