Product Description

Charles M. Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the least understood figures in American culture. Now acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us the first full-length biography of the brilliant, unseen man behind Peanuts: at once a creation story, a portrait of a native genius, and a chronicle contrasting the private man with the central role he played in shaping the national imagination.

It is the most American of stories: How a barber's son grew up from modest beginnings to realize his dream of creating a newspaper comic strip. How he daringly chose themes never before attempted in mainstream cartoons—loneliness, isolation, melancholy, the unending search for love—always lightening the darker side with laughter and mingling the old-fashioned sweetness of childhood with a very adult and modern awareness of the bitterness of life. And how, using a lighthearted, loving touch, a crow-quill pen dipped in ink, and a cast of memorable characters, he portrayed the struggles that come with being awkward, imperfect, human.

With Peanuts, Schulz profoundly influenced America in the second half of the twentieth century. But the humorous strip was anchored in the collective experience and hardships of the artist's generation—the generation that survived the Great Depression, liberated Europe and the Pacific, and came home to build the prosperous postwar world. Michaelis masterfully weaves Schulz's story with the cartoons that are so familiar to us, revealing how so much more of his life was part of the strip than we ever knew.

Based on years of research, including exclusive interviews with the cartoonist's family, friends, and colleagues, unprecedented access to his studio and business archives, and new caches of personal letters and drawings, Schulz and Peanuts is the definitive epic biography of an American icon and the unforgettable characters he created.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17605 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Released on: 2007-10-16
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 672 pages

Amazon.com
Amazon Significant Seven, October 2007: There's no book this year that made people's eyes light up when I told them about it more than Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis's new biography of cartoonist Charles Schulz. (And when they saw the obvious-but-brilliant Chip Kidd-designed cover, their eyes got even brighter.) Everyone, it seems, feels a personal connection to Peanuts (a name, by the way, that Schulz always hated), but few have a sense of the artist whose small troupe of big-headed characters still lives at the center of our imagination. If some mystery about the man still remains after reading Michaelis's sharp, engaging, and level-headed biography that's no fault of the biographer--in fact, it's to his credit. Michaelis parses Schulz's particular combination of Midwestern reserve and steely determination and the strip's still-surprising balance of exuberance and misery, and he reminds us what a colossal cultural force it became, especially in the 1960s. But even as he ingeniously finds sources for Schulz's four-panel vignettes in the events of his biography, he recognizes that the true, sometimes inexplicable drama of his life took place when he sat down every day for 50 years to trace Linus's wobbly strands of hair, fill in Snoopy's black nose, and, time and again, letter the words "Good grief." --Tom Nissley

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. For all the joy Charlie Brown and the gang gave readers over half a century, their creator, Charles Schulz, was a profoundly unhappy man. It's widely known that he hated the name Peanuts, which was foisted on the strip by his syndicate. But Michaelis (N.C. Wyeth: A Biography), given access to family, friends and personal papers, reveals the full extent of Schulz's depression, tracing its origins in his Minnesota childhood, with parents reluctant to encourage his artistic dreams and yearbook editors who scrapped his illustrations without explanation. Nearly 250 Peanuts strips are woven into the biography, demonstrating just how much of his life story Schulz poured into the cartoon. In one sequence, Snoopy's crush on a girl dog is revealed as a barely disguised retelling of the artist's extramarital affair. Michaelis is especially strong in recounting Schulz's artistic development, teasing out the influences on his unique characterization of children. And Michaelis makes plain the full impact of Peanuts' first decades and how much it puzzled and unnerved other cartoonists. This is a fascinating account of an artist who devoted his life to his work in the painful belief that it was all he had. 16 pages of b&w photos; 240 b&w comic strips throughout. (Oct. 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
David Michaelis’s book, the first full-scale biography of Charles Schulz, is almost as universally adored as his subject’s comic strips. The former biographer of N. C. Wyeth (whose son Andrew was a hero of Schulz’s) takes on America’s best-known cartoonist, drawing on exclusive access to Schulz’s papers and interviews with nearly every living Schulz acquaintance. Erring on the side of inclusion, the book sometimes seems too rich with detail, and one reviewer faults Michaelis’s focus on Schulz’s gloomier side (a criticism that Schulz’s own daughter has made about the book). Otherwise, reviewers are riveted by the revelatory correspondences between Schulz’s groundbreaking work and the man who brought it to life.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Do not let this be the only Schulz biography you read
I was very disappointed with this very skewed and incomplete biography of Schulz, especially given its length. Being a collector of Peanuts books and other memorabilia since 1965, I had looked forward for several years to reading this book.

People who have not read other books about Schulz, not to mention the late cartoonist himself, are ill-served by this work. Michaelis has placed excessive emphasis on Schulz's melancholy and lack of social ease and has all but ignored his subject's joys (which included golf, skating, hockey, reading, and charity work such as Canine Companions for Independence.) As Linus scolded Lucy, I feel inclined to say to Michaelis about Schulz's shyness and sensitivity, "these aren't faults, these are character traits." Schulz is painted too much as a dark and stormy cartoonist, who never learned how to live life.

Instead of this book, I would suggest the Rheta G. Johnson biography, as well as the books Schulz wrote for the 25th, 35th, and 45th anniversaries of Peanuts.

I also suggest that the prospective reader or those who have already read Michaelis's book should search the Internet and read about the Schulz family's beefs with the author. They describe the problems better than I can. Michaelis spent a lot of time researching and writing this book, but has let down the family, his subject, and the public.

Brilliant Genius, Depressing Man
I can see why Charles Schulz's kids are upset with this book. While it was very enjoying to read about how Charles Schulz became the great cartoonist that he was, it was pretty depressing to read about how miserable his personal life was. I felt that the book was one sided as well - it spent a lot of time talking about his faults, not his good qualities. The book was a fun read though, overall.

Not a tribute, but a portrait of the man
If you are looking for a loving portrait of the creator of Peanuts, or simply a narrative of his career, this is not the book for you. If you want to get to know Charles Schulz the man, this is definitive. As a lifelong Peanuts fan, I was disappointed to find out some things about Schulz, but I couldn't argue with the author's analysis, and I certainly have a more three-dimensional understanding of Schulz, warts and all. The interweaving of Schulz's personal life, career, and actual comic strips is a remarkable achievement. It is lengthy but between the quality of the writing and the compelling flow of the unfolding events of Schulz's life, it was a relatively quick read.
If I have one beef with the book, it is that the endnotes are difficult to decipher. The documentation is there, but the author uses an abbreviation code that is needlessly confusing.