Tracy Daugherty’s 2024 book on Larry McMurtry strikes all the chords we expect from a biography—the womb to the tomb details of a life. It’s a must read for any McMurtry fan. This is doubly true for David Streitfeld’s Western Star, which covers the same subjects but with an insider’s perspective Daugherty lacks. Streitfeld writes, “I became a regular in Archer City and in [Larry’s] complicated life from the late 1990s until he died. I was a crony and confidant.” With Streitfeld we get a glimpse of McMurtry behind the covers of the books, a look into his complex and contradictory nature. In Western Star, Streitfeld pens a portrait of an enigmatic mythmaker who sought to demythologize the West. And yet, almost compulsively, instinctively, McMurtry created myths about his own life and work—myths Streitfeld, as a New York Times journalist, fact-checked and unraveled to reveal the real man behind some of the most beloved novels of the late twentieth century.