Art historians have written profusely about how Theo van Gogh supported his brother Vincent financially and unfailingly encouraged his artistic endeavors. The authors of the engaging Theo: The Other Van Gogh, aided by a voluminous cache of previously unpublished letters, document the unbreakable emotional ties that bound them as well. Temporary obstacles of poor health, financial woes, family disputes and even Theo’s marriage threatened to undermine Theo’s support of his older brother, but ultimately he never wavered.

Vincent and Theo followed in an uncle’s artistic footsteps, both working in different branches of Goupil’s, one of Paris’ leading art galleries. Theo worked first in Brussels, where artistic creativity was encouraged; he was later transferred to The Hague, where he honed his skills by constant visits to the many local museums. When Vincent suddenly quit his gallery job, his parents worried over his instability. Theo, however, was the son they called “our crown, and our joy.” Conflicts at work began to occur when Theo was transferred to Paris in 1878. His job was to present Goupil’s artists those whose paintings of history and mythology epitomized the academic style to collectors who were ignoring avant-garde artists such as Millet, Daumier and Courbet. Theo admired the work of the Impressionists and felt constantly at odds with his more conservative employers. It was at this time that Vincent began to pursue his own artistic endeavors, and Theo sent him all he could: 150 francs a month for food, models and art supplies. Despite the artistic constraints he felt at work, Theo knew that if he left, Vincent would be lost without his support.

The authors trace the brothers’ alternating bouts of physical illnesses and mental instability, their immersion in the avant-garde art scene, and finally, their untimely deaths, only six months apart. Their story emerges as a microcosm of the tumultuous art world at the end of the 19th century.

Theo wrote after Vincent’s death that “one day he will be understood.” This fascinating account helps readers to understand not only the famous artist, but also the brother who provided him crucial emotional and artistic support. Deborah Donovan writes from Cincinnati and La Veta, Colorado.

This summer, Elvis fans are celebrating a very special event: the 50th anniversary of the King’s first recording. In July of 1954, Elvis waxed his debut tune, “That’s Alright,” a rockabilly gem that showcased his special blend of blues, country and swing. Although the song wasn’t a smash hit, it permanently altered the landscape of popular American music and set the singer on a course to superstardom. Just in time for this milestone in music history, Pamela Clarke Keogh, author of the best-selling biographies Audrey Style and Jackie Style, delivers Elvis Presley: The Man. The Life. The Legend. Offering fresh perspectives on the star, Clarke presents a thorough chronology of Elvis’ life, recounting his childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi, his musical evolution, starting with Sun Records in Memphis, his Hollywood career and marriage to Priscilla. Through a colorful, fast-moving examination of his ever-changing personal style, which spanned nearly three decades, Clarke explains the rock icon’s limitless appeal, giving readers a perceptive analysis of his position in popular culture. From “Hillbilly Cat,” to Hollywood hunk, to Vegas-style star, all of his incarnations are covered. The book also takes a special look at Graceland in all its gaudy splendor. Clarke interviewed Elvis insiders and family members for the book, including Priscilla Presley, Jerry Schilling and Larry Geller. She was also granted special access to the Graceland archives, from which she chose the volume’s visuals. Fans of Presley will welcome this special new account of the singer’s life and legacy, which features more than 100 color and black-and-white illustrations and photographs. Long live the King!

Writer and master muckraker Upton Sinclair catapulted to fame with his exposŽ novel on the meatpacking industry, The Jungle, which instigated the Pure Food and Drug Act. This year, Sinclair’s timely masterpiece turns 100, and Fulbright scholar Anthony Arthur gives us an excellent, balanced tribute to the author’s life, literary achievements and still relevant social platform.

Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair is an absorbing chronology; Arthur knows his subject well and appreciates the oxymoron of Sinclair’s austere personal habits and impassioned idealistic impulses. Chapters place Sinclair’s life into distinct identities (progressing from The Penniless Rat to The Sage ) following the publishing career of an outspoken social reformer and tireless, disciplined novelist who was the most conservative of revolutionaries. Arthur expertly contextualizes Sinclair’s life amid the rambunctious 20th-century milieu: Sinclair found celebrity at 27, had a long (eventually aborted) association with the American Socialist Party, a run in the 1943 California gubernatorial race, a Pulitzer Prize for Dragon’s Teeth (starring the inimitable Lanny Budd), and three marriages. Alison Hood is a writer in San Rafael, California.

<b>Writers’ night</b> <b>The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein</b> opens in June 1816, as a spooky summer storm rages around the Swiss villa of Lord Byron. Inside, five friends sit near a warm fire, writing ghost stories at the behest of their host. From the charged evening that gave birth both to Mary Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i> and the first vampire novel, <b>The Monsters</b> segues into a superlative, riveting history of Shelley’s idiosyncratic parentage (writers William Godwin and proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft), her love-starved childhood, and her erratic life with Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and their gifted contemporaries (including the mad, bad and dangerous to know Lord Byron).

With acute psychological insight, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, historians and award-winning authors of the <i>American Family Albums</i>, explicate Mary’s internal and external worlds, effectively connecting the turmoil of her 19th-century life to the poignant themes at the heart of <i>Frankenstein</i>. Though her family and friends experienced misfortune and untimely deaths after she published <i>Frankenstein</i>, <b>The Monsters</b> sensibly suggests that if malady fell upon them, it was because of their monstrous natures ones that veered unwisely toward self-aggrandizement, incest and excess all in a search for unconditional love.

<i>Alison Hood is a writer in San Rafael, California.</i>

Charles J. Shields, a journalist and author of nonfiction for young readers, blends techniques of fiction and creative investigative reporting in Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. No prior biography of Lee exists, and Shields has written a largely imagined rendering of the reclusive, famously feisty author's life. Lee, now 79 and living in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, declined to speak with Shields or verify his research. The result is a book that, in Shields' words, "aims to capture a life but is not a conventional biography." Which begs the question: Do we really need to know Ms. Lee's innermost thoughts, isn't it enough that she wrote a worthy book that continues to inspire?

Alison Hood is a writer in San Rafael, California.

Music journalist Rick Coleman’s insightful, often controversial new biography Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll is both a loving tribute and a bold alternative cultural perspective. Coleman argues not only for a fresh look at Domino’s importance as a pianist, vocalist and songwriter, but also that the black contribution to rock ‘n’ roll has been minimized by numerous accounts painting Elvis Presley as the music’s creator. He is especially miffed that Domino’s status as a hit-maker and performer has taken a back seat to his personal flamboyance. While many of Coleman’s claims will be familiar to those with more than superficial knowledge of people like Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, he restates their impact with zeal and passion.

Coleman traces Domino’s rise in a New Orleans where issues of race and class hampered the city’s darker-skinned residents. He also shows how several major music labels and personalities among them such figures as Dick Clark, Alan Freed and Lew Chudd played favorites and political games, undercutting Domino and many other gifted black performers while insuring maximum publicity and performance opportunities for less talented white teen idols. But thankfully, the book isn’t totally gloom and doom. Coleman provides expert analysis of Domino’s playing style, showing his mastery of triplets and the integration of elements from African and Latin idioms alongside New Orleans blues and R&andamp;B. Domino was also an accomplished vocalist, particularly on upbeat, rhythmically tricky numbers. Most importantly, Coleman points out that Domino’s recordings have sold more than 100 million copies, making him one of the most successful composers in rock history. Such Domino originals as Blueberry Hill and Ain’t That a Shame are now staples, and Domino’s scope encompassed country, blues and jazz as well. While it’s doubtful that Blue Monday can reverse the effect of decades of inaccurate music journalism on its own, it sets the record straight regarding both Fats Domino and the creative impact of African Americans on ’50s popular music. Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

The New England flowering of philosophers, novelists and poets in the early 19th century produced a literary crop that is still influencing our writing and thinking today. Philosophers and essayists continue to quote Emerson. Nonfiction writers revere Thoreau. And novelists and short story writers, especially John Updike, bow toward Hawthorne.

Many readers, however, know Hawthorne’s reputation but not the man. Philip McFarland aims at both audiences in his vivid and dramatic book, Hawthorne in Concord, released to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Hawthorne’s birth. Although his detail and extensive notes will satisfy academics, he writes without assuming that a reader has prior familiarity with the subject. He is also admirably concise in this age of bloated biographies.

McFarland’s focus on Concord provides a good perspective on Hawthorne’s life. The novelist lived there three times, at three crucial periods in his own life and in that of his young nation. The book begins with the 1842 marriage of handsome, promising Nathaniel Hawthorne and bright but seriously ill Sophia Peabody. Provided with enough texture and emotional drama for a period novel, we find ourselves caught up in the prospects of this fascinating man whose writing was marked by so much imagination and compassion.

In the early days in Concord, Hawthorne struggles and almost fails at his chosen career. He and Sophia finally move in with his mother because he can’t make ends meet as a writer. Then, in the wake of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne triumphantly reclaims Concord only to be chosen as a consul to England.

Hawthorne’s third period in Concord rounds out this parable of the stages of a man’s life. Ill with what now seems to have been intestinal cancer, Hawthorne, with the devoted Sophia by his side, struggles with his writing and his mortality. It is a tribute to McFarland’s skills that we are so moved by the inevitable end of a biography.

Volker Skierka’s Fidel Castro: A Biography was first published in Germany in 2000 but has been updated for the American edition. It is a meticulous accounting of Castro’s rise to power, his frequent run-ins with his more cautious Russian supporters and his close but ambivalent relationship with Che Guevara, who, as the author demonstrates, was the political purist Fidel could never afford to be. Skierka provides a valuable sketch of what Cuba was like under Castro’s predecessor, Fulgencio Batista, and his allies in the American Mafia. It may surprise some to learn that Castro was a childhood admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, even going so far as to write him a “fan letter,” a copy of which is reproduced in the book. Skierka includes a detailed bibliography, 16 pages of photos and a list of relevant CD-ROMs and websites. While he has no illusions about Castro’s flaws or Cuba’s unrelenting turmoil, Skierka concludes that, “Identification with the revolution is still high among ordinary people, including many young people, and it will outlive [Castro]. One thing Cubans certainly don’t want is to return to the old dependence on the great neighbor to the north.”

<b>Peggy Lee’s fever pitch</b>

Singer/songwriter Peggy Lee consistently proved during her lengthy and impressive career that a great performer could be extremely popular, yet maintain high artistic standards. Peter Richmond’s exhaustively researched new biography, <b>Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee</b>, chronicles her rise from obscure small-town singer Norma Deloris Egstrom to jazz and pre-rock diva Peggy Lee, the epitome of class, swing and sophistication. The journey was anything but smooth, and Richmond details the constant turmoil and stress Lee endured throughout her life, from early problems with stage fright and mastering physical awkwardness to tragic romantic encounters and four unsuccessful marriages. Though he delves extensively into intimate situations, Richmond does so without becoming judgmental or substituting innuendo for fact.

He’s equally convincing in his examination of Lee’s musical gifts. His descriptions of her interaction with such famously prickly characters as Johnny Mercer and Benny Goodman give readers insight into not only what made her excel musically, but also how sharp she was in dealing with creatively innovative, quirky figures. Lee had an incredible knack for reworking a tune, and turned Lil Green’s Why Won’t You Do Right and Little Willie John’s Fever into such masterful signature songs that many mistakenly assumed she had written them. Her storytelling skills were ideal for the lush, metaphor-laden material that was the stock-in-trade of Mercer, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter and other kingpin composers of the pre-rock era.

Still, though Lee’s fame and wealth increased, she seldom enjoyed sustained peace and happiness. Her desire to be simply Norma Deloris Egstrom from Nortonville, North Dakota, when she was at home frequently bewildered admirers and often angered her companions and husbands. The ’70s and ’80s proved mostly cruel decades in terms of commercial fortunes, but Lee continued working until she suffered a massive stroke in 1998. Fortunately, Richmond’s volume ensures that Peggy Lee’s contributions to the American musical canon will not only be remembered, but appreciated.

You’ve heard about the four-and-twenty blackbirds, but an 18-inch, 7-year-old boy, baked in a pie? The truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. It’s not the pie but the seven-year-old who commands attention in Lord Minimus: The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Smallest Man, an engaging, poignant biography of a little man who had a little luck for the first 25 years of his life and ran short on it thereafter.

Born in 1619 to a butcher and his wife in a simple English village, Jeffrey Hudson caught the attention of the King’s favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, not just for his dwarfism, but for the fact that he was "wholly proportionate and very good-looking." Desperate for royal attention, the Duke staged the pie presentation for the 15-year-old French queen of King Charles I. An enthusiastic lover of dogs and monkeys, Henrietta Marie took to her "little man" at once, and for the next 15 years the two were virtually inseparable.

It was a lovely life of dressing up and elegance, feasts, masques and opulence. Five paintings were made of Jeffrey, one by Van Dyke. But all too soon the idyll ended. In 1642 early flare-ups of the English Civil War forced the queen to leave London. For Jeffrey, the departure led to a whole new life. Commissioned a Captain of Horse, he may have seen battle. He eventually killed a man in a duel. Captured by pirates at sea, he was sold into slavery in North Africa, then released and returned to England after some 25 years (unaccountably a foot and a half taller). He died 12 years later, after being persecuted for his Catholicism.

Nick Page, author of The Tabloid Bible, makes good use of sketchy documentation in presenting this colorful life of triumphs and tragedies, contrasts and ironies. Much of his story is well-founded speculation, but his digressions into life at court, architecture, the English practice of buying back citizens enslaved by Barbary pirates, and the origin of the word "Tory," all offered with an appealing light touch, make this book a jewel of popular social history.

Maude McDaniel writes from Cumberland, Maryland.

Johnny Cash was a man who seemed destined for immortality. A hard-living native of Arkansas whose career spanned five decades and spawned more than 1,000 songs, he was an omnipresent figure on the country music scene, a proudly defiant survivor who used the pressures of fame to fuel his work. Given the scope of his influence and his larger-than-life persona, Cash’s death on September 12, 2003, seemed an impossible thing. His songs were rooted in the South but written for the world. Timeless classics like Big River, I Walk the Line and Folsom Prison Blues achieved international recognition, becoming permanent components of the country music canon. This month, BookPage spotlights a special group of volumes that chronicle Cash’s remarkable career.

The Man in Black Cash: An American Man (CMT/Pocket, $30, 176 pages, ISBN 0743496299) tells the story of the singer through photographs, letters, lyric sheets, album covers and other visual riches. Sanctioned by the Johnny Cash estate and assembled with the help of Cash’s close friend and longtime fan, Bill Miller, the collection of artifacts presented in this colorful volume reflects more than 50 years of country music culture. There are publicity shots of the singer taken for Sun Records in Memphis in the early 1950s; photos of Cash and his wife, singer June Carter; ticket stubs from the Grand Ole Opry; and one-of-a-kind Cash collectibles, including a Slurpee cup from the 1970s emblazoned with the singer’s face. (Our favorite photo: a black-and-white shot of Cash, circa 1953, his face innocent and unlined, his arm around a tuxedoed Elvis.) Edited by Mark Vancil and Jacob Hoye, Cash: An American Man is the first title from CMT Books, a new imprint created by CMT: Country Music Television and Simon &and Schuster’s Pocket Books. With lively text provided by Miller, whose friendship with Cash lasted more than 30 years, this must-have scrapbook also contains the singer’s final interview, granted to music journalist Kurt Loder shortly before Cash died, and the lyrics to the last song he composed. Produced by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine, Cash (Crown, $29.95, 224 pages, ISBN 140005480X) is the ultimate memorial to a man who lived what he wrote and sang what he believed. With tributes from Bob Dylan, Bono, Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris, the volume provides a complete historical overview of Cash’s music. Highlights include a comprehensive discography, an interview with Rick Rubin, who produced four of Cash’s albums, and pieces of classic Rolling Stone reportage, including Ralph J. Gleason’s account of the performer’s 1969 San Quentin concert. There are also excerpts from Cash’s two autobiographies, as well as chapters on his screen career and his marriage to June, who, as a member of the famous Carter Family, had a recording career of her own. Rare photographs offer a vivid, behind-the-scenes look at Cash’s extended family, including his 13 grandchildren. Singer Rosanne Cash, daughter of the Man in Black, captures the special essence of her father in her foreword to the volume: “He was a poet who worked in the dirt,” she says. “He was the stuff of dreams, and the living cornerstone of our lives.” Country music’s First Family Fans hankering for more details on the Cash-Carter dynasty should pick up Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? by journalist Charles Hirshberg and filmmaker Mark Zwonitzer. Recently released in paperback, the biography, which was a National Book Critics Circle Finalist in 2002, takes an in-depth look at the humble beginnings, heavenly harmonies and history-making careers of the Carter Family. A.P., Sara and Maybelle Carter (June’s mother) entered the world of country music as a trio starting in the 1920s. This fluid account of their lives, both personal and musical, begins with patriarch A.P.’s birth in southern Virginia in 1891 and continues into the 1970s, creating a context for the folk tunes they made famous (“Wildwood Flower,” “Wabash Cannonball”), examining seminal recording sessions and offering a wonderful overview of the cultural forces that influenced American roots music. With their dolorous ballads and gentle instrumentals, their hymns and laments, the Carters helped to shape the sounds of the 20th century. Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? explains how and why their delicate melodies endure. Julie Hale writes from Austin, Texas.