"Harper Lee is the subject of Charles J. Shields's new 2006 biography, 'Mockingbird.'...Lee has resisted biographers, including Shields, whose requests for cooperation, he says, she 'declined with vigor.' A former high-school teacher who has written nonfiction books for young adults, Shields has been enterprising in the face of frustration, basing his biography 'on six hundred interviews and other sorts of communication with Harper Lee's friends, associates, and former classmates.'" (New Yorker) This review of Shields' "Mockingbird" highlights Lee's relationship with Truman Capote and considers her contributions to Capote's "In Cold Blood." Literary themes in Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" are explored.