Arthur Miller

A great theater critic brings twentieth-century playwright Arthur Millers dramatic story to life with bold and revealing new insights Lahrs cogent analyses are revelatory. . . . He does not reduce the work to the life, but shows how it explains the life from which it emerges.Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal New Yorker critic Lahr shines in this searching account of the life of playwright Arthur Miller. . . . Its a great introduction to a giant of American letters.Publishers Weekly Distinguished theater critic John Lahr brings unique perspective to the life of Arthur Miller (19152005), the playwright who almost single-handedly propelled twentieth-century American theater to a new level of cultural sophistication. Organized around the fault lines of Millers lifehis family, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, Elia Kazan and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Marilyn Monroe, Vietnam, and the rise and fall of Millers role as a public intellectualthis book demonstrates the synergy between Arthur Millers psychology and his plays. Concentrating largely on Millers most prolific decades of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Lahr probes Millers early playwriting failures; his work writing radio plays during World War II after being rejected for military service; his only novel, Focus; and his succession of award-winning and canonical plays that include All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible, providing an original interpretation of Millers work and his personality.