“Tracy Daugherty’s excellent new book . . . sketches a complete portrait of the writer . . . Daugherty has pored over McCarthy’s work and draws–effortlessly, it seems–key connections between the writer’s lived experience and his fictional universe . . . Daugherty weaves [his] disparate material together with such a light touch that this is the rare biography one might call breezy, though it’s not remotely facile.” –Andrew R. Graybill, Texas Monthly, October 6.

“[The story] is a lot for even a 500-page, forensically reported biography to wrangle, yet Tracy Daugherty’s Cormac McCarthy has moments when we just might witness the essence of McCarthy . . . Daugherty’s biography gives us everything, a life in full . . . The verdict here?  Read Cormac McCarthy.”–David Wesley Williams, Chapter 16, October 6.

“[D]ivulges a lot of new information, dispels myths, has strong set pieces and does a bloodhound’s job of tracing the overlaps between the life and the work . . . Daugherty is a sensitive reader of the novels, but he’s especially good on the making of them, and on the editors who helped McCarthy along the way.”–Dwight Garner, The New  York Times, October 5.

“That Daugherty succeeds in producing a measured, insightful account of a man who once said he found discussion of his life ’embarrassing’ is impressive . . . Daugherty is good on McCarthy’s . . . literary career . . . thoroughly researched . . . [a] fine biography.”–Alexander Larman, The New York Post, October 4.

“[E]ngrossing . . . Mr. Daugherty, the author of critically-acclaimed biographies of Larry McMurtry, Joan Didion, and Donald Barthelme, deftly separates the writer from the myth, capturing McCarthy’s evolution from a Southern writer to a Western one with a biography that pulls you along like a novel.”–Bill Healey, The Wall Street Journal, October 2.

“Daugherty’s fascinating biography, which reflects impressive research . . . is very well told and filled with astute judgments about McCarthy’s 12 novels . . . [It includes] startling new reporting.”–Michael O’Donnell, “Cormac McCarthy’s Midlife Crisis,” The Atlantic, October.

“Indispensable.”–The Chicago Tribune, September 23.

“Tracy Daugherty’s biography of Cormac McCarthy is a landmark publication.  Putting together the life of a writer who not only shunned publicity but actively worked to keep fans, journalists, the media, and academics off his trail requires the powers of both a skilled biographer and a nosy private detective . . . [This] biography will necessarily become the standard . . . The edifice [Daugherty] has erected out of the . . . records of McCarthy’s life is remarkable . . . The book is the first wide window into the life of McCarthy, and it is often as surprising as it is moving.”–Michael Crews,  “Cormac McCarthy’s Desert Wanderings,” Portico, September 9.

“This superbly researched, lyrical book from novelist and literary biographer Daugherty . . . breaks down the literary giant into a man who is complex, troubled, and dedicated to his craft . . . Readers interested in American literary history or anyone who’s ever read a McCarthy story will be fascinated by this book.”–Library Journal, September 3, starred review.

“In the tremendous Cormac McCarthy:  A Legacy Revisited, Tracy Daugherty delivers a portrait of one of America’s most mythologized writers . . . Daugherty’s lucid prose offers readers a keen sense of time and place . . . Literature fans will enjoy the book’s thoughtful analyses of McCarthy’s writing and influences . . . a worthy and insightful read,”–BookPage, October, starred review.

“[A] vivid and sweeping biography . . . Daugherty expertly illustrates that McCarthy’s fiction is ‘rich with the history of America’s greed and violence, its spiritual yearnings, its stewardship of the earth’s elements, and, most consistently, its linguistic paradoxes.’   The result is an astute and penetrating portrait of a literary great.”–Publishers Weekly, August 7, starred review.

“Exceptional literary biographer Daugherty approaches Cormac McCarthy with the patience of a historian and the instincts of a novelist . . .  [He] reveals the complicated, contradictory man behind the legend . . . The result is less a monument than a reckoning.  Daugherty’s approach is both surgical and sympathetic, deploying a pulsing rhythm that mirrors the haunting cadence of McCarthy’s own writing . . . balanc[ing] scholarly rigor with narrative force, making this accessible without sacrificing intellectual depth and humanizing a legend without diminishing the mystery.”–Booklist, August 1, starred review.

“A revealing biography of the Southwest literary sage . . . Daugherty balances the elements of McCarthy’s peculiar genius with well-reported portraits of him as a private yet adventurous figure . . . A well-told story of a flinty American figure.”–Kirkus, July 1, starred review.

“[A] rich literary biography . . . A remarkable book that fills the silences with extensive research and analysis of McCarthy’s comprehensive literary record.”–The Los Angeles Times, August 31.

“Tracy Daugherty, well on his way to establishing himself as the best literary biographer of the 21st century, has made an extraordinary capture of one of American literature’s most elusive subjects.  In the case of Cormac McCarthy, to show the man beside the myth, distinguishing one from the other with such impeccable clarity, is truly a striking achievement . . . And Daugherty’s take on McCarthy’s body of work is just as thorough, just as sound, and sometimes just as surprising.”–Madison Smartt Bell.

“The enigma revealed.  Tracy Daugherty’s biography of one of our most mysterious and iconic novelists reads like a novel itself in all its darkness, adventure, loss and redemption.  One of the most thrilling biographies I’ve ever come across.”–T. C. Boyle