When the first Peanuts comic strip appeared in 1950—simple line drawings of a group of children doing what children do: playing football, flying kites, and being cruel to one another—there was nothing to suggest the cultural phenomenon it would become. Over the next fifty years Charles Schultz drew 18,977 strips, the last of which appeared the day after he died in October 2000. This intimate and moving biography includes interviews with Schultz’s children, his childhood friends, and his fellow cartoonists; photos, home movies, and television interviews; and, most spectacularly, the comic strips themselves, in glorious, full-screen black and white.  AT