Clint

<p><strong>From the acclaimed film critic and <em>New York Times</em> bestselling biographer of Paul Newman, the definitive biography of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, the most prolific and versatile actor-director in the history of the medium, and an indelible fixture of American culture.</strong></p><p>C-L-I-N-T. In that short, sharp syllable, there is an emblem of American manhood and morality and sheer bloody-minded will, for better and worse, on screen and off, for more than sixty years. Whether he's holding a pistol, an orangutan, or a boxing glove; whether he's facing down bad guys on a western street (Old West or new, no matter); staring through the lens of a camera; or accepting one of his thirteen Oscars (including two for Best Picture); he is as blunt, curt, and solid as his name, a star of the old school stripe <em>and </em>one of the most prolific and accomplished directors of his time, a man of rock and iron and brute force: Clint. </p><p>To tell the story of Clint Eastwood is to tell the story of nearly a century of American culture. No Hollywood figure so completely and complexly represents the cultural and political climates of contemporary America. At age ninety-four, he has lived a tumultuous century and embodied much of his time and many of its contradictions. </p><p>We picture him most immediately as he has appeared to us on screen: squinting through cigarillo smoke in <em>A Fistful of Dollars </em>or <em>The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly</em>; imposing rough justice at the point of a .44 Magnum in <em>Dirty Harry</em>; sowing moral vengeance in <em>The Outlaw Josey Wales </em>or <em>Pale Rider</em>;<em> </em>abandoning farming for murder-for-hire in <em>Unforgiven</em>; grudgingly training a woman boxer in <em>Million Dollar Baby</em>; standing up for his neighbors despite his racism toward them in <em>Gran Torino</em>. But those are roles, however well-cast and convincing, and they are two-dimensional in comparison to the whole life. The reality of Clint Eastwood is far more rich, knotty, and absorbing—a saga of cunning, determination, and conquest, a great American story about a man ascending to the Hollywood pantheon while keeping a gimlet eye on its ways and habits and one foot firmly planted outside its door. </p>