My 15 favorite biographies
Biographies are all too often too long. In their dogged pursuit to cover every twist and turn in their subject’s life, biographers will sacrifice style and, ultimately, purpose. I am presently reading David Reynold’s new book on Lincoln, Abe. As if we need another biography on Lincoln. I looked at its 900+ pages and thought just that. I am now a third of the way through it and anticipate reading many other books before I finish Abe. What got me this far? Purpose … I know why Reynolds wrote this book. He apparently has achieved what so few biographers do in their massive treatments. He found a compelling reason to write a book about Lincoln. I suspect he was inspired by his long study of Whitman – a fellow Abe fan. He suspected that too little attention has been paid to the violent, almost anarchic world (very familiar to us in 2020 by the way) that shaped this great man. His efforts are, of course, probably too expansive but I feel he is giving me real insights both into Lincoln and our country. I compared this book with David Donald’s celebrated single volume biography on Lincoln. A true Lincoln scholar, Donald was widely praised for bringing the story together in 600 pages in a coherent and deeply researched fashion. I remember feeling entirely uninspired at its conclusion. I felt the purpose was less to enlighten and more to put the stake down as the writer of the finest comprehensive scholarly single volume history of Lincoln up to that moment. Since then, I have gathered much more insight from shorter books that just focused on one speech or his life long battle with melancholy or his role as commander-in-chief. In fact, the truly instructive and inspirational book on Lincoln, Team of Rivals (on the list), is not a traditional biography at all; however, it brings the man alive more than any other book I have read on the subject. Of course, it is massive also. Brevity is in short supply in the biography world. One editor told me that fans of the biography prefer the doorstopper. I suspect it is a combination of immersion and fitness training. I am apparently an anomaly.
This has been a long-winded way of saying I prefer my biographies with milk and sugar, not black. The list is mostly composed of untraditional works – ones that do not begin with birth and end with death. If that is your cup of tea, there are a few that fit that bill but most won’t. I also tried to resist books that, despite their popularity, are more about words than thought and are, I suspect, as much the product of research assistants as the historian. The order is alphabetical by subject.
Daniel Boone
The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer
by John Mack Faragher
1992 362 pages (paperback)
I read this book in my final months in graduate school before going into teaching. My love of the book is no doubt tainted by my late thirty swoon into graduate studies; however, I reviewed it years later hoping to integrate it into my history class, reacquainting my self with its many charms. This is a biography that takes a piece of true folklore and gives it a “refresh” filled with real scholarship, great writing and, believe it or not, the result is an actual Daniel Boone who is far more interesting than any mythic version. You have to love the length … a true admonishment to the door-stopping crowd.
Churchill
Walking with Destiny
by Andrew Roberts
2018 982 pages (hardback)
All my criticisms about the traditional biography collapse under the substantial weight of this book. It is immeasurably long! Note … that is 982 pages of small print with footnotes that must be read. It begins with his birth and ends with his death. I have likely read more about Churchill than any other 20th century figure BEFORE I read this book. I did not need to spend three months just prior to COVID’s arrival reading yet another book about a man as interesting, as vital, as indispensable and as problematic as anyone who has received a state funeral. Regardless … this is a great book. If you hate Churchill it might not be your cup of tea. If his hubris, his imperial prejudices and his many terrible decisions make it impossible for you to like him, stay away from this book. If, however, you are NOT that person, even if you have a suspicious relationship with the legendary man, the book is worth the months you have to commit to it (I reread War & Peace while reading this book!). Roberts is a wonderful writer and his selection of Churchill quotes is the stuff of wonder. I laughed out loud as often as I cried. It was a goose bump three-month ride – the perfect primer for a world soon to be turned upside down.
The Literary Churchill
Author, Reader, Actor
by Jonathon Rose
2014 450 pages (paperback)
I apologize for beginning with TWO Churchill biographies. I am going alphabetically but that is a weak excuse. He is the most fascinating man to read about that I know of and so many of his biographers are such great writers that it is a bit of an effort to keep my Churchill contribution to this list limited to two. When I picked this book up before writing this blurb. I was immediately overcome by a profound sense of nostalgic affection. I wish I could start it afresh. Rose tells much of the same story many others do but his emphasis is less on the facts and so much more on HOW Churchill did what he did. How did he write so much, so well for so long? How did he lead Britain through its darkest days with his language as her secret weapon? How much did he know and what did he know? It is a glimpse into a Shakespearean mind mingled with a vaudevillian temperament. The book is a treat.
The Dawn Watch
Joseph Conrad in a Global World
by Maya Jasanoff
2017 314 pages (hardback)
While it helps to like the many works of Joseph Conrad, an appreciation of his writing is not a prerequisite to enjoying this book. Despite what I just wrote, I suspect that if I had not read several of his best novels and short stories. I might not have included it on this short list. Jasanoff is writing a book about a “hinge” writer. Joseph was betwixt and between in many ways. Polish and very Eastern European, he would eventually make England and English his home. He spent much of his younger life at sea, often in the places inhabited by the “other”. He was both a beneficiary and a critic of empire. He grew old and saddened, however, by the encroaching modern world. All this makes him great fodder for a “global” history. It seems to be a prerequisite these days that any history must either redefine our understanding of globalization or claim that its subject lies at the heart of the birth of the modern world. These tropes are undermining good books and giving them a homogeneity they do not deserve. Jasanoff does a very creative and sometimes brilliant job of resisting this tiring homogenous “rewrite” of history. Her story does not swerve far from the man but is structured much like one his better novels.
Emerson
The Mind on Fire
by Robert Richardson, Jr.
1995 571 pages (hardback)
I refuse to rank but if I had to rank by pure intellectual joy & enthusiasm, this is the runaway #1. You do not have to have a grip on the complicated, obtuse and somewhat dated essays of one the greatest and certainly most popular of our philosophers. He lay at the heart of the Transcendental Movement of the mid-19th century in America. Thoreau was his protégée (more on him later), Hawthorne and Melville friends, the latter eventually standing in direct opposition to the central tenets of Emerson. Emerson was an unavoidable presence in the 19th century, an international figure often reviled but much more often revered. His essays mostly came from speeches painstakingly prepared and very long by today’s standards. People traveled long distances to hear them. There were no theatrical pyrotechnics. They were philosophical ruminations derived from intense reading and thought. This book is the story of the growth of this remarkable mind - “a mind on fire.” It is a journey in the history of thought and faith. It is a journey through 19th century America and much of the Western world. It “transcends” traditional western thought as it voyages into the Far East and Southern Asia. All of this happens, however, mostly within the confines of his beloved New England. The quotations are extraordinary and a pen in hand is required when reading this book. I used to ask my students each year to “unpack” the following excerpt from Emerson’s famous essay, “Self-Reliance”.
“Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.”
This book will light this famous excerpt up. It might light up your mind while doing so.
Book of Ages
The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
by Jill Lepore
2013 265 or 325 pages … if you read the invaluable notes (hardback)
Jill Lepore can write about anything – and she frequently does. Her pieces in The New Yorker are required reading. Basically, anything she writes is worth the time to read. She is a professor of American History at Harvard and is regarded as the best teacher there. The fact that she just wrote the most compelling reexamination of our nation’s history in These Truths only confirms that she would be my number one choice at a dinner party of my dreams. This book is different. It is a wonder of scholarly research and interpretation (therefore the notes) and a startling glimpse into both a time and a legend. Warning – Jane’s brother, Benjamin (the one & only), does not come out well in the end. Brilliant, wealthy, literate, witty and worldly … he was all of those. Just make sure you are not related. Regardless, Lepore puts enough fragments together to not only let some of the gas out of the BF myth, but to create a Revolutionary era heroine in a woman who will outlive all her many progeny, living a life at the edge of financial ruin, employing entrepreneurial gifts every bit as impressive as her brother’s and receiving the most elusive of all honors – an ounce of recognition from her famous brother. Like so much of Lepore’s work, it is beautifully written and utterly original.
Our Man
Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
by George Packer
2019 556 pages (hardback)
This very recent biography got one of those front-page NYT Book Review write-ups that make the book a “must”. I was determined to buy it and a year later I read it after pausing for three months in the middle. George Packer is a great writer. He is today’s David Halberstam though I think his “end of America” theme is wearing thin and suggests an insufficient grasp of the whole course of American history. That was a pretentious thing to say and I apologize though I am perfectly willing to defend my turf. Again, Packer was not the problem, Holbrooke was. I thought he was a deeply compromised person when he strutted (and “strut” is the right word) his stuff in my morning papers. The hero of the Dayton Accords and a determined diplomat obsessed equally with the importance of America’s place in the world and his own, Holbrooke is not very likeable. Even Packer struggles with a certain distaste for his long time friend’s outsize ego, sycophantic tendencies and his unstable manic mind. In the end, HOWEVER, it all comes together with Vietnam and Afghanistan book ending a career that is as unnerving and disturbing (and often heroic) as the last fifty years of American history. The book is so well written and the stories are so well told that even a real schmuck like Holbrooke ends his high wire life with an echo of tragedy and purpose.
American Sphinx
The Character of Thomas Jefferson
by Joseph Ellis
1997 306 pages (hardback)
There is so much to recommend this compact, erudite and almost thrilling treatment of Thomas Jefferson. There is one BIG problem, however. It was written before the DNA confirmation of his sexual relationship with Sally Hemmings and Ellis in an Appendix suggests it did not happen. That might be enough to wait for the next great TJ biography – and wait you will. While Annette Gordon Reed wrote a great book in 2009 revolving around TJ and the Hemmings family, it is not the intellectual “big picture” tour de force that Ellis’ book is. He does not leave one mired in detail and has the hubris to write TJ’s story within the context of the nation then and now. His Jefferson, a man as paradoxical as brilliant, as duplicitous (particularly with himself) as idealistic, is the true representative Founding Father of a nation founded in the ideals of the Enlightenment and the original sin of slavery. It is heady stuff. Years ago I was asked by a friend to recommend ONE book on America above all others. Until the recent arrival of Lepore’s These Truths, that book was American Sphinx.
NOTE: Ellis is a great writer and a real historian, plagiarism scandal aside. His book on John Adams, Passionate Sage, may better than Ellis’ Jefferson biography and certainly much more compelling than David McCullough’s wildly popular but primer version of that difficult, courageous and almost completely misunderstood man.
Zealot
The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
by Reza Aslan
2013 336 pages (paperback)
I looked everywhere in our house for my marked up copy of this book until I remember that I lent it to a relative. It is likely I will not see it again. I then realized I had a fresh copy near the wall in the shed but then remembered I gave that to a friend last fall. I have given this book away more often than any other on this list. The talented Iranian-American religious scholar, Reza Aslan, wrote this gripping recasting of the life of Jesus. Reza was born a Shiite Muslim, converted to an evangelical strain of Christianity and later in his life returned to Islam. His journey makes him uniquely qualified to give you a narrative that does not include Jesus as the Son of God but is respectful and compelling in every other sense. This is a book that true believers will struggle with but for those (like me) who qualify as lifetime members of the Doubting Thomas Club, it is mesmerizing. In some respects, Jesus is even more arresting and revolutionary when examined within his mortal Jewish context.
The Inevitability of Tragedy
Henry Kissinger and His World
by Barry Gewen
2020 394 pages (hardback)
I write about this book separately on this website. I wrote that review in August of 2020. Six months later, the book is only more and more relevant. It is a scholarly journey into the building blocks of a man and a foreign policy. Please look at my more extensive review. A great book … even if you hate Kissinger.
Team of Rivals
The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
2005 737 pages (paperback)
Where do I begin …
The book and its title have become part of the lexicon of American politics. (e.g. will Biden create a “team of rivals” cabinet?). It is cited in so many different contexts and seems more relevant each year. It might be the best and most gripping portrait of Lincoln ever written or filmed (though Speilberg’s Lincoln comes close). It is a blast to read despite its great length. It is Goodwin’s finest effort to date with No Ordinary Time close on its heels. I am almost finished with Reynold’s recent biography of Lincoln, Abe – A Cultural History, and I suspect it will get on the next draft of this list. As I discussed earlier, Abe is pretty overwhelming but it is as novel and as illuminating as it is long. The same can be said of Goodwin’s book. There is also the added magic of Goodwin’s Halberstam touch. She can sketch a portrait as well as the best journalist and has a gift for the anecdote. Combined with her very real historical chops, one gets a biography (of sorts) that reads like a mini series. If you read one book on Lincoln, read this one.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Champion of Freedom
by Conrad Black
2003 1136 pages (paperback)
This is truly a Puckish selection. Conrad Black is a controversial man. Publisher, financier, prisoner, writer … the ultimate inside man. A larger than life persona enshrouded in contradictions and the whiff of ruthlessness. This is not your typical biographer. But … this is NOT your typical biography. It is eminently readable. In fact, it is gripping. You will learn a lot even if you consider yourself (like me) to be a bit of a FDR scholar. The story of his life and his monumental presence in the 20th century remains one that I suspect continues to intimidate historians. His life, his leadership qualities and his policies remain the stuff of editorial disagreement to this very day. As such, his is a hot rock story. Maybe that is what drew Black to research and write this epically long (too long) book. He begins the book taking jabs at every opportunity. Black’s conservative outlook is rudely and crudely apparent early on. Then something marvelous happens. FDR does to Black what he did to most anyone he met. He seduces him. Black cannot help but be spellbound by this man who was elected four times, saved us from the worst of the Great Depression, fought the war that had to be fought and directed the creation of Pax America. All from a wheelchair, with martinis at 6, donuts in the morning, a cigarette always at the ready and an ability to fall straight to sleep each and every night no matter what terrifying thing is going on or what history making decision he must make the next day. The cast of characters is all there but the one that stands out is oddly enough Black. His journey is as interesting as the story itself. While he backtracks into a more hedged position of admiration at the end, the dye has been cast. His conversion propels this stunning narrative about a man whose story has yet to be wholly told.
Will of the World
How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
by Stephen Greenblatt
2004 390 pages (paperback)
Reading book “blurbs” is part and parcel of owning a physical, real book. This is particularly true with a paperback that has “blurbs” from all the criticisms the book received in its hardback incarnation. When a book is really good, each time I put it down I might read the “blurbs” – all of them, again and again. I learn nothing new from them. I have almost memorized them. It is unlikely I chose the book because of them. Rather, this little ritual is an act of shared enthusiasm. I have not read more over-the-top “blurbs” from respectable sources than those that adorn the paperback edition of this wholly original book. Yet, they barely do justice for how good this book is. You will learn about the man’s life – what we know of it and what we speculate about. You will learn a lot about Elizabethan England – and that is a romp. You will learn to appreciate his plays even if you have not read them. All this will happen at once in a telling that is repeated with a different moment in the man’s life, a different context from his times and a different set of plays that illuminate all of it. In the end, Greenblatt will step away and you will close the book and read the “blurbs (again)” with shivers going down your spine. By the way, when I mention “the end”, I am referring to the end of each of the book’s 12 chapters. I read most of them in Holland Park in London. It was a midsummer day’s dream. I will never forget it.
Truman
by David McCullough
1992 992 pages (hardback)
I read this book when I was in finance and all our children were either in elementary school or still in diapers. My remembrance of this massive biography, therefore, is mixed up with my own nostalgic memories. I suspect that despite the 28 years since I read it, my instincts to include it on this list are accurate. That is, in part, because of I have read most every other book this popular and prolific writer has produced. He tells a great story with a sense of drama and anecdotal detail often missing from a traditionally trained historian. The results vary with the brilliant Mornings on Horseback at one end of the spectrum and the wildly overrated John Adams at the other. Clearly his popularity influenced the quality of his work as McCullough got older. The biography of Adams was a boring rehash as was the story of Lewis & Clark. That is not the case with Truman. It helped that it was the first major biography on a President often dismissed by his contemporary critics and historians. McCullough’s biography was a valuable part of the remaking of Harry Truman from an FDR footnote to one of the more admired Presidents in the 20th century. Today, as we reel from four years of psychological and political abuse from a man more closely resembling Dark Knight’s Joker than any political figure of our or any other day, the comparisons between Biden and Truman are numerous. Like Biden, Truman’s character carried the day. Truman faced a blizzard of terrible decisions as the country swung into the Cold War. His decency and respect for the office were often the telling differences. It is what we all hope from our newly elected 78-year-old Joe.
Before the Storm
Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
by Nick Perlstein
2009 670 pages (paperback)
The book might be last on the list but it may be the one we should all be reading. Perlstein called it in 2009. His reexamination of Goldwater makes it clear that the GOP of today was in the water 60 years ago. My father went to Goldwater’s nomination at the Cow Palace in San Francisco and told me later how much he enjoyed it. Reading this book only a few years before his death left me feeling a bit queasy about my Dad and his loyalty to a GOP that became much of what Goldwater dreamed of before being clobbered by LBJ. One BIG fact that comes out of this gripping, very fast paced narrative is a “what if” we rarely hear of when it comes to JFK’s assassination. Most people do the counter factual dance of his death looking at Vietnam and Civil Rights. What this book posits is that it was likely that Goldwater would have given JFK a real run for his money in 1964. What if Goldwater had won? I cannot recommend this book enough. It may be 100 pages too long but time flies when you are having a disturbingly good time.
Here is an Honorable Mention List:
No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin (a truly great story)
Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough (many good TR books out there)
Nixonland by Nick Perlstein (read the Goldwater book first)
Lyndon by Merle Miller (old fashioned oral history – fun)
Paul Revere’s Ride by David Hacket Fischer (a great ride)
Henry David Thoreau by Laura Walls (helps to like Thoreau)
Maxwell Perkins by A. Scott Berg (by far his best book)
Passionate Sage by Joseph Ellis (John Adams deserves a musical too)
What should be on the list. I have not read them but, if I live long enough, I will.
The LBJ books by Robert Caro …
The three volume biography of Churchill by Martin Gilbert …
Recent biography of Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson …
Biography of Gladstone by William
