I noticed, while preparing tomorrow’s Hili Dialogue, that tomorrow is We Love Memoirs Day. Well, I’m not a fan of memoirs so much as of biographies, for memoirs can easily be distorted because the writer is the subject. That’s not so true of biographies, and it got me thinking about the biographies I’ve loved the most. I’ll mention just four (three of them comprise more than one volume), and I encourage you to note your own selections in the comments.
My criteria are simply that the subject of the biography be an interesting person—or, in the case of the first two, made interesting by the author’s research—and that the book be written very well, so the prose is a pleasure to read.
These are listed in no particular order.
1.)_ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro (1974). I read this behemoth (1,336 pages!) soon after it came out, and I couldn’t put it down. One wouldn’t think that Robert Moses, an urban planner who held a number of powerful positions in New York City, would be such an interesting subject for a biography, but Robert Moses made it so. As Wikipedia notes,
Moses’ construction projects transformed the New York area and revolutionized the way urban areas across the United States were designed and built. His philosophy of urban development influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners across the United States.
I won’t summarize what he did, as you can read the Wikipedia link to the book above or Moses’s short biography on the site. It’s a mesmerizing read, although some critics complain it has a number of errors (Moses, who was still alive when it came out, shares that opinion). You can look up these allegations after you read the book, but if you like biography you must read it. It won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1975.
Here’s the cover; click to get the Amazon link. At $16.47 for the huge paperback, it’s a great bargain:
2.) What Caro did for Robert Moses—making an unlikely subject seem fascinating—he also did for Lyndon Johnson, in a four-volume work that’s supposed to end at volume five. The Years of Lyndon Johnson (first volume from 1982), currently over 3,000 pages, and is another series of books that are hard to put down. The first volume covers Johnson’s youth through his first campaign for the Senate, the second up to his successful election to the Senate in 1947, the third his control of the Senate and passage of the Civil Rights act of 1957 (this volume won both the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award), and the fourth up to Johnson’s attaining the Presidency after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.
Unfortunately, the fifth and final volume, up to Johnson’s death, is still in the works, and, like the book below, it’s a race against time as Caro is now 90 and has been saying for several decades that the book is nearly finished. Caro notes that he’s written a lot of the book, and I hope he’ll finish, as the final volume will cover Johnson’s tenure during the Vietnam War and his resignation from the Presidency in 1969. This is a crucial volume in the set, and we all hope Caro finishes it.
Here’s the set on Amazon, with the boxed hardcover set going for $113 and the paperbacks from $11-14, those being great bargains as well.
3.) The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill by William Manchwster (I am speaking of the first two volumes). Manchester completed two volumes in 1983 and 1988, and I devoured them. He died of stomach cancer before the third volume could be completed, so his unfinished manuscript was co-published with Paul Reid as the final volume. I haven’t read it.
You’re drawn into the series by the first chapter of the first book, which simply recounts a day in Churchill’s life as PM at his home in Chartwell, Kent. What a life the man had! Soldier, journalist, prisoner of war and escapee, holder of many big government positions (including First Lord of the Admiralty, during which he was humiliated by the Dardanelles fiasco and had to resign), parliamentarian, Prime Minister (twice), and elder statesman. He could write very well, was a prolifie author, and his books The Second World War and A History of the English Speaking Peoples won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. (I can’t think of another British PM who won a Nobel Prize for Literature.)
Unfortunately, the second volume of the biography, Alone, ends just when Churchill takes the reins as Prime Minister during WWII, and I was greatly looking forward to see the account of Churchill helming the UK during that war. But because Manchester died before that volume was published, I never read it, even though it came out with Reid’s help. Even so, you might read the first two volumes and see if you want to go on to the co-authored third.
Here’s the Amazon link to the trio: another bargain for the hardbacks at $79 (nearly 50% off), with the paperbacks around $15.
4. The two-volume biography of Charles Darwin by Janet Browne, comprising Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995), and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (2002). The first book covers Darwin’s life up to 1856, when he was starting On the Origin of Species, and the second his life at Down House, the publication of The Origin and his other books, ending, of course, with his death in 1882.
I may be biased in this selection because it is after all about Darwin, but it’s an extraordinarily well written duo, with a lot about the science. Janet has now condensed the two books into one, Darwin: A Biography, which just came out on June 30. I haven’t read it, so what I’m recommending is the two-volume set. Do read it. The cover below links to the Amazon site of the first volume
Now it’s your turn, and I look forward to hearing what biographies the readers recommend (I use those as a source of future reading).
Max Perutz and the Secret of Life
Georgina Ferry
Chatto & Windus, publishers
2007
“In Science, Truth always wins.”
-Max Perutz
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2396919/
IMHO – title should be capital “T” on “The” 😁
Make a perfect pair with Ferry’s earlier
Dorothy Hodgkin : A Life
Granta Books
1998
I recommend David Blight’s “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom”, and also Dougass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave”.
Frederick Douglas indeed! I enjoyed…. Maybe more I could identify with his 1855 autobiography, “My Bondage and My Freedom”… i have lived in the Virginia Tidewater all my life and his descriptions of the farmlands and waterways of the northern Chesapeake Bay and Eastern Shore of maryland really came alive for me. But also he talks about his freedom in those years in the North as a Black Man. A short volume.
I’m currently engaged in a project to read biographies of all of the English monarchs in order; currently about to start on Henry VII. Interest in these depends, of course, on one’s interest in English history.
The biography I’ve read which I think would be of most interest to frequenters of this website would be Mencken: A Life, by Fred Hobson.
Second most likely to be of interest would probably be Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc, by Arthur I. Miller
Well, I can recommend Ronald Hutton’s Charles II.
Thanks!
Any from the Yale English Monarchs series?
None yet; they are all very long (David Carpenter’s Henry III is two volumes, and well over a thousand pages) and I have a limited amount of time. However, once I got to the 15th century, I had to go with much longer books. Hence, Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV, Dan Jones, Henry V, Lauren Johnson, The Shadow King, and Thomas Penn, The Brothers York, which, for 600+ pages, at least got me through three kings. Not that I mind; they were great reading.
I recently picked up Bates’s “William the Conqueror,” Carpenter’s two volumes, and Scarisbrick’s “Henry VIII.” I don’t know whether I’ll have time, but the sales prices were too good to ignore!
Anything written by Walter Isaacson. Start with Leonardo Da Vinci. Then head off to Einstein, and Kissinger, and then The Code Breaker (not quite a biography, but close). I like his modern writing style, very straightforward. And, as is especially evident in his biography of Einstein, he doesn’t shy away from difficult material, which he conveys in a manner that can be understood. This tells me that he understands it himself.
I have read a good number of Einstein biographies and Isaacson’s is among the best and very accessible.
Isaacson is great! Also Robert Caro’s series on LBJ, of which I’ve read two volumes.
I could not agree more regarding The Power Broker! I could not put that book down and have repeatedly recommended (and lent my copy) to others.
While you are not a sport’s guy, I nevertheless recommend Jane Leavy’s Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy. Focuses on his Jewish heritage, his identity, character and significance beyond his baseball playing career. Her book on Mickey Mantle; The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and The End of America’s Childhood is powerful and heartbreaking at the same time.
Not a recommendation but a question: have readers (or our host) read the Jason Arday memoir Great and Unfortunate Things?
Good question. I haven’t.
Purely fictional works don’t count.
It’s all the same to some folx.
“‘I think questions of truth and accuracy in memoir are very, very blurred because they are subjective accounts of a bit of someone’s life,’ [Alexandra Pringle, former Bloomsbury editor-in-chief] told listeners. ‘A memoir is not an autobiography, and it’s important to make the distinction between the two.
‘If you’re thinking of, for example, John Major or Mrs Thatcher’s autobiography you would expect that to be absolutely true.
‘But a memoir is a work of literature which is verging on fiction, and you cannot necessarily expect a memoir to be a factual day-by-day or year-by-year account of someone’s life.'”
https://spectator.com/article/does-it-matter-that-jason-ardays-memoir-is-made-up/
I recommend Bob Spitz’s The Rolling Stones. It is amazing the amount of drugs they did, but still toured and recorded. A really interesting read.
Speaking of Bob Spitz, his Beatles biography is a good one.
Regarding (at least some of) The Stones, I wonder of some of those drugs did not act as preservation agents, kind of a live mummification. Given the way that they jump around on stage at their advanced age (even older than me), it would behoove them to volunteer a few tissue samples for biomedical research.
Jagger has never done hard drugs. He has a child younger than one of his GREAT-grandchildren. I’m more than 20 years younger and would be happy to be as fit as he is.
Hitler and Stalin–Parallel Lives, by Alan Bullock. He follows both men in time alongside each other, through out their lives, from birth to death. Showing their differences and similarities. Young people today, right and left, should read this and learn how both men’s nature and actions would lead to the deaths of millions of their followers.
The Power Broker is an amazing book. I learned so much about NYC that I had not previously understood, like “why do they have so Avni roads that don’t go anywhere?”
After reading that, I bought the LBJ set, which were also good, but most as good as the Moses book, IMO.
One book that I recommend is: Robert Kennedy and His Times, by Arthur Schlesinger. It definitely is highly sympathetic toward Kennedy, but living in the days of his son, we could all use some good Kennedy to offset the other kind.
Speaking of Darwin— there is a biographical account of the Beagle voyage called Fossils, Finches, and Fuegians, by Richard Keynes, who was Darwin’s great-grandson. I love the book, and found it well-researched. For those interested, Keynes also edited and annotated Darwin’s writings and illustrations from the Beagle voyage, and published them in a book called “The Beagle Record: Selections from the Original…..” That is an amazing book, he gifted me a signed copy (signed by Keynes, not Darwin), which I greatly prize, as Keynes was one of my scientific heroes, and he was delighted to find our shared admiration for Darwin. (When I met Keynes, I was ignorant of his family connection.)
I greatly enjoyed the book on Da Vinci by Isaacson as well.
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin about Oppenheimer (on which the movie is based) is very good.
The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wolff about Alexander von Humboldt is awesome.
Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford. Very good. Looking forward to reading his biography of Mozart.
Maybe more a biography of the romantic period than a biography of a person: Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes.
And a memoir so it doesn’t count but Life by Keith Richards is so great. Especially as an audiobook.
Re Humboldt: Humboldt’s Cosmos by Gerard Helferich is also very good.
Thanks for the “Last Lion” recommendation. I have just bought the first volume as a result. Churchill was the only British PM to win a Nobel Prize of any kind.
If you’re interested in philosophy and an extraordinary character from that world, I recommend “Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality”
by David Edmonds.
Hermione Lee’s biography of Tom Stoppard; a fine book of an extraordinary life.
Also an interesting take on the mid-twentieth century.
I believe I’ve mentioned a couple of these before, but they remain high on my list:
Joseph Frank’s majestic five volumes on Dostoevsky are as much a biography of the writer’s cultural and intellectual world as they are of the man and his works. If only some of the more toxic ideas circulating in that world had died with it.
Walter Jackson Bate’s volume on Keats takes a more personal approach to his subject, with a strong focus on Keats’s artistic development. Bate won the 1964 Pulitzer for this work, as he did for a later book on Samuel Johnson.
I am currently a hundred pages into Andrew Roberts’s “Churchill: Walking with Destiny.” The writing is splendid, but I wonder whether his portrait of the young Winston is not skewed a bit toward those traits that were clearly visible in the elder statesman.
The third volume of The Last Lion is certainly as good as the first two. Other favourites:
Roy Hattersley’s Nelson
Peter Ackroyd’s Dickens
Christopher Hibbert’s Queen Victoria
Philip Ziegler’s Mountbatten
Peter Gay’s Freud
And for a surprisingly good and entertaining autobiography, try Keith Richards’ Life.
I’ve been on something of a biography kick the last few months.
Ricki Riccardi’s Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong is great, but you probably need to know Armstrong’s music or be willing to listen. It’s all on YouTube. Interestingly, this is his third bio of Armstrong. The first covered his later years and the second his middle years (Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong, also very good).
Gary Gidden’s Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: The Early Years 1903-1940 and Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star: The War Years, 1940-1946 are both very, very good. I assume a third volume is coming.
I am reading currently James Kaplan’s (single volume biography), Frank: The Voice. It’s good so far, but does not provide the detail on his movies and recordings that the Armstrong and Crosby bios do.
Comment by Greg Mayer
I mostly read scientific biographies, as the following suggestions show.
Browne, E.J. 1995-2002. Charles Darwin: a Biography. Two volumes 1. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. I second Jerry’s motion on this one. The new one volume abridgement is also billed as an update, so I intend to read it, as I’d like to get Janet’s view on 25 years or so of further Darwin scholarship.
Clark, R. 1968. J.B.S.: the Life and Work of J.B.S. Haldane. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Very much more a life rather than an examination of his work, which makes for much better reading. Haldane, as I have remarked before here at WEIT, was the original Most Interesting Man in the World.
Cobb, M. 2025. Crick: A Mind in Motion- from DNA to the Brain. Profile Books, London. The author . . . ’nuff said!
Provine, W.B. 1986. Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Very much about the work, so perhaps not as much for a general reader as the books on Crick and Haldane.
I’ll also mention Jurgen Haffer’s 2007 Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy: the Life and Science of Ernst Mayr 1904-2005. (Springer, Berlin). It’s not a gripping read unless you’re into Mayr and his science, but it’s chock full of data on Mayr’s life and contributions, including Mayr’s answers to Haffer’s many queries. It’s more of a primary than a secondary source, and will be of great use to whoever eventually writes a more conventional biography of Mayr.
GCM
One of the best biographies I have read is ‘Strindberg’ by Michael Meyer.
So many great suggestions in the comments. Thanks to everyone. I have read a great many biographies and am always looking for more.
As a couple of people here have mentioned the Keith Richards memoir, I will add that I just ordered Tim Curry’s memoir. Mostly because he just died, but also, who can forget his iconic entrance down the elevator in RHPS?
I’d toss in Why Freud Was Wrong by Richard Webster. More of a demolition of the pseudoscience of Freudian psychology than a biography, but nonetheless contains a lot of information about the man. Incredible book.
A minor clarification: Lyndon Johnson did not resign from the presidency — he left office when his term expired. (You may have been thinking of his March 31, 1968, surprise announcement that he was no longer a candidate for the Democratic nomination for that year’s presidential election.)
Yes, that is what I meant. Resigned from candidacy is what I should have said.
One of the very best biographies I know is Wittgenstein, by Ray Monk, a magnificent study of a complicated, often difficult genius.
James Gleick has written smart lively biographies of scientists, including colossal figures Newton and Feynman.
Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler delves into the heart of the heartless.
Two terrific lives of James Joyce, a more formal, but superb one by Richard Ellman, and a short, sparkling one by the great Edna O”Brien, who also wrote one of my favourite memoirs, Country Girl.
Last, biographies of two of the most important cultural figures of the 20th century. Peter Guralnick’s two-volume life of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love is a fascinating account of an American tragedy writ large. Robert Creamer’s Babe: The Legend Comes to Life is a beautifully told tale of the Rabelasian life of Babe Ruth.
Montaigne: A Biography, by Donald Frame.
Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard. James Garfield was president of the US for four months when he was shot. Obviously, he didn’t amass much of a record. Millard portrays him as a possessing a brilliant mind and a most generous soul. A truly great man, or so it seems.
I had read Janet Browne’s books on Darwin last year, and learned much. He’s a much more intriguing person that I had known beforehand and her bio is very engaging. I’ll have to get the Robert Moses book as I still remember childhood trips to the Niagara Power station (named after him). It’s still #3 largest hydroelectric plant (in terms of megawatts) in US–that’s more than Hoover dam.
I’d like to put in a plug in for David McCullough, whose bios of Truman, John Adams and other American historic figures are quite good. Although not biographies, McCullough’s books on feats of engineering, such as The Great Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge) and The Path Between the Seas (Panama Canal), are biographical in the sense that he devotes much time to the persons involved and cultural context of these works.
Lots of good suggestions here — I’m glad to be retired, with time to explore some. Although it is an autobiography rather than a biography, I wanted to mention Bertrand Russell’s 3-volume autobiography, which I read 50 years ago and still recall with great pleasure and interest. One of my favor lines was from his account of meeting the anthropologist Malinowski at Cambridge — Malinowski was, apparently, a rather pompous little man who had sought out Russell as another genius, and Russell was not impressed. Shortly after leaving Russell’s office, Malinowski wrote him a note to say that he thinks he must have left his hat in Russell’s office. Russell’s reply was classic, a brief note back that said “Yes, I found your hat in my office and assumed it was yours. Indeed, the very sight of it reminded me of you….”
Thanks, David. I was unaware of Bertrand Russell’s autobiography. I am also retired, though also approaching the end of my shelf life…may still be able to get through a 3-volume set.
I found Lawrence Krauss’s biography of Richard Feynman, titled Quantum Man (2011), to be an excellent read that balances science and personal life details so deftly. But this is to be expected of a biography of a man like Feynman.
Zamoyski’s Napoleon biography is impressive, much better than the hagiography of Andrew Roberts. Also, Gavan Tredoux’s Galton double biography (has not been covered anywhere apart from Aporia).
Timothy Leary’s autobiography titled Flashbacks is very entertaining – and my copy was signed by the great man himself!
Speaking of great men, I’d recommend the biographies of Augustus and Hadrian by Anthony Everitt.
I’m with Doug on Roberts’ biography of Churchill – a cracker.
“Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan” by Herbert Bix is also a must read. This one scored a Pulitzer.
“Stalin” by Stephen Kotkin is monumental. It’s currently at 2 volumes. Hopefully number 3 – from June 1941 onwards – will be coming soon but apparently Kotkin is having difficulty getting into Russia to get his hands on the archives.
Can’t imagine why that would be….
Another good Stalin bio is “Stalin – The Court of the Red Tsar” by Simon Sebag Montefiore.
“Kissinger – 1923 – 1968 : The Idealist” by Niall Ferguson. It’s quite sympathetic to Kissinger. Don’t know if Niall will be able to finish it now that Henry is no more.
Leftfield choice: The Bare-Faced Messiah, by Russell Miller. The unauthorised biography of L Ron Hubbard.
Russell writes well, but it’s mainly the absolutely insane life of L Ron Hubbard that sells it. Hubbard’s compulsive lying and exaggerations about his life simply don’t compare to the bizarre events of his true life.
The only real complaint is that Miller barely conceals his contempt of Hubbard and Scientology. But I imagine it’s almost impossible to write without venom when Scientology is trying to fit you up with a murder (which they actually did to Miller when he was trying to write the book).
Hubbard is like a weapons-grade Jason Arday. But where Arday seems to have lived a very bland existence outside his lies, Hubbard’s life includes accidentally declaring war on Mexico, attempted murder, kidnapping, massive fraud, black-magic sex cults, writing one of the most infamous fake texts ever, evading governments left, right and centre, multiple attempted coups, starting his own paramilitary, secret police and naval force, huge quantities of drug taking, high-seas pirating, and various other hard-to-belive things.
Only $3.92 on Kindle! Couldn’t resist.
I recommend “The Incredible Life of Tadeusz Kosciuszko” by Anthony Sharwood.
He was a Polish national who fought in the American war of independence, being summoned by Washington to help defend the Hudson. He fortified Philadelphia, engineered the victory at Saratoga and fortified West Point.
Then he returned to Poland to fight against Russia and Prussia.
Thomas Jefferson said of him: “He is as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known, and of that liberty which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone”.
He was incorruptible and left his estate to be used to free and educate American slaves, appointing Jefferson as his executor. Unfortunately, Jefferson did not carry out those wishes.
There is a national memorial to him in Philadelphia.
He was a national hero in America but I suspect that not many Americans know about him which is a great pity.
I can think of no better way to dive into the amazing life of Ernest Hemingway than to read the biography by Michael Reynolds. It is detailed, accurate and immensely readable, due to Reynolds’ writing style–clear and direct, like someone else’s.
Oh, and it’s only 5 volumes, each a mini masterpiece. If you want to pick and choose, I’d say start with ‘Hemingway: The Paris Years,’ which will hook you on Hem’s first novel, ‘The Sun Also Rises.’
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe
Einstein by Walter Isaacson
Here are a few of my favorites:
Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018. The biography of the nineteenth century intellectual and abolitionist, alongside, as noted above, Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave.”
Curry, Constance. Silver Rights. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1995. The story of Mae Bertha Carter and her family’s campaign to desegregate Mississippi schools, written by civil rights leader Connie Curry. The book won the 1996 Lillian Smith Book Award for non-fiction.
Davis, Jack E. An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. Much more than an account of nature advocate Douglas, providing context for the understanding the U.S. environmental movement, written by the Pulitzer prize-winning environmental historian Jack Davis.
Lear, Linda J. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. A compelling account of the life and work of the influential mid-twentieth century biologist.