This remarkable biography, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, shines a light on one of America's greatest patrons of the arts, Lincoln Kirstein, who fought for and funded many of the greatest artists and institutions of the 20th century. Kirstein was a complicated and neurotic character whose aesthetic endeavors cut across all artistic genres: he started literary magazines, fueled innovation at the Museum of Modern Art, and nearly single-handedly helped keep ballet alive in the Americas. The names of those who have felt his beneficence are legion--Ezra Pound, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Diego Rivera--but until this book, the importance of Kirstein himself has faded into history. We remember the artists, the geniuses, the dancers--but this wonderful biography reminds us of the power and passion of a devoted sponsor of culture.