Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing and Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

“Mr. Zipperstein’s volume [is] composed with the tact of a historian who has read the archives and the novels with equal care, . . . rescuing Roth from the noise and restoring him to the exuberant sentences he spent his life turning around.”—Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal“A moving portrait of Roth in all his complexity.”—Emily Gould, New York Magazine“Well-modulated and immensely erudite. . . . This biography will introduce Roth to new readers as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century and one of the most influential voices in shaping American Jewish identity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Roth's life and writing abound in moments that bring him forward, and Zipperstein has a discerning antenna for curating and sharing many of the most revealing ones.”—Michael Frank, Times Literary Supplement“This is one of the fairest and finest literary biographies I have read, with the emphasis on literary. Zipperstein does Philip Roth and his life’s work more than justice. He has produced a book that is a work of literature itself. Not every writer is what Roth called (and was called) ‘a writer’s writer.’ And not every scribe who undertakes to write a major life is truly a writer’s biographer. Zipperstein is one.”—Judith Thurman, author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller“Steven Zipperstein’s appreciation of Philip Roth is literary biography at its best. Acute and original judgments of Roth’s written worlds come embraided with revelatory portrayals of the worlds Roth inhabited, scrutinized, and provoked, and of Roth himself, solemn and hilarious, voraciously curious, a boundless sensual spirit riven by his craft.”—Sean Wilentz, author of Bob Dylan in America

Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing and Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

“Mr. Zipperstein’s volume [is] composed with the tact of a historian who has read the archives and the novels with equal care, . . . rescuing Roth from the noise and restoring him to the exuberant sentences he spent his life turning around.”—Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal“A moving portrait of Roth in all his complexity.”—Emily Gould, New York Magazine“Well-modulated and immensely erudite. . . . This biography will introduce Roth to new readers as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century and one of the most influential voices in shaping American Jewish identity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Roth's life and writing abound in moments that bring him forward, and Zipperstein has a discerning antenna for curating and sharing many of the most revealing ones.”—Michael Frank, Times Literary Supplement“This is one of the fairest and finest literary biographies I have read, with the emphasis on literary. Zipperstein does Philip Roth and his life’s work more than justice. He has produced a book that is a work of literature itself. Not every writer is what Roth called (and was called) ‘a writer’s writer.’ And not every scribe who undertakes to write a major life is truly a writer’s biographer. Zipperstein is one.”—Judith Thurman, author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller“Steven Zipperstein’s appreciation of Philip Roth is literary biography at its best. Acute and original judgments of Roth’s written worlds come embraided with revelatory portrayals of the worlds Roth inhabited, scrutinized, and provoked, and of Roth himself, solemn and hilarious, voraciously curious, a boundless sensual spirit riven by his craft.”—Sean Wilentz, author of Bob Dylan in America

Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing and Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

“Mr. Zipperstein’s volume [is] composed with the tact of a historian who has read the archives and the novels with equal care, . . . rescuing Roth from the noise and restoring him to the exuberant sentences he spent his life turning around.”—Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal“A moving portrait of Roth in all his complexity.”—Emily Gould, New York Magazine“Well-modulated and immensely erudite. . . . This biography will introduce Roth to new readers as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century and one of the most influential voices in shaping American Jewish identity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Roth's life and writing abound in moments that bring him forward, and Zipperstein has a discerning antenna for curating and sharing many of the most revealing ones.”—Michael Frank, Times Literary Supplement“This is one of the fairest and finest literary biographies I have read, with the emphasis on literary. Zipperstein does Philip Roth and his life’s work more than justice. He has produced a book that is a work of literature itself. Not every writer is what Roth called (and was called) ‘a writer’s writer.’ And not every scribe who undertakes to write a major life is truly a writer’s biographer. Zipperstein is one.”—Judith Thurman, author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller“Steven Zipperstein’s appreciation of Philip Roth is literary biography at its best. Acute and original judgments of Roth’s written worlds come embraided with revelatory portrayals of the worlds Roth inhabited, scrutinized, and provoked, and of Roth himself, solemn and hilarious, voraciously curious, a boundless sensual spirit riven by his craft.”—Sean Wilentz, author of Bob Dylan in America