Max Eastman

Christoph Irmscher is Provost Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he directs the Wells Scholars Program. Among his many books are Longfellow Redux and Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science, named Editor’s Choice of the New York Times Book Review in 2013.

“A subtle portrait of a disappointed man . . . Readers wanting a full life of Eastman are well served by Mr. Irmscher’s meticulous chronicle.”—Richard Aldous, Wall Street Journal“A shrewd, important, and revealing portrait of the ever-unrepentant Eastman.”—Jill Lepore, author of Joe Gould’s Teeth“Eastman deserves a reintroduction, and Irmscher has done a magnificent job of dramatizing his life.”—George B. Hutchinson, Cornell University“Christoph Irmscher has written a truly humane biography of a life that captures the last century’s transformations. Richly illustrated with photographs, artwork, letters, and published documents, Max Eastman gives the reader a full sense of the man who wrote poetry as well as trenchant political, literary, and philosophical essays, and who retained a lifelong interest in the sources of humor and laughter.”—Werner Sollors, author of The Temptation of Despair: Tales of the 1940s“This revolutionary turned reactionary deserves to be studied again. A polarizing figure—much celebrated, much reviled—he was a true American original, and this clear-eyed biography is equal to the task.”—Nicholas Delbanco, author of Lastingness: The Art of Old Age."It’s difficult to be a legend, but Max Eastman has at long last acquired the absorbing and revelatory biography he ought to have. Christoph Irmscher’s textured portrait is written with self-confident clarity, a keen archeological eye, superb craft, and exemplary evidentiary standards. Surely definitive, Max Eastman disdains closets and dark places to reveal what it was like to have lived one of radicalism’s most remarkable lives."—Alan M. Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor of English Literature and American Culture, University of Michigan