Ring Lardner

This is more than a biography of the great humorist from Niles, Michigan. In a penetrating full-length portrait, Donald Elder has explored Ring Lardner’s whole world—the vibrant and inventive times in which he lived, the unforgettable people who surrounded him, and the impudent words that came from his typewriter.

At the height of Lardner’s fame in the middle twenties he was known simultaneously as...