Bellow, at forty-nine, is at the pinnacle of American letters--rich, famous, critically acclaimed. The expected trajectory is one of decline: volume 1, rise; volume 2, fall. Bellow never fell, producing in the latter half of his life some of his greatest fiction (Mr. Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift), winning two more National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize. At eighty, he wrote his last story; at eighty-five, he wrote Ravelstein. In this volume, his life away from the desk, including his love life, is if anything more dramatic than in the first. In the public sphere, he is embroiled in controversy over foreign affairs, race, religion, education, social policy, the state of culture, the fate of the novel.

In this stunning second volume, Zachary Leader shows that Bellow's heroic energy and will were present to the very end of his life. His immense achievement and its cost, to himself and others, continue to be worth the examination of this vivid work of literary scholarship.