This is a biography of American writer Thomas Wolfe by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald. The book follows Wolfe from improbable affairs to drunken brawls, from his mother's Old Kentucky Home, caricatured in Look Homeward Angel, to European capitals where he indulged his Faustian yearning to read, see and do everything. With complete access to all of Wolfe's papers, Donald presents an account of Wolfe's short, but astonishing life. Wolfe's passionate affair with Aline Bernstein is candidly described, as are his controversial relations with his editors, in particular with father-figure Maxwell Perkins of Scribner's. David Donald Herbert won the Pulitzer Prize for Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War.