Jacket designed by Chip Kidd.

(Excerpt from the Roundtable introduction.)

David Michaelis' Schulz and Peanuts is the most ambitious biography to date of the creator of what may be the most influential and beloved comic strip of the 20th century; it may be the most controversial biography of a cartoonist, as well.

Schulz and Peanuts appeared in early October. It received largely respectful reviews, most of which took Michaelis' story of Charles Schulz's life at face value and reiterated it uncritically — including those reviews that appeared in the New York Times and the New Yorker. Several reviews underscored Michaelis' conclusions that Schulz was a depressed or melancholic personality and a remote father and husband, but didn't question them. By the end of October, however, it was widely known, at least among cartooning circles, that the Schulz family was unhappy with much of the biography and disputed precisely those most-talked-about assertions made in the book. Schulz's son Monte was particularly vocal about his — and the family's — dissatisfaction with Michaelis' portrait of his father, posting numerous messages on the Cartoon Brew website to that effect.