Commenting on my own review

Given the attention that my review of Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography is now getting and the degree of Schulz expertise people ascribe to me at times, I thought I should clarify that.

The book does add a richness of fact, but don’t take my review to attest to the accuracy of every fact presented. I am far more knowledgeable about Schulz’s work than I am about the history of the man himself; most of what I know of the man comes simply from reading earlier biographies. While I know enough to catch errors in other biographies like apparently melding Schulz’s two wives (sequential!) into one, far more subtle details would easily elude me. However, the book did well in the category of facts with which I’m familiar.
Perhaps more significantly, I cannot attest to the accuracy of the emotional portrait of Schulz the book paints. I never met the man, only saw him in the flesh once. And I suspect that with any human being, there are many different perspectives through which one can view the person inside.

I just don’t want people using my supposed expertise to validate this single portrait. Thanks!

New releases
A different kind of coffee table book

If you have a coffee table, you should have a “coffee table book”, a large, heavily illustrated color volume that your guests can easily and casually flip through, (Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects is a good choice, of course.) But you …

Upcoming releases
Destined to blow up

Puffer Jacket Snoopy is a thing… enough of a thing that I’ll be discussing an item that only barely qualifies for this blog (it comes with a book… a tiny book of stickers.) Amazon is now listing for October release a Desktop Inflatable Puffer Jacket Snoopy. It’s one of the …

Upcoming releases
The Return of What’s Necessary

Coming in April is a reissue of Only What’s Necessary, Chip Kidd’s second book on the art of Peanuts, reissued for the 75th anniversary of the strip. (My review of the original 2015 edition is here.) For those keeping track, this is the third cover for this book. Here are the …