Very interesting read. I found it interesting he used many pieces of his life and inserted them into his cartoons. How on his mom's last night on earth she said they should get a puppy and name him snoopy. WHa-La the birth of snoopy. I felt Schulz really was his own psychologist but he received his therapy I would call "cartoon therapy".
It was real to him, things of his childhood but when told as a cartoon it didn't hurt so much. Didn't hurt him so much. The cartoons took the pain out of life, maybe through these cartoons of his life he was able to find peace He really seem to be a very depressed person. He had cute/fun cartoons but his life was rather sad.This book runs the gamuts of emotions. Well worth the read.

This book, many years in the making, is chock full of insight into the creator of the marvelous Peanuts cartoon strips, Charles Schulz. But it also lends vision inside the characters that made up those strips as well, and their interaction with each other, and how they emerged onto our cultural landscape and remain with us forever. I rate this book right up there with the greats because Peanuts is and was and will remain so much a part of our culture for generations to come, and, since it is so well written, and so enjoyable to read, I find it to be required reading like "A Catcher in the Rye" and "The World According to Garp" despite its being a biography. Michaelis is a gifted writer, and the subject matter in Schulz is truly interesting, and engaging. Adore it.

Charles Schulz said, "Anyone who reads my strip, knows me." After getting the behind the panels look in this great biography you fully understand how true those words were. The various strips that are put into the text of the book reinforce the feelings and emotions Schulz encountered throughout his life. It will change the way you read Peanuts, by adding all this insight. Very enjoyable.

This book chronicles the life of Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts, from his birth and boyhood where the factors in his life began to shape his personality and view on the world. He grows up a very private, correct little boy who learns to internalize his feelings and maintain continuous awareness of other people's opinion of him. Unlike other boys, he does not engage in rough and tumble play but rather spends his time drawing pictures, wanting to grow up to be "respected" like his Dad, a successful local barber during the Depression.

Schulz experiences wrenching times upon arrival at adulthood, as his mother dies the day before he leaves to go into the Army to fight in WWII. During the war he learns to become more self-confident and even becomes a squad sergeant for a machine gun crew.

After the war, Schulz continues to develop his drawing talent, though few take him very seriously. He finds a job at a mail-order art instruction school while also submitting his cartoons to the newspaper syndicates. Finally, his creation called "Lil' Folks" slowly finds a niche, but in the process is rebranded rather crudely as "Peanuts" to avoid copyright infringement with another creation with a similar title.

As his success grows, Schulz gets married and starts a ready-made family. He struggles to maintain his hold on his creation and his world. As outside forces begin to pull on him, including his wife and his fandom, he withdraws more and more behind his impassive shell that he learned in childhood, expressing his internal thoughts and conflicts via the medium of the Peanuts strip. The book includes numerous examples of Peanuts strips in which this is illustrated, sometimes with verbatim dialogue and/or names, etc. to events and people in Schulz' life at the time, including his extramarital affairs.

As Schulz ages, he divorces and finds happiness in marriage to a younger woman. At the same time, the creative intensity seems to wind down in his creation, becoming more routine and flat. Schulz clings tightly to his creation to the end, insisting on full control, ownership, and doing all his own writing and drawing. Ultimately he determines that Peanuts will die with him, no one else will be allowed to draw it. Thus Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang are forever silenced - in the final strip Schulz draws, Charlie Brown sinks into a bean bag chair, saying he's lost to the world. And in the final strip published, Snoopy sits during a snowball fight, suddenly realizing his father never taught him to to throw a snowball. This is reflective of Schulz' life - perhaps 50 years of Peanuts was one man's attempt to reconcile and refigure his own straitened childhood.

This book made me feel a bit sad, and it was revealing to see the inner workings behind many of the Peanuts strips, "inside jokes" that only the people in Schulz' life could "get." However it was a fascinating glimpse into the alchemy between a man's life and his creative expression. Schulz recognized that his depression and inner struggles were a problem, yet refused to seek assistance because he felt it would take away his talent.

In the end, Charlie Brown never does get to kick the football. And, at the end of life, one wonders if Schulz ever did attain what he was seeking. One hopes he did.

Once again, I'll give a minority view here on Schulz and Peanuts. After reading this book, I can understand why the Schulz family and their friends who helped David Michaelis write this book can be upset. After 600 pages of writing, what we have here is a psychological profile of Charles M. Schulz, revealing all his negative personality traits but yet rarely showing none of his positive ones. This is a very unsympathetic view of Charles Schulz by the author who seems to be obsessively repeating himself in these pages, the flaws, weaknesses and almost hypercritical nature of his subject. Now don't get me wrong, this is a highly informative book and the author's usages of using Schulz's own comic strips to reflects his views on Schulz is quite brilliant. But as a biography, we readers should like to know more about the man then just his psychological personality.

What is missing from these 600 plus pages? A lot for an author who had Schulz's paper works and cooperation from family and friends. Usually its the simple things that make up a person that is missing. Like did Schulz follow sports like hockey (Minnesota North Stars??), what was his views on events of his period, like the Vietnam War, race relations (introduction of Franklin), ERA (introduction of Peppermint Patty) and other issues. What motivated Schulz to lent Charlie Brown and Snoopy names to NASA for Apollo 10 mission, knowing that if that mission ended in a disaster, it could spell ruin for him? There are a lot more about Charles M. Schulz remains unsaid, unwritten and unsought in this book and that is where this book failed so badly. Its one dimensional view of Charles M. Schulz and after 600 pages of reading it, I find it hard to understand why many self-proclaimed Peanuts fans would so heartily endorsed this book as I read through all the Amazon reviews.

The author could have taken a more balance approach. He could have stop repeating all the personality flaws over and over throughout the 600 pages. He could have investigate and wrote about things that made Schulz such a force in the newspaper comic world and created a more well rounded perception of his subject. But he didn't and while the book is quite readable and highly informative on certain aspects of Schulz, you won't get a definitive look at his life in this book. I am afraid someone else would have to write a more balance account and I hope that Schulz family and friends who got burnt by this author, may have the courage to try again with a better writer.