Pearl's Progress

by James Kaplan

New Yorker Philip Pearl takes a teaching job as assistant professor of English at Mississippi's Picket State University, where he finds a group of weird co-workers, a variety of students and townspeople, and love. (Nancy Pearl)

303 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 1989

About the author

James Kaplan has been writing noted biography, journalism, and fiction for more than four decades. The author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman, the definitive two-volume biography of Frank Sinatra, he has written more than one hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, from Arthur Miller to Larry David.