Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s.

"An immensely interesting book." —The New Yorker

A moving, penetrating, sharply focused portrait of America’s greatest poet—his genius, his passions, his androgynous sensibility—an exuberant life entwined with the turbulent history of mid-nineteenth century America. In vivid detail, Justin Kaplan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, examines the mysterious selves of this enigmatic man whose bold voice of joy and sexual liberation embraced a growing nation.

This captivating portrait invites us to see Sylvia Plath before The Bell Jar, before she became an icon—a young woman with everything to live for.

“An illuminating biography . . . which floods clarifying light on a chapter of the poet’s early life that Plath painted in jaundiced tones in The Bell Jar.” —The New York Times

Originally published in 1976, Christopher and His Kind covers the most memorable ten years in Christopher Isherwood's life—from 1928, when he left England to spend a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely, to 1939, when he arrived in America.