This book is everything a non-fiction biography of one of twentieth century America's literary greats should be - insightful, informative, comprehensive - but it is also everything the fiction that Maxwell Perkins used to oversee was - moving, encompassing, wonderfully character driven and full of prose that makes you sigh with a smile.

I got lost in Max Perkins' story immediately and kept turning the pages thanks to surprisingly unexpected twists and turns that surrounded his career, or rather the careers of the greats he led so well; Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wolfe and James Jones. An essential read for anyone interested in the New York publishing scene in the first half of the 1900s and the whole book - so stodgily well written - serves as a reminder of how beautiful biographies can be.