Budd Schulberg predicted in 1950 that he would be remembered primarily as "the writer who reversed the usual process: started in Hollywood and worked East." It was an accurate forecast in that Schulberg's name most often surfaces in connection with the city where he was raised, where he has returned frequently to work, and about which he has written on many occasions. Yet while the author often refers to himself as a "Hollywoodologist" and to the Los Angeles basin as his version of Steinbeck's "Salinas Valley," he is much more than a student of the film industry or a regional novelist. In the course of a professional career which began in 1938, Schulberg has produced a varied body of work--stories, plays, essays, reportage, and screenplays--covering a broad range of subjects from prizefighting, labor racketeering, and political revolution to the price of literary success in America and the life cycle of...