Donaldson, Scott, in collaboration with R. H. Winnick,

Archibald MacLeish: An American Life, Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

In this definitive biography of MacLeish, the discussion of J. B. presents MacLeish's reasons for writing the play and describes his writing and revising process as he moved from written script to performance.

Drabeck, Bernard A., and Helen E. Ellis, eds., Archibald MacLeish: Reflections, University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.

Arranged in a question-and-answer format, this book was pieced together from several interviews MacLeish granted during the last years of his life. MacLeish considered this book the autobiography of his professional life. His discussion of J. B. focuses on the differences between the published and the performed versions of the play.

Ellis, Helen E., Bernard A. Drabeck, and Margaret E. C. Howland, Archibald MacLeish: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 1995.

With more than twenty-three hundred entries and two indices, this book is an...