Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century
Jennifer Homans
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • “A fascinating read about a true genius and his unrelenting thirst for beauty in art and in life.”—MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography and the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Baillie Gifford Prize Based on a decade of unprecedented research, the first major biography of George Balanchine, a broad-canvas portrait set against the backdrop of the tumultuous century that shaped the man The New York Times called “the Shakespeare of dancing”—from the bestselling author of Apollo’s Angels New York Times Editors’ Choice • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, Oprah Daily Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—The New York Times called him “the Shakespeare of dancing.” His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr.
Award History
1 wins · 5 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plutarch Award: Biography | 2023 | Winner | Secondary source |
| Kirkus Prize for NonfictionMajor | 2023 | Finalist | Secondary source |
| Pulitzer Prize in Biography or AutobiographyMajor | 2023 | Finalist | Secondary source |
| Los Angeles Times Book Prize for BiographyMajor | 2022 | Finalist | Secondary source |
| National Book Critics Circle Award for BiographyMajor | 2022 | Finalist | Secondary source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
- George Balanchine86%
02 Central places
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- Russia38%
- Europe38%
- the Americas38%
03 Suggested argument
No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.
04 Reading orientation
28 / 100 academicSerious trade
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 78%.