"Cott first interviewed Maurice Sendak in 1976 for Rolling Stone, just at the time when Outside Over There ... was gestating. Over the course of their ... conversation about his life, work, and the fantasies and obsessions that drove his creative process, they focused on many of the themes and images that would appear in the new book five years later. Drawing on that interview, [this book offers an] examination of the inner workings of a complicated genius's torments and inspirations that ranges over the entirety of his work and his formative life experiences, and uses Outside Over There ... as the key to understanding just what made this ... talented man tick"--
