Here is Martha Graham, from her birth and childhood on Pittsburgh’s North Side (Allegheny, Pennsylvania), to becoming one of the most important artistic forces of the twentieth century—the legendary dancer and choreographer who upended dance, propelling the art form into the modern age, and whose profound and pioneering influence is still being felt today.

Neil Baldwin, author of admired biographies, gives us the artist and performer, the dance monument who led a cult of dance worshippers as well as the woman herself in all of her complexity. This is the story of Graham’s large, fiercely lived life, a life beset by conflict, competition, and loneliness—filled with fire and inspiration, drive, passion, dedication, and sacrifice in work and in dance creation.

A native New Yorker, Baldwin received a PhD in Modern American Poetry from SUNY/Buffalo. He is the critically acclaimed author of biographies of William Carlos Williams, Man Ray, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford; as well as Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God, and The American Revelation. He served as manager of The Annual Fund at The New York Public Library; and was founding executive director of The National Book Foundation, sponsor of the National Book Awards.