About the Author

Newton Booth Tarkington (1869 - 1946) was an enormously prolific novelist, playwright, and short story writer who chronicled urban middle-class life in the American Midwest during the early twentieth century. He is best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams, and is one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once.

Jonathan Yardley is the book critic of and a columnist for the Washington Post. His books include biographies of Ring Lardner and Frederick Exley. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism in 1981.