A review by triscuit807
The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein by Farah Mendlesohn

4 stars. This is a dissertation on the life and works of RAH - it contains masses of material and analysis - and as such, it isn't especially readable. In addition to his life and bibliography (divided into short stories, juveniles, and adult novels), Mendlesohn covers technique (cinematic, the use of a sidekick, "oh wow" engineering, and time tales), rhetoric (what emotions he was trying to evoke), society and how humans should fit into it, civic revolution/social justice (guns, disability, racism, feminism, sex and sexuality), and the use of a cat to denote individual worth. I read this for my 2020 Reading Challenge (Reading Women "by female historian") and the 2020 Hugo nominations (Best Related Work).