Writing in the June 4, 2025 edition, reviewer Tom Nolan writes:
Biographers have their own rules to follow, obliged as they are to include informational passages some may expect to be dull. But C.M. Kushins, the author of the consistently engrossing “Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard,” had no reason to skimp at all in telling the cradle-to-grave story of his dry-witted, understated subject…. Mr. Kushins, whose previous books include a biography of the musician Warren Zevon, does an excellent job of guiding us through Leonard’s stories, manuscripts and adaptations.
Cooler than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard by C.M. Kushins is published in the English language by Mariner.
C. M. Kushins is the author of Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon and Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin. He has been a freelance journalist for over fifteen years and his work has appeared in High Times and The Daily Beast, among others.