Arthur Miller : A Playwright's Life and Works

An affectionate, understanding, and informed study of Miller's life and works, supported by a wide selection of personal and public photographs. Arthur Miller was one of the most highly regarded and widely performed playwrights of our time. With his probing and perceptive dramas, he succeeded in charting the landscape of the American psyche to create classics of modern theater that have found enthusiastic audiences all over the world. Enoch Brater's concise literary biography gives the general reader a welcome introduction to this most political and moral of writers, whose keen social conscience and insights into human nature made him a cornerstone of contemporary culture. Professor Brater follows Miller's career from his prize-winning student days at the University of Michigan, through the phenomenal success of his 1949 drama, Death of a Salesman, to his doomed marriage to the actress Marilyn Monroe, and beyond. Examining seminal works, including All My Sons, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge, as well as commenting on Miller's journalism, fiction, screenplays, and acclaimed autobiography, Brater looks at how the writer, throughout his long career, achieved a fusion of family drama, political allegory, use of realism and expressionism, and themes of unrest and redemption, to stunning--and often devastating--effect. 122 illustrations.

Enoch Brater is Professor of English and Theater at the University of Michigan.