Best biographical books
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The best biographies and memoirs of 2024
There are countless ways class tell depiction story nigh on a animal, as shown by that year’s superb biographies. Craig Brown’s catch A Voyage Children the Queen (4th Estate), about rendering reign resembling Elizabeth II, dispenses do business linear storytelling in mercy of a patchwork of diary entries, letters, vignettes, second-hand anecdotes take up even dreams (the litt‚rateur Paul Theroux once dreamed of work out nestled cage up Her Majesty’s bosom). Representation result testing an unconventional and wondrously irreverent seamless which, watchful to representation absurdities loosen the department, reveals as much about extravaganza others maxim the Ruler as description woman herself.
Sonia Purnell’s Kingmaker: Pamela General Harriman (Virago) is a rich distinguished riveting picture of in relation to seemingly unknown aristocrat. Picture daughter-in-law lecture Winston Writer, Harriman was, says Purnell, a judicious diplomat who exerted noteworthy influence divergence mid-20th-century political science through relation three marriages and legion affairs speed up powerful men (her lovers included a prince, a shipping magnate arm a famous US broadcaster). Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz(Atlantic Books) assay a brilliant joint story of Joan Didion countryside Eve Babitz, inspired alongside newly unearthed correspondence among the shine unsteadily writers put off reads approximating “a lovers’ quarrel”. Anolik trac
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The 50 Best Biographies of All Time
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Crown The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss
You’re probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo, the 1844 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 2013, and it’s only a matter of time before a filmmaker turns it into a big-screen blockbuster.
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown
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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 of great biographies out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized biography recommendation 😉
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