Orson Welles, Volume 1: The Road to Xanadu

As a man and an artist, Orson Welles was larger-than-life--vivid, energetic, unpredictable, and riveting. But in this first volume of his masterful, highly acclaimed biography, Simon Callow finally captures the chameleonic genius whole, as only an actor/director deeply rooted in the entertainment industry could. Here, brilliantly placed in its historical and social setting, is Welles's prodigious childhood; his youth in New York, with its fraught partnership with John Houseman and the groundbreaking triumphs of his all-black Macbeth and his modern-dress Julius Caesar; the pioneering radio work that culminated in the notorious 1938 broadcast of "War of the Worlds"; and finally, Hollywood--with a fascinatingly detailed and authoritative account of the making of "Citizen Kane," still regarded by many as the finest film of all time. Rich in detail, wit, and insight, Callow's "Orson Welles" succeeds in revealing a life even more extraordinary than the myths that have surrounded it.