Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy And Her World - Softcover

Brightman's massive biography of Mary McCarthy passionately and responsibly chronicles the many incarnations of "the first lady of letters." There's a lot to tell: McCarthy married four times, entertained many lovers, co-founded the Partisan Review, opposed World War II and penned 16 novels, several memoirs and hundreds of letters, articles, essays and reviews during her 79 years. Brightman richly details McCarthy's ascension from a battered foster child to a celebrated member of the New York literary and intellectual elite. For McCarthy, Brightman writes, language was "an instrument of conquest ... a medium for the refinement of perception." Writing Dangerously won a 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Carol Brightman was an anti-war activist in the '60s and later the biographer of the writer Mary McCarthy. She sometimes wondered why so many of the committed social-change movements of the '60s were crushed or co-opted, or just fizzled out, while the Grateful Dead's hedonistic, tribal road show grew and throve and wound up a cultural institution. Carol is the author of "Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead's American Adventure" and "Writing Dangerously."