I describe this book with the all too familiar compliments one pays to a good biography, that it is objective and well detailed. This book gives us a picture of Henry Miller as an actual man rather than the exaggerated Leviathan of his own well-crafted and resilient mythology. More importantly, Ferguson shows that Miller is perhaps the most successful of such a man in letters. Few authors are harder to extricate from their literary doppelgangers as is Miller. In comparing Miller's actual life to his writing, we see how he lived paying self-conscious attention to his own myth, continually setting the stage and assembling the cast, sometimes in small detriment to his personal respectability. Ferguson explores the chronology of Miller's life, loves, and literature with careful attention, critical evaluation, and due praise. He shows how Miller is not just the dirty old man or modern sage, but the perpetual Brooklyn boy. Miller forever exudes childlike boundless joy. Something that both his predecessors and successors stocked lightly if at all. ( )