It's hard to make a lively documentary about someone who's been dead so long that everyone who knew him is dead, too. But A&E succeeds by having an actor read excerpts from Poe's stories, poems, and letters, as well as sharing anecdotes that reveal a more intimate side of this macabre genius. In this video, we see Poe the doting husband, who played games in the yard with his young wife and later cared for her during her prolonged battle with tuberculosis; Poe the joker, who scared small children in the streets of Baltimore by waving his arms and shouting "Nevermore!"; and, finally, Poe the derelict, who showed up for lectures drunk and shamelessly chased married women in his quest to replace his beloved Virginia. As with many of the characters he created, there was far more to Poe than met the surface, and this Biography does an admirable job of shining light on the shadows of the haunted writer's life. --Larisa Lomacky Moore