The Good LIFE

Description

Pre-orders now open! This book is scheduled for release in fall 2026. Orders placed before then will ship on or before the release date. 

The Good LIFE: Growing Up in a Lost World

By Patrick McGilligan

ABOUT THE BOOK

Once upon a time before the rude reality shocks of the 1960s, Patrick McGilligan grew up in downtown Madison on the shore of haunting Lake Mendota, in the long shadow of St. Raphael’s Cathedral and the State Capitol. His busy boyhood intersected with everyone “famous in Wisconsin” and others more famous who were just passing through the small Midwestern city. His tender, humorous, engaging memoir of lost times ponders life’s lessons and the self-mythologizing boast that Madison was, as LIFE Magazine proclaimed, “the best place in America to live.”

Author Patrick McGilligan has written upwards of two dozen biographies of actors and film directors, oral histories with screenwriters, and collections of interviews with Hollywood blacklisted personnel. His most recent life story is Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham, published by HarperCollins in 2025. This is one of his shortest books. McGilligan lives with his wife, Tina Daniell, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.