Brian Jay Jones is an award-winning writer and biographer and presently serves as vice president of Biographers International Organization, the world's largest organization of practicing biographers. Brian is a devoted member of the Jim Henson generation, having been two years old when Sesame Street premiered in 1969 and nine when The Muppet Show debuted in 1976. A former policy analyst and advisor in the U.S. Senate, Brian abandoned politics for the pen in 2008, with the publication of his award-winning biography of Washington Irving.
"""Illuminating . . . As Jones expertly shows, Henson remained throughout his life an artist who was continuously in motion, conceiving, pitching, and managing multiple projects at once.""--""The Atlantic"" ""Consistently surprises . . . Highly readable and never long-winded (even at nearly 600 pages), ""Jim Henson"" joyously documents its subject's knack for combining old-fashioned puppetry with the world's newest entertainment medium to forge a kind of furry, felt-covered vaudeville.""--""The Wall Street Journal"" ""This is a biography that earns the label ""definitive.""""--""The Dallas Morning News"" ""In his new biography, Brian Jay Jones tells the story of how Henson turned a quaint art form into an entertainment empire. . . . The result is an exhaustive work that is never exhausting, a credit both to Jones's brisk style and to Henson's exceptional life.""--""The New York Times"" ""An insightful look at the gentle artist.""""--Parade """" """"If ever you had a single question about the felt magic Jim Henson managed to create, chances are Brian Jay Jones' sweeping new biography of the puppeteer will answer it. . . . Jones offers a meticulously researched tome chock-full of gems about the Muppets and the most thorough portrait of their creator ever crafted. . . . It is a better world with the Muppets. And we are better off with this careful account of their master.""--Associated Press ""Compulsively readable . . . evocative . . . Much has been written about Henson--during his life and after--but nothing with the same sense of authority and access as ""Jim Henson: The Biography.""""--""The A.V. Club"" ""There are so many enjoyable aspects to this book that it's hard to know where to start. . . . ""Jim Henson: The Biography"" is a fantastic story of a brilliant life cut short, but it can also be read as a blueprint for following your bliss.""--""BookPage"""" """"Brian Jay Jones draws upon new interviews with family and friends, reams of archivale"