I enjoyed reading this book probably because I like true journalists and Robert Wernick was one of them; in the Writers, he gave us not the entire biography of an author but little-known tidbits of it that were a delight to read. The hard facts one can find in any publication but the tiny details that have human interest make any piece of work more interesting.

The authors Wernick talks about are Ludwig Bemelmans, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Herman Melville, Ezra Pound, and George Sand. Possibly, the people who lived during the time of those writers may have known the tidbits about their lives and personalities through newspapers or the other existing media, but those of us who weren’t born at that time or were oblivious to what was in the papers are bound to enjoy reading this book. For example, in December 1926, her first husband Archie, who had fallen for another woman, asked Agatha Christie for a divorce and then after a quarrel left the house. The same evening, Agatha left the house, too, and disappeared from sight. Her disappearance suddenly became the news of the day, with a newspaper offering a prize and the police looking for her. Ten days later she was found in a hotel in Yorkshire where she had registered with the name of her husband’s lover. Robert Wernick’s addition to this incident is, from his pen, “The mystery writer Dorothy Sayers took a hand at investigating the disappearance, using the abandoned car in her next novel, and Arthur Conan Doyle, who was deep into mysticism at the time, took one of Agatha’s gloves to a medium in a futile attempt to find out where she was.”

Then, when Wernick wrote about Herman Melville and Moby Dick, he also offered his critique of the novel by saying, “One-fourth of the book’s 135 chapters contained descriptions of how a whale ship operated.” Then, about Ezra Pound, he pointed out that the poet felt regret at the end of his life, “for being on the wrong side of things.”

When I finished the book, I wished it were much longer and had in it many other authors with tiny, entertaining details about their lives.

The book is very readable and well organized, giving each author his or her chapter. The prose is clear and succinct, projecting Wernick’s style and professional background. I believe everyone can pick something up from reading it; however, no one should expect this book to be one of serious research.

is Robert Wernick, a journalist, who passed away in April 2017 at about 81 years of age. He has several books on different subjects, mostly historical and written for Time-Life books. Among them, Blitzkrieg is a notable one.

I had fun reading it.

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