Harry Crosby was the godson of J. P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Living in Paris in the 1920s and directing the Black Sun Press, which published the works of James Joyce and others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the Lost Generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosbys pastimes until, in 1929, he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself. This biography is an engrossing saga of a brilliant but self-destructive socialite from a fascinating and complex time.