David Mamet

This definitive biography of David Mamet offers a fascinating portrait of one of America's most celebrated playwrights.

The profane, prolific, and provocative playwright David Mamet—author of Oleanna, Glengarry Glen Ross (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), American Buffalo, and Speed-the-Plow—has not received a full-length biography in over twenty years.

David Mamet: A Life fills that gap. This definitive book offers a unique portrait of America's most celebrated playwright, providing comprehensive, in-depth coverage of Mamet’s private, public, and working life.

Mamet is one of those unusual individuals who, in combining their art and politics, has moved from being an artistic liberal figure to one of the few conservatives working in contemporary theater and film today.

Surprisingly, there has been only one biography of Mamet. This book sheds fresh light on him to show that what made him unique as an artist was the close relationship between his ethnicity and religion and his writing. His work became so closely intertwined with his Jewishness and Judaism that they formed the backbone of his existence and thinking.

Revealingly, this immersive biography will explore the ethnicity, religion, and politics of this writer who created some of the twentieth century’s most important works of art.