For a long time it has been said that writers are influenced by their environment and in turn influence it. In Writers in Crisis Mr. Geisman shows this to be so. Taking the writings of six outstanding American authors of the past two decades, Lardner, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Wolff and Steinback, he uses the clinical evidence of their books as source material for reaching conclusions as to how these men as creative individuals reacted to the pressure of their lives. Guided by a point of view that has both a psycho-analytical and a socio-historical orientation, he picks his data with rare skill and then conveys in vivid yet convincing fashion his own interpretation of how each of these six have gone through successive emotional stages in the evolution of their reactions to the world about them. For the busy practising psychiatrist the book affords a quick and pleasant entry into the world of American letters of to-day. As a study of the problem of the flowering of genius, it is provocative and thought-inspiring to the student of the mind.