Paradise Lost

David S. Brown is the Raffensperger Professor of History at Elizabethtown College.

James L. W. West III, Pennsylvania State University:
David Brown provides the kind of context that other biographers, caught up in the myths that Scott and Zelda created about themselves, have not provided. A pleasure to read.

N. J. McGarrigle:
[An] enjoyable biography…Brown’s Paradise Lost is welcome in that it filters some of the poor-boy-in-life-and-love consensus.

[An] engaging portrait…Brown draws extensively on the autobiographical aspects of Fitzgerald’s novels and stories.

Steve Donoghue:
A worthy and readable addition to the always-widening shelf of Fitzgerald biographies.

Mene Ukueberuwa:
Looks beyond Gatsby and the famous stories of Fitzgerald’s excesses, and instead explores his correspondence with the Progressive intellectuals of his day to show that—if his prose left any doubt—Fitzgerald held a dim view of the decadent world in which he found himself trapped.

Brown writes a tight, finely observed character study of F. Scott Fitzgerald…Brown deftly explores the great uncertainties of social class in Fitzgerald’s day and the outsider feelings that clouded his life and psyche. Making sense of his time-bound views of African Americans and women proves more of a challenge. Carefully researched and a pleasure to read, Brown’s persuasive, original account will entice Fitzgerald fans and cultural historians alike.

David Leigh:
[An] insightful history of Fitzgerald’s main characters and themes.

Christina Hunt Mahoney:
Paradise Lost accomplishes much in its aim to contextualize Fitzgerald within both American historical and literary historical parameters. This new biography manages to get past the trappings of Fitzgerald’s boozy flapper-era persona and to credit his talent for taking the pulse of the America in which he lived.

Carl Wilkinson:
Brown’s biography strives to forgo the well-known anecdotes to instead reinsert Fitzgerald into his historical context.

Alex Harvey:
[A] thorough biography.

Carl Rollyson:
Sometimes when a historian turns to a literary figure the results are refreshing. Think of David Donald writing about Thomas Wolfe and now David S. Brown on Fitzgerald… What sets this biography apart from the others is its emphasis on Fitzgerald's ‘historical sensibility.’

Paul Gottfried:
Brown produces the most clearly written biography of his subject.

Eric Rovie:
The book is rich with detailed historical, philosophical, and sociological examples that place Fitzgerald’s work within a historical situation that isn’t simply the stereotype of ‘Jazz Age Excess.’…Brown re-shapes the standard understanding of the Fitzgeralds as rapacious consumers into something more nuanced…By writing this respectful yet critical biography, David S. Brown has done much to add to the now-prodigious legacy of a man who, like Jay Gatsby, died alone despite having done so much for so many.

Brian Morton:
Brown gets closer to a real Fitzgerald than anyone else.

James McGrath Morris:
Brown has delivered an insightful, thought-provoking and at times entertaining rendering of [Fitzgerald’s] life…For fans of The Great Gatsby, there is much to like in Paradise Lost.

Jay Parini:
What I admire about Paradise Lost is that it moves well beyond the hackneyed images in which the author lives in the prison house of his own fragile dreams, a sybaritic social climber who squanders his talent by drinking…This biography seems wildly relevant in a time when raw wealth has again taken on such an emblematic value…More than any biographer before him, Brown reveals the degree to which Fitzgerald understood the politics of his era…A splendid biography.

[An] incisive biography.

Sam Tanenhaus:
With a surer sense than more gossipy writers, [Brown] fits Fitzgerald's life into the broader American history.

John Banville:
[An] excellent book… Paradise Lost…conjures up an entirely different portrait from the one painted by previous biographers… Brown’s book,…in its breadth of perspective and seriousness of intent, makes most biographies seem to consist mainly of tittle-tattle and random gossip.

Joseph Epstein:
Brown’s book is a useful corrective to the figure of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a hopeless drunk and unrestrained reveler—diving into the fountain at the Plaza and all that—which has been vastly overdone…One of the splendid services rendered by Brown is to have convincingly made the case that F. Scott Fitzgerald was an original in a way much grander than he himself realized.