IN A Writing Life, Stanley Weintraub applies the biographical skills he perfected over a lifetime of writing to tell his own story. In doing so, he introduces us to a who’s who of the twentieth century whom he encountered in his life and in his research, from Eddie Fisher to C. P. Snow, from Leonard Woolf to Pierre Salinger, from Ray Bradbury to Danny Kaye to Isaac Bashevis Singer, and he takes us inside his world of discovery and enables us to feel his passion and experience his relentless intensity for finding the letters, diaries and documents that reveal the important details of history.

Weintraub was one of the preeminent biographers, one of the most distinguished military historians, and one of the most important scholars of playwright George Bernard Shaw of the last 60 years. He published biographies of American and English figures of political, cultural and military significance, including Shaw, Lawrence of Arabia, Whistler, Beardsley, Queen Victoria (which reached #1 on The Times of London bestseller list), Prince Albert, King Edward VII, Disraeli, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Marshall and FDR; he wrote histories covering aspects of the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Korean War, and he wrote a series of books about wartime Christmases, including Washington getting home for Christmas in 1783, Sherman reaching Savannah for Christmas in 1864, the Christmas Truce of 1914, Christmas at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, and a military escape from Korea at Christmas in 1950.

Stanley Weintraub grew up during the Depression, survived a war in a military hospital while serving as an officer in the Korean War (in which he earned a Bronze Star), and emerged as a Guggenheim Fellow, a National Book Award finalist (for Beardsley) and Evan Pugh Professor of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University.

—From Publishers Weekly, Review 11 September 2020.

Fellow scholars should especially appreciate reading how Weintraub balanced his research into Queen Victoria, James McNeill Whistler, and George Bernard Shaw, among others, with domestic life, raising three children (one of whom edited this book) with his wife, Rodelle, and also coauthoring six books with her. However, any reader with an appreciation for the historian’s craft would do well to find a place for this richly rewarding work on the shelf.

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