Vincent Starrett, the well-known author and book columnist on the Chicago Tribune, recounts his own rich experiences in what can best be described as the autobiography of a bookman. As such it is the story of a man who has lived by books. Although an novelist and story writer by trade, he writes about the books of others with enthusiasm and authority, and about the great and near-great among authors, booksellers, collectors, and, above all, the classic array of newspapermen with whom he has shared life.

The book offers an intimate picture of the Chicago literary renascence, seen from the inside and described with insight and humor by one of its survivors. It is doubtful that we shall get a closer view of the creative zest - and the pleasures - of Starrett's contemporary craftsmen, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Burton Rascoe, Harry Hansen, Christopher Morley, and Alexander Woolcott, to name a few. The portraits he draws of Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson, Harriet Monroe, Edgar Lee Masters, and Arthur Machen are vivid and unforgettable.