The Examined Life -- Biographies

Hutchinson Family Encyclopedia suggests that biography as a literary form took root in 17^th-century England with the work of Samuel Johnson (who himself became a biography subject through the writing of his friend James Boswell).  Biographical stories and sketches, and their counterpart, autobiography, at one time were characterized by morally and educationally uplifting stories of great people and character built and tested in adversity – role models for the reader’s improvement.  With Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, biographers began delving into deeper and more personal details and sharing character flaws and decision-making processes with the reader.  A new school of  biography writing was also created by Strachey – that of the biographer placing him or herself in the subject’s mind and imagining the unrecorded thoughts or unwitnessed actions that might have influenced the recorded or witnessed events of the subject’s life.

In recent years, biography has served to revive interest in long-overlooked individuals who were famous (or infamous) in their own day, humanized individuals deified by popular history, and even told the life stories of unusual subjects.  So if you are #40 on the list for David McCullough’s John Adams or Edmund Morris’s Theodore Rex, consider one of these biographies; and if you’d like to find others, please visit the reference desk.

American Revolutionary History

• The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin ~ H.W. Brands (B Franklin, B)

• Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation ~ Joseph J. Ellis (973.4 ELL)

• John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot ~ Harlow Giles Unger (B Hancock, J)

• Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington ~ Richard Brookhiser (973.41 BRO)

• John Marshall: Definer of a Nation ~ Jean Edward Smith (B Marshall, J)

• A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and The American Republic ~ Henry Mayer (B Henry, P)

• The Adams-Jefferson Letters ~ 2 volumes, Lester J. Cappon, ed. (B Adams, J)

• Abigail Adams: An American Woman ~ Charles W. Akers (B Adams, A)

• Passionate Sage: the Character and Legacy of John Adams ~ Joseph J. Ellis (973.44 ELL)

Presidential Lives

• John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life ~ Paul C. Nagel (B Adams, J)

• The Two American Presidents: A Dual Biography of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis ~ Bruce Chadwick (973.70922 CHA)

• T.R.: The Last Romantic ~ H.W. Brands (B Roosevelt, T)

• The Lion's Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War ~ Edward J. Renehan, Jr. (973.911 REN)

• Woodrow Wilson ~ Louis Auchincloss (B Wilson, W)

• No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin (973.917 GOO)

• Truman ~ David McCullough (B Truman, H)

• Harry and Ike: The Partnership That Remade the Postwar World ~ Steve Neal (973.918 NEA)

• Eisenhower ~ Geoffrey Perret (B Eisenhower, J)

• Eisenhower: Soldier and President ~ Stephen E. Ambrose (B Eisenhower, J)

• Jack: A Life Like No Other ~ Geoffrey Perret (B Kennedy, J)

• Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy ~ Richard D. Mahoney (973.922 MAH)

• Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin (B Johnson, L)

• Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan ~ Edmund Morris (B Reagan, R)

Other American Biographies

• A Beautiful Mind: the Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash ~ Sylvia Nasar (B Nash, J)

• Personal History ~ Katharine Graham (B Graham, K)

• Ava’s Man ~ Rick Bragg (B Bundrum, C)

• Positively 4^th Street: the Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina ~ David Hajdu (782.42162 HAJ)

• Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn ~ David Hajdu (B Strayhorn, B)

• Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC ~ Jon T. Hoffman (B Puller, C)

• Jack: Straight From the Gut ~ Jack Welch (B Welch, J)

• The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice ~ Bernard B. Kerik (B Kerik, B)

• Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay ~ Nancy Milford (B Millay, E)

• Washington ~ Meg Greenfield (975.3 GRE)

 World Figures

• Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love ~ Dava Sobel (B Galilei, M)

• Marie Antoinette: The Journey ~ Antonia Fraser (B Marie Antoinette)

• The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary ~ Simon Winchester (B Minor, W)

• Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage ~ Alfred Lansing (919.89 LAN)

 Biography with a Twist

• Seabiscuit: An American Legend ~ Laura Hillenbrand (798.4 HIL)

• London: The Biography ~ Peter Ackroyd (914.21 ACK)

(AS 3/02)

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