Favorite Autobiographies/Biographies

[EricP]

I was wondering which autobiographies and biographies you would recommend to others. I've recently become interested in the genre and would like some suggestions. Although my knowledge of the genre is somewhat lacking, the following titles are some of the best and most memorable autobiographies and biographies I have read. Thanks in advance for those who suggest some of their favorites!

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X"
"Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow
"My Bondage and My Freedom" by Frederick Douglass
"The Words" by Jean-Paul Sartre
"Lincoln" by David Herbert Donald
"Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov

[_Shannon_]

Rocket Boys and the other two Coalwood books by Homer Hickham.

The Life of Charolette Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell

Oh-- and for sure Plutarch's Lives.

Those spring to mind as my favorites, but I haven't finished mt morning coffee yet- so there might be more in a little while. :yawnb:

[_Shannon_]

I thought of another I really liked- Crashing Through by Robert Kurson.

[slobone]

Robert Caro's series on Lyndon Johnson
Taylor Branch's series on Martin Luther King
John Richardson's series on Picasso
Ron Chernow, Titan (John D. Rockefeller)
Maria Riva's biography of her mother, Marlene Dietrich (not for the faint of heart)
Barry Miles, Ginsberg
Boswell, Life of Johnson
Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles

Autobiographies: Shelley Winters, David Niven, Arthur Rubinstein, Yeats, Ben Franklin, Gore Vidal

And then there's the memoirs, like John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse or Hemingway's A Moveable Feast

And the diaries, like Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, Pepys, Noel Coward, Joe Orton (also not for the faint of heart)...

Just for starters... I have a really long list if you want to start getting into the more gossipy ones.

[jgweed]

The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill.

[Pecksie]

Here are some of the most enthralling, fascinating bios I've ever read:

Antonia Fraser's "The wives of Henry VIII" and "Mary Queen of Scots"
Richard Holmes's "Shelley: The pursuit"
Juliet Barker's "The Brontës"
Claire Tomalin's "Jane Austen" and "Pepys: the unequalled self"
Robert K. Massie's "Peter the Great"
Katherine Duncan-Jones's "Sir Philip Sidney, courtier poet"

Hope this helps!

[JBI]

Yeats's A Vision.

[Niamh]

My Uncle John by Edward stephens. About the life of J.M.Synge. I also love Letters to Molly, which are a collection of letters written by Synge to his fiance Molly Algood ( Abbey actress Maire O'Neill).

[armenian]

autobiographical excerps from Gandhi are enlightening

[John Goodman]

David Suzuki: The Autobiography


Maybe it would be more enjoyable if you were Canadian and have actually heard of him. :p

[slobone]

David Suzuki: The Autobiography


Maybe it would be more enjoyable if you were Canadian and have actually heard of him. :p
Isn't he that annoying guy on TV? :yawnb:

[John Goodman]

Isn't he that annoying guy on TV? :yawnb:

He's far more interesting than just an annoying guy on TV. And you can hardly called him annoying! :)

[EricP]

David Suzuki: The Autobiography


Maybe it would be more enjoyable if you were Canadian and have actually heard of him. :p

I'm about twenty miles from the Canadian border and I grew up watching CBC. Suzuki was the host of a science/nature show, right? The name of the show is escaping me at the moment. I don't even realize how much Canadian television I watched as a child until I mention "The Raccoons" or "Degrassi High" to friends from other states and receive blank stares.

[djy78usa]

Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley by Timothy White

[slobone]

He's far more interesting than just an annoying guy on TV. And you can hardly called him annoying! :)
Well I've only seen him in one series that was on PBS, but it was hard to take. But everybody has their own preferences.

And you can definitely be interesting and annoying at the same time.

[JuLe]

Let me suggest something slightly different than those mentioned here. An autobiography of Amos Oz - A tale of love and darkness, he is an Israeli writer. His autobiography is written as a novel which is set on Israel's early years, the war of independence. I really enjoyed reading it as a novel and as a literary masterpiece.

[bej6s]

Great thread. I've never read autobiographies, as a rule. I tried to read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was young and I couldn't get through it; it was so sad. I've read one autobiography that was assigned for school. However, I typically either find them boring or incredibly sad, to the point where I don't want to read it anymore.
So when I do attempt to take a stab at them again, I will know where to start now.

[John Goodman]

Well I've only seen him in one series that was on PBS, but it was hard to take. But everybody has their own preferences.

And you can definitely be interesting and annoying at the same time.


I've never seen anything he did for PBS, so I can't comment there. Most kids interested in nature grew up with him on The Nature of Things on CBC.

[slobone]

I've never seen anything he did for PBS, so I can't comment there. Most kids interested in nature grew up with him on The Nature of Things on CBC.
That might have been the show, did they jump around a lot from one topic to another? Wasn't good for my ADD.

Possibly not Suzuki's fault.

[ballb]

Kershaw`s two volume biography of Hitler. 1500 pages flash by before you realize. Unusually for an academic Professor Kershaw can write.

Recommend Michael Foot`s two volume biography of Nye Bevan.

Red Shelley by the late & much missed Paul Foot, a political biography of the poet.

Andrew Motion`s biography of Keats.

[LadyWentworth]

Well, I read all sorts of autobiographies/biographies/memoirs. I tend to read mostly about different figures from the American Civil War, baseball and anyone from theater and classic Hollywood (I am going beyond just the actors into the directors, writers, producers, et.c.). I am not limited to just those topics, though.

Judging from what you listed, it seems that you are more interested in historical ones. Here are some of the ones that I liked most (trying not to repeat some of the others that were mentioned here :) ):

*I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp - Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp
*Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend - Ted P. Yeatman
*John Wilkes Booth: A Sister's Memoir - Asia Booth Clarke (this one is intriguing for the fact that she seems to try to change the image that Booth left behind for himself after he assassinated Lincoln)
*Good Brother, Bad Brother: The Story of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth - James Cross Giblin
* Personal Memoirs - Ulysses S. Grant
*Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman
*An Honest Calling: The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln - Mark E. Steiner
*Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait - Karen Holliday Tanner
* The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd - Richard Zacks
*The Journals of Lewis and Clark
*John Adams - David McCullough
*The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
*Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson - Alan Pell Crawford

There is more, but that is all that I can think of off the top of my head. :)

I am really into journals and memoirs. I also really enjoy collected letters. I find those to be interesting because it seems like you are able to get more "personal" with these people while reading their letters.

[EricP]

Red Shelley by the late & much missed Paul Foot, a political biography of the poet.


I enjoyed this biography very much. I loved the fact that Shelley packaged "Queen Mab" as a children's book so that he could expose young readers from bourgeois families to radical politics without their parents' knowledge! :D

[A MM]

I've read the whole of Ghandhi's Experiments with Truth, many times. Something fascinating about his story to me.

I also like Gandhi's technique of describing incidents and episodes in relatively short pieces.

There must be many different ways of writing autobiographies.

Another one I've read and liked which is not mentioned by many readers/writers is "Be my guest", a thin volume, by Conrad Hilton the hotel magnate. I assume he wrote it himself.

I also have a copy of William Thackston's translation of The Baburnama, among the earliest in the world's autobiographical literature. Go back to it from time to time.

[bej6s]

Thanks, Lady Wentworth! I'm tag-teaming a few books at the moment, but I'll definitely plan on starting one of those as soon as I finish one of the books I'm on right now.

[bounty]

I was wondering which autobiographies and biographies you would recommend to others. I've recently become interested in the genre and would like some suggestions. Although my knowledge of the genre is somewhat lacking, the following titles are some of the best and most memorable autobiographies and biographies I have read. Thanks in advance for those who suggest some of their favorites!

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X"
"Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow
"My Bondage and My Freedom" by Frederick Douglass
"The Words" by Jean-Paul Sartre
"Lincoln" by David Herbert Donald
"Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov

eric if you have the least bit of interest in sport---i recommend a lefty's legacy (sandy koufax), a flame of pure fire (jack dempsey), alexander's book on ty cobb, (and if you really like baseball, he's got another good one on rogers hornsby), jesse owens an american life, babe: the life and legend of babe didrikson zaharias, hauser's book on muhammad ali, seabiscuit, and god's joyous runner (eric liddell). ive got a few others i could recommend too---some i have that ive read and some that i have that look great but i just havent gotten to them yet...

[Emil Miller]

I was wondering which autobiographies and biographies you would recommend to others. I've recently become interested in the genre and would like some suggestions. Although my knowledge of the genre is somewhat lacking, the following titles are some of the best and most memorable autobiographies and biographies I have read. Thanks in advance for those who suggest some of their favorites!

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X"
"Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow
"My Bondage and My Freedom" by Frederick Douglass
"The Words" by Jean-Paul Sartre
"Lincoln" by David Herbert Donald
"Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov

I can recommend:
Somerset Maugham by Ted Morgan.
Thomas Mann-A Life by Donald Prater.
Graham Greene by Norman Sherry.


"Ich beschloss aber Politiker zu werden"

Adolf Hitler
Mein Kampf