Top ten biographies of all time
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The 30 Best Biographies of All Time
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Blog – Posted on Monday, Jan 21
Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”
At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction.
All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels, if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number • • 50 You’re probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo, the revenge novel by Alexandre Dumas. But did you know it was based on the life of Dumas’s father, the mixed-race General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave? Thanks to Reiss’s masterful pacing and plotting, this rip-roaring biography of Thomas-Alexandre reads more like an adventure novel than a work of nonfiction. The Black Count won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in , and it’s only a matter of time before a filmmaker turns it into a big-screen blockbuster. 49Reading the Best Biographies of All Time
Custer Custer&#;s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles Stalin Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, (Vol 1) by Stephen Kotkin Marx, Karl Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Lifeby Jonathan Sperber Dumas, Alex The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss Kennedy, Joseph P The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw Washington, George Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow REVIEW (5 stars) Lincoln, Abraham The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner REVIEW (not rated) Vanderbilt, Cornelius The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles Wilson, Woodrow Woodrow Wilson: A Biography by John Milton Cooper REVIEW (3¾ stars) Jackson, Andrew American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham REVIEW (3¾ stars) Roos The 50 Best Biographies of All Time
Crown The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown