From the front cover jacket..

Dan Brown's New York Times best-seller The Da Vinci Code has sold many millions of copies in over forty languages, becoming a worldwide phenomenon that has inspired secret societies, international museum tours, and even a forthcoming major motion picture. But despite the phenomenal success of The Da Vinci Code and several of his other novels, Dan Brown himself has been able to remain something of a mystery to his fans. While there are more than two dozen books that address various aspects of The Da Vinci Code, little has been written about the enigmatic author.

The Man Behind the Da Vinci Code is the first book to chronicle Dan Brown's upbringing, his rise to best-sellerdom, the sometimes mysterious and quirky nuances of his character, and his recent struggles to protect a false sense of anonymity by drawing into a sheltered and isolated society of his own making. Through exclusive personal interviews with his friends and former colleagues as well as newspaper articles and interview transcripts collected over the course of Brown's career, biographer Lisa Rogak paints an intriguing and insightful picture of the man Time magazine named one of the one hundred most influential people of 2005.

From the back cover jacket...

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BECOME THE BEST-SELLING
FICTION WRITER OF OUR TIME?

Among the many insights included in this fascinating portrait of Dan Brown:

• The impact and influence of the elite prep school
  Phillips Exeter Academy on Brown's life
  
  
• How Brown became infatuated by secret societies
  
  
• Brown's unusual work habits, including his use of
  gravity boots, an antique hourglass, and
  voice-recognition software
  
  
• How he ventured from his first calling as a middle-of-the-road
  pop singer to become a publishing phenomena and Random House's
  best-selling author to date
  
  
• The connectedness of Brown's writing and his life. For example,
  Brown's early pop-singer days produced a 1994 CD and title track
  called "Angels & Demons." The CD's cover was designed by John Langdon,
  who would create the cover for the subsequent "Angels & Demons" book
  while also inspiring a portion of protagonist Robert Langdon's name.
  
  
• That, even in the face of a high-profile lawsuit that threatens to wreck his career,
  Brown hasn't signed an affidavit unambiguously asserting that he is the sold
  author of the "The Da Vinci Code".

Lisa Rogak is the author of more than thirty-five books, including:

• "Dr. Robert Atkins: The True Story of the Man Behind the War on Carbohydrates,"
• "Colin Powell: In His Own Words,"
  
• "Howard Dean in His Own Words,"
  
• and the forthcoming "No Happy Endings: The Life of Shel Silverstein."

Lisa Rogak lives in New Hampshire, not far from Dan Brown.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-5642-9
ISBN-10: 0-7407-5642-7
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Format: Hardcover
Published: October 2005
Category: Biography

150 pp, 5 3/4 x 8 3/4 in