American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell

Who was Norman Rockwell? Behind the folksy, pipe-smoking facade lay a surprisingly complex figure—a lonely man all too conscious of his inadequacies. Solomon describes him as an obsessive personality who wore his shoes too small, washed his paintings with Ivory Soap, and relied on the redemptive power of storytelling to stave off depression. He wound up in treatment with Erik Erikson, the influential psychotherapist. American Mirrordraws on unpublished papers to explore the relationship between Rockwell's anguished creativity and his genius for reflecting American innocence. "The thrill of his work," writes Solomon, "is that he was able to use the commercial form of magazine illustration to thrash out his private obsessions."

In American Mirror, Solomon, a biographer and art critic, trains her perceptive eye on both the art and the man. She also brilliantly chronicles the visual history of American journalism and the battle pitting photography against illustration.