“What a masterpiece this book is! So captivating, so original, so full of energy, insights and analysis! Bill Goldstein’s brilliant work will be read with great pleasure not only by those who think they already know his famous subjects, but by all readers who love history and biography.”

“The World Broke in Two is more fun to read than it has any right to be. Its subject – the overlapping neuroses, illnesses, and inspirations of four 20th Century greats – would seem familiar territory. But Bill Goldstein is such a companionable writer and his narrative is so full of telling detail that we encounter each of these writers anew. The result is a book that anyone interested in the vicissitudes of the writing life – then or now – will read with hunger. Like all good accounts of writing, it draws us back to the books themselves. ”

“The World Broke in Two is a gem of collective – and interwoven – biography. Like the great modernists of fiction, Bill Goldstein pays keen imaginative attention to simultaneity; he surveys the literary landscape, and these four great peaks upon it, as if he were the pilot flying that famous airplane over Mrs. Dalloway. The reader is made to see the writers – paused, burgeoning, and on the brink – in strong relationship to one another. The result is a view and vision we’ve not had before. ”