Matthew J. Bruccoli, the Emily Brown Jefferies Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, is the leading authority on F. Scott Fitzgerald. He has written and edited more than fifty volumes in the field of American literature, a score of them dealing with Fitzgerald.

Matthew J. Bruccoli is always able to look through the events themselves to the essential fact about Fitzgerald: his existence as an artist, and not only to how it came about, but what it came to. Some sort of epic grandeur is exactly what Fitzgerald had. It is a perfect title for this book, for the grandeur is there, in the struggle to create memorable work. I fully expect that this will be the indispensable biography of a very great American writer, for the spirit of the man is in the facts, and these, as gathered and marshaled by Bruccoli over thirty years, are all we will ever need. But more important, they are what we need. - James Dickey; ""Impeccably researched...both comprehensive and judicious... Bruccoli brings Fitzgerald vividly alive."" - Newsweek; ""This masterpiece contains exactly what we need to know about this dazzling figure."" - Publishers Weekly; ""It is difficult to imagine any work on Fitzgerald and his literary product that will supplant this one."" - The New Yorker; ""Indispensable and definitive."" - The Times Literary Supplement