Leader, the biographer of literary lion Kingsley Amis, draws upon extensive research and more than 150 interviews in this 800-pager, the first of a two-volume Bellow biography. He covers the years from Bellow’s birth to a Russian immigrant family in a Montreal suburb, and his family’s move to Chicago when he was nine, through three of his five marriages and the publication of his National Book Award-winning fifth novel, Herzog, in 1964. By the middle of his career, Bellow had reshaped the American novel, infusing it with a new vernacular. But at what cost to his private life? Leader writes of Bellow’s life and work, with special attention to the autobiographical underpinnings of his fiction: “Bellow’s use of people he knew, his responsibility toward them, the effect his using them had on his character, figure as fictionalized topics throughout his writing,” Leader writes. A fascinating analysis. (Credit: Knopf)