N.C. Wyeth

By STEVEN HENRY MADOFF

No illustrator in this century made a larger splash than Newell Convers Wyeth. His charged, brilliantly lit images for Treasure Island, Kidnapped and many others still ring with celebration of childhood's fantasies. In this meticulous, satisfying biography, Michaelis captures Wyeth and his times vividly: the artist's gale-force energy and the immense gravity of the family circle from which he and his children (among them America's patron saint of Yankee nostalgia, Andrew) never pulled free. Though a few notes of adulation are too sonorous, they bespeak the kind of bigheartedness that N.C. would have admired. Bully, he'd say, echoing his friend Teddy Roosevelt. Bully for Michaelis' book too.

--By Steven Henry Madoff