Serves its purpose as a brief straight to the point biography, although I still prefer detailed ones, and in this case I wanted to hear more about Poe's influence to literature (instead of the many times heard argument that he was an inspiration for sci-fi and detective stories). If you don't know much about Poe, this is a good introduction, but otherwise there's not a lot of new information. Ackroyd does handle his subject objectively, though. He juggles between the fair amount of contradictory writings concerning Poe's personality with great care, and corrects some misconceptions.