Brothers: What the van Goghs, Booths, Marxes, Kelloggs--and Colts--Tell Us About How Siblings Shape Our Lives and History Reprint edition

EDWIN BOOTH GREW UP TO BECOME THE GREATEST ACTOR ON THE nineteenth-century American stage while his younger brother John grew up to assassinate a president. Vincent van Gogh would never have survived without the financial and emotional support of his younger brother, Theo, in a claustrophobic relationship that both defined and confined them. Henry David Thoreau?s life was shadowed by the early death of his older brother, John, who haunted and inspired his writing.

Colt parallels his quest to understand how his own brothers shaped his life with an examination of the complex relationships between famous brothers in history. Illuminating and affecting, Colt?s magnificent book is a history told through the lens of fraternal rivalry?and love.