Charles Schulz, the artist and writer of Peanuts, became one of the wealthiest men in America by using his childhood insecurities and failures as material for his comic strip. Charlie Brown, the strips likable loser, shared more than a first name with his creator and was inspired by Schulz bittersweet memories of his Midwestern boyhood.

Charles Monroe Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, like Charlie Brown's, was a barber. Schulz parents nicknamed him Sparky after the racehorse Spark Plug in one of his favorite newspaper strips, Barney Google. He read the funnies avidly; copying all the characters he was fond of, especially those in Segar's Thimble Theatre and Percy Crosby's Skippy...