The Graduate is a milestone film (the third highest grossing movie ever) for Baby Boomers, who felt for the first time that Hollywood understood their generation and what it was striving to achieve. Directed by the older, non-American-born Mike Nichols, this is one of many ironies catalogued in a new exciting towering biography of a protean creative force in theater and film, replete with dazzling triumphs and crushing failures. Written by Mark Harris, the husband of gay playwright Tony Kushner ( Angels in America), but more importantly a highly respected popular cinema historian ( Pictures at a Revolution; Five Came Back), Mike Nichols profiles a prickly genius who was a virtuoso observer of others, yet a stranger to himself.