I really didn't know much about the real Atticus Finch, this was a great read and a really well done biography. I really went in and I questioned everything.

My son is reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in school this year, so I have been hearing a lot about the book and decided to reread it. I loved it just as much as I did the first time. Atticus Finch, by Joseph Crespino, gives greater insight into Harper Lee's life and family, and why and how she created this beloved character. For those of you interested in the details around one of the most beloved books of all time, I highly recommend this biography. It is well-written and well-researched.

Atticus Finch
The Biography
by Joseph Crespino
Perseus Books, Basic Books
Basic Books
Biographies & Memoirs
Pub Date 20 Oct 2020




I am reviewing a copy of Atticus Finch, The Biography through Perseus Books, Basic Books and Netgalley:




Atticus Finch was born on Christmas Day 1956. She would not be heading home to Alabama for the Holidays. She couldn’t get time off from her job as an airline reservationist, so she spent Christmas with her closest friends in New York, Michael and Joy Brown and their two boys.





Watchman was Harper Lee’s effort to make sense of her father’s conservatism amid the madness of massive resistance. Yet that first novel didn’t succeed.




In this book, historian Joseph Crespino draws on exclusive sources to reveal how Harper Lee's father provided the central inspiration for each of her books. Harper Lee’s Father, A.C Lee was a lawyer and newspaperman. He was a principled opponent to opponent but he was also a racial paternalist.



When Harper Lee created the Atticus Finch of the Watchman out of the ambivalence she felt toward white southerners like him. After a militant segregationist movement arose that mocked his values, she revised the character in To Kill a Mockingbird to defend her father and to remind the South of its best traditions.




If you are looking for an in-depth look at Harpers Lee Character Atticus Finch, I recommend historian Joseph Crespino in depth book on the Subject titled Atticus Finch!



Five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

Interesting. But bogged down in too much detail and no small amount of speculation. The ideas here would make a great piece of long form journalism but was too drawn out as a book.