Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints

Here is a dazzling collection from Joan Acocella, one of our most admired cultural critics: thirty-one essays that consider the life and work of some of the most influential artists of our time (and two saints: Joan of Arc and Mary Magdalene).
Acocella writes about Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and chemist, who wrote the classic memoir, "Survival in Auschwitz"; M.F.K. Fisher who, numb with grief over her husband's suicide, dictated the witty and classic "How to Cook a Wolf"; and many other subjects, including Dorothy Parker, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Saul Bellow. "Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints" is indispensable reading on the making of art--and the courage, perseverance, and, sometimes, dumb luck that it requires.