He was an American original—a great journalist who made us laugh at ourselves. This affectionate, entertaining and authoritative biography offers a wholly new look at Ring Lardner’s too-short life and career.

Lardner may have been an aloof and distant man in some respects, but the story of his life is intensely human and intensely moving. For a while in the twenties he was the most famous writer in the country, with an annual income equivalent to a half million in today’s dollars. Then alcohol and illness began to erode his. skills-- yet he worked honorably and with distinction right up to his early death

But that brief life was full and fascinating.

In Ring, Jonathan Yardley has brought together a vast amount of Lardner material, including excerpts from his writings that have never before been published in book form—many of them unread since their original publication and many of them marvelously funny. He restores baseball to its proper role in