The winner of every major national literary award, the preeminent novelist of his generation, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a movie director, politician, pugilist, antiwar activist, hipster, philosopher, and enfant terrible, Norman Mailer has been maligned, loved, hated, belittled, idolized -- but never ignored. This sweeping biography captures the legend's extraordinary life and career in his own fascinating words and in vivid accounts by his famous peers, friends, enemies, wives, lovers, and family members. Mailer is an extraordinary tapestry, a portrait of an era as well as a man -- as protean as the subject himself and just as overflowing with life.