best biographies of writers

50 Must-Read Literary Biographies

Sarah Ullery

Sarah suffers from chronic sarcasm, and an unhealthy aversion to noise. She loves to read, and would like to do nothing else, but stupid real life makes her go to work. She lives in the middle of a cornfield and shares a house with two spoiled dogs and a ton of books.

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I live vicariously through the lives and stories of the writers I love and admire. Sometimes I read biographies of authors whose lives parallel aspects of my own; small lives that eventually produce great art. Lives like Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson, or Penelope Fitzgerald who didn’t write her first book until she was 58.

I like to read biographies that share a commonality with my own life, but like the best fiction, I’d rather be transported to worlds with characters that are larger than life. Lives that are tumultuous, scandal-ridden, and full of perils. Lives that are exciting and rich and full of conflict. Lives that produce stories like Native Son , The Bell Jar, Lolita , A Rage in Harlem , or Frankenstein .

I also like to read about the lives of the authors of some of my favorite books—Iris Murdoch and The Sea, The Sea , Philip K. Dick and A Scanner Darkly , Mary Shelley and Frankenstein , Penelope Fitzgerald and The Blue Flower— but this can be a perilous exercise. Some authors were pretty terrible people, which can ruin your perception of their writing. But like most of us, artists and writers lived lives rife with nuance, and through even-handed, well-researched biographies, readers can take a peek into the minds that have created some of the stories we love.

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall

The supposed “American Brontës,” the three Peabody sisters influenced the thinking of writers like Thoreau and Hawthorne. The youngest sister, Sophia, married Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall

After you finish the story of the Peabody sisters and are searching for more stories about American Romanticism and the role women played in the literary scene at the time, pick up Megan Marshall’s other book, about Margaret Fuller.

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes  by Janet Malcolm

This is a biography of the biographies that have been written about Sylvia Plath. It tries to correct the myth surrounding Plath and Ted Hughes.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon

Mary Wollstonecraft died a week after giving birth to Mary Shelley, but in many ways, despite not knowing each other, their lives were very alike. A wonderful book about the mother who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women  and the daughter who wrote Frankenstein .

Neruda: The Poet’s Calling by Mark Eisner

A Biography of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

“In this part of the story I am the one who Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood . “ —from Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You”

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight

This is the most recent biography of Frederick Douglass. It’s a wonderfully rendered story of a complex and brilliant man who greatly influenced American history.

Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson

I’m not a huge fan of Little Women — I find Louisa May Alcott’s life much more interesting than her writing.

Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner by Brenda Wineapple

Genet is the pen name for Janet Flanner, a woman who fled her home in Indianapolis at 30 to live with her girlfriend in Paris in the 1920s. While in Paris, she became a correspondent for the New Yorker .

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux

Audre Lorde did not live a quiet life, and this biography relishes in the myth and power of Lorde as an early black lesbian feminist.

Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

What was it like to be married to the author of Lolita ? The story of Vera and Vladimir Nabokov was a love story that spanned 52 years. Stacy Schiff, if you’ve never read any of her other biographies, is a master.

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore by Eleanor Alexander

This has all the bad: racism, sexism, abuse, sexual assault—so I warned you! It’s a hard story. I hesitate to call it a romance—maybe there was love, but the relationship between Dunbar and Moore was definitely not stable. This is a relatively short biography, but it certainly packs a punch!

The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini

I’ve always been hesitant to read Jean Rhys’s most famous book,  Wide Sargasso Sea , because I’ve always loved Jane Eyre . But recently I picked up Jane Eyre for a reread and I thought, God, Rochester is an ass. Maybe it’s time for Wide Sargasso Sea .

Chester B. Himes: A Biography by Lawrence P. Jackson

Chester B. Himes is probably most famous for his crime noir series the Harlem Cycle , which starts with A Rage in Harlem . Himes was arrested for armed robbery and spent almost ten years in prison, but while in prison his articles were featured in publications like Esquire . Plagued by racism in America, Himes moved to Paris where he became famous for his Harlem series.

Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife to the poet Percy Shelley, who drowned when she was only 24. The idea for Frankenstein was born on a stormy night as a group of writers were telling scary stories.

James Baldwin: A Biography by David A. Leeming

David Leeming was friends with Baldwin for 25 years before writing his biography. This is a wonderful glimpse into the life of one of the preeminent voices of African American literature in the world.

Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery

A man who created creepy comics and lived with a horde of cats and thousands of books automatically sounds sounds like the kind of person whose biography I want to read.

Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy by Carolyn Burke

Both a poet and visual artist, Mina Loy moved in the most influential circles of her time. She bumped shoulders with Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp—to name a few.

Rebecca West: A Life by Victoria Glendinning

A great selling point for a biography is when the subject is described as a sexual rebel. I’m also a sucker for a story about a dysfunctional English family, which Rebecca West famously wrote with The Fountain Overflows .

The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller

Okay, I’d rather read about the Wollstonecrafts/Shelleys, or the Peabodys, because I think the Brontës are a bit overrated…but like the Plath biography, which was a biography of her biographies, this book tries to demystify the myth that surrounds the Brontës.

Anaïs Nin: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

Best known for her sexual exploits, diaries, and relationships with leading intellectuals of her time, Anaïs Nin was more than the sum total of her famous idiosyncrasies.

Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

A biography collected from conversations with de Beauvoir, who’s best known for her philosophical writing on existentialism and her relationship with Jean Paul Sartre.

Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee

A well balanced biography about a woman whose life is as well known as her books; still, you’ll find some tidbits in this biography that you’ve probably never known, and might come to see Woolf in a new light—for better or worse. Hermione Lee is a master biographer.

Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector

A writer whose work has seen a resurgence in recent years—Clarice Lispector was born in post–War World I Ukraine, and emigrated to Brazil in her early years. Her writing and life is steeped in mysticism.

Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg

It’s hard to find biographies about black female writers. Especially writers from the 20th and 19th centuries. Jane Crow was a lawyer, writer, and civil rights crusader. She’s an example of a woman we should know more about.

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch

I wish there were more biographies about Flannery O’Connor, the master of the short story. This is a good biography, but I want more.

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell

Four hundred years ago Montaigne wrote The Essays , where he tried to answer the universal question: How to live? This biography explores his questions and answers in a historical context.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersand

A wonderfully in-depth story of Ralph Ellison’s life. He was born in 1913 in the south and moved to New York City in 1936. He had a grandiose personality that was sometimes at odds with other writers and politically active intellectuals of his time.

A Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902–1941, I, Too, Sing America by Arnold Rampersad

Langston Hughes’s life is told in three volumes. The first relates Hughes’s early years as he traveled the world.

Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee

I own this book. It’s HUGE. I bought it after reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s biography in which it is mentioned that Edith Wharton was in Paris at the same time as Millay. But while Millay struggled at times with finances, Wharton was born to privilege.

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

In high school we had to choose a book from a list of 100 American classics to read every month. Their Eyes Were Watching God was the best book I read from that list. Zora Neale Hurston’s life was fascinating.

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrère

A Scanner Darkly is a favorite book. A life as strange as the stories he wrote: “ It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane .”

Richard Wright: The Life and Times by Hazel Rowley

This powerful story about the author of Native Son weaves Wright’s own writing and quotations into the biography.

The Life of Emily Dickinson by Richard B. Sewall

There are a lot of biographies of Emily Dickinson, but this is my choice.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

Penelope Fitzgerald was nearly 60 before publishing her first book, which makes me love her. She’s best known for writing The Blue Flower , The Bookshop , and Offshore .

Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist by Darlene Harbour Unrue

“Pale Horse, Pale Rider” is one of my favorite short stories. A woman is in bed with a fever during the influenza epidemic, and in her fever she remembers her childhood, and worries about her fiancé who is a soldier fighting in the first world war. The author, Katherine Anne Porter, lived a life that was no less compelling.

Zelda by Nancy Milford

A woman driven mad by her husband’s lecherous appropriation of her personality and writing. Confession: I’m not a huge fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so it doesn’t pain me to discover he was a jerk.

Iris Murdoch: A Life by Peter J. Conradi

The Sea, The Sea is one of my favorite books. Charles Arrowby is absurd, frustrating, and totally realized as a man coming to the end of his life, but fighting like hell to delay the breakdown into old age. Iris Murdoch at first imagined herself to be the next George Eliot, but ended up embracing Dostoevsky’s influence.

Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher by Joan Reardon

Fisher wrote extensively about her own life in memoirs like The Gastronomical Me and  How to Cook a Wolf , in which she writes about food and its relationship with life and love.

Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White

Alice Walker was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple . This might be the only biography on the list whose subject is still alive, which brings a new dynamic to the biography.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Your life can’t be all rainbows and unicorns if you’re writing stories like The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle .  This is a biography about the woman, the books, and the times in which they existed.

The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai by Ha Jin

Li Bai was a Chinese poet who lived a long, long time ago, but whose work and legacy is still greatly revered today in China.

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

My favorite literary biography. Edna St. Vincent Millay was fashioned as a modern Sappho, and a holdover of Victorian era poets like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But despite her writing style, her personal life was very modern.

Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead

The life of the illustrious war correspondent Martha Gellhorn who reported from the frontlines of most of the biggest wars of the 20th century. A fascinating figure.

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry

Best known for her play  A Raisin in the Sun , Lorraine Hansberry counted James Baldwin and Nina Simone as friends. She was a prominent voice in the civil rights movement, she joined one of the first lesbian organizations, and challenged JFK to take a wider stance on civil rights. Why don’t we hear more about Lorraine Hansberry more? She died at 34.

Borges: A Life by Edwin Williamson

To read his books and short stories, it would be easy to imagine that Borges’s life could be stranger than fiction. But this biography focuses on the human side of Borges and brings new light to his work and thinking.

Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula Giddings

Ida B. Wells was an African American reporter who investigated and fought to end lynching in the south. This is the story of a brilliant and fearless reporter, and an indictment against the United States.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

I’ve never read Little House on the Prairie . I prefer reading about the rocky life story of the author behind the books.

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou

Yes, an autobiography. I included it because I don’t think anyone should try to retell Maya Angelou’s story. Her telling, and poetry, should be the last word.

The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography by Edmund Gordon

A biography about the author of the morbid and gothic fairytales like The Bloody Chamber and gothic novels like The Magic Toyshop .

My Soul Looks Back by Jessica B. Harris

Jessica B. Harris writes about her early life in New York City when she moved in social circles that included James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou. A vibrant city, full of vibrant people.

Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin

Harriet Jacobs wrote the memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , which became the most well-read slave narrative written by a woman. Jean Fagan Yellin expands on Harriet Jacobs life, and the world into which she escaped.

Need more? Check out these articles too:

7 Great New Literary Biographies for Your TBR

50 Must- Read Biographies

You Might Also Like

The 50 Best Biographies of All Time

Think you know the full and complete story about George Washington, Steve Jobs, or Joan of Arc? Think again.

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Biographies have always been controversial. On his deathbed, the novelist Henry James told his nephew that his “sole wish” was to “frustrate as utterly as possible the postmortem exploiter” by destroying his personal letters and journals. And one of our greatest living writers, Hermione Lee, once compared biographies to autopsies that add “a new terror to death”—the potential muddying of someone’s legacy when their life is held up to the scrutiny of investigation.

Why do we read so many books about the lives and deaths of strangers, as told by second-hand and third-hand sources? Is it merely our love for gossip, or are we trying to understand ourselves through the triumphs and failures of others?

To keep this list from blossoming into hundreds of titles, we only included books currently in print and translated into English. We also limited it to one book per author, and one book per subject. In ranked order, here are the best biographies of all time.

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.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown

Few biographies are as genuinely fun to read as this barnburner from the irreverent English critic Craig Brown. Princess Margaret may have been everyone’s favorite character from Netflix’s The Crown , but Brown’s eye for ostentatious details and revelatory insights will help you see why everyone in the 1950s—from Pablo Picasso and Gore Vidal to Peter Sellers and Andy Warhol—was obsessed with her. When book critic Parul Sehgal says that she “ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice,” you know you’re in for a treat.

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, by Alec Nevala-Lee

If you want to feel optimistic about the future again, look no further than this brilliant biography of Buckminster Fuller, the “modern Leonardo da Vinci” of the 1960s and 1970s who came up with the idea of a “Spaceship Earth” and inspired Silicon Valley’s belief that technology could be a global force for good (while earning plenty of critics who found his ideas impractical). Alec Nevala-Lee’s writing is as serene and precise as one of Fuller’s geodesic domes, and his research into never-before-seen documents makes this a genuinely groundbreaking book full of surprises.

Free Press Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, by Robin D.G. Kelley

The late American jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk has been so heavily mythologized that it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. But Robin D. G. Kelley’s biography is an essential book for jazz fans looking to understand the man behind the myths. Monk’s family provided Kelley with full access to their archives, resulting in chapter after chapter of fascinating details, from his birth in small-town North Carolina to his death across the Hudson from Manhattan.

University of Chicago Press Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, by Meryle Secrest

There are dozens of books about America’s most celebrated architect, but Secrest’s 1998 biography is still the most fun to read. For one, she doesn’t shy away from the fact that Wright could be an absolute monster, even to his own friends and family. Secondly, her research into more than 100,000 letters, as well as interviews with nearly every surviving person who knew Wright, makes this book a one-of-a-kind look at how Wright’s personal life influenced his architecture.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography, by Arnold Rampersad

Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel, Invisible Man , is about a Black man who faced systemic racism in the Deep South during his youth, then migrated to New York, only to find oppression of a slightly different kind. What makes Arnold Rampersand’s honest and insightful biography of Ellison so compelling is how he connects the dots between Invisible Man and Ellison’s own journey from small-town Oklahoma to New York’s literary scene during the Harlem Renaissance.

Oscar Wilde: A Life, by Matthew Sturgis

Now remembered for his 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde was one of the most fascinating men of the fin-de-siècle thanks to his poems, plays, and some of the earliest reported “celebrity trials.” Sturgis’s scintillating biography is the most encyclopedic chronicle of Wilde’s life to date, thanks to new research into his personal notebooks and a full transcript of his libel trial.

Beacon Press A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life & Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks, by Angela Jackson

The poet Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1950, but because she spent most of her life in Chicago instead of New York, she hasn’t been studied or celebrated as often as her peers in the Harlem Renaissance. Luckily, Angela Jackson’s biography is full of new details about Brooks’s personal life, and how it influenced her poetry across five decades.

Atria Books Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century, by Dana Stevens

Was Buster Keaton the most influential filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century? Dana Stevens makes a compelling case in this dazzling mix of biography, essays, and cultural history. Much like Keaton’s filmography, Stevens playfully jumps from genre to genre in an endlessly entertaining way, while illuminating how Keaton’s influence on film and television continues to this day.

Algonquin Books Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation, by Dean Jobb

Dean Jobb is a master of narrative nonfiction on par with Erik Larsen, author of The Devil in the White City . Jobb’s biography of Leo Koretz, the Bernie Madoff of the Jazz Age, is among the few great biographies that read like a thriller. Set in Chicago during the 1880s through the 1920s, it’s also filled with sumptuous period details, from lakeside mansions to streets choked with Model Ts.

Vintage Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, by Hermione Lee

Hermione Lee’s biographies of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton could easily have made this list. But her book about a less famous person—Penelope Fitzgerald, the English novelist who wrote The Bookshop, The Blue Flower , and The Beginning of Spring —might be her best yet. At just over 500 pages, it’s considerably shorter than those other biographies, partially because Fitzgerald’s life wasn’t nearly as well documented. But Lee’s conciseness is exactly what makes this book a more enjoyable read, along with the thrilling feeling that she’s uncovering a new story literary historians haven’t already explored.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, by Heather Clark

Many biographers have written about Sylvia Plath, often drawing parallels between her poetry and her death by suicide at the age of thirty. But in this startling book, Plath isn’t wholly defined by her tragedy, and Heather Clark’s craftsmanship as a writer makes it a joy to read. It’s also the most comprehensive account of Plath’s final year yet put to paper, with new information that will change the way you think of her life, poetry, and death.

Pontius Pilate, by Ann Wroe

Compared to most biography subjects, there isn’t much surviving documentation about the life of Pontius Pilate, the Judaean governor who ordered the execution of the historical Jesus in the first century AD. But Ann Wroe leans into all that uncertainty in her groundbreaking book, making for a fascinating mix of research and informed speculation that often feels like reading a really good historical novel.

Brand: History Book Club Bolívar: American Liberator, by Marie Arana

In the early nineteenth century, Simón Bolívar led six modern countries—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela—to independence from the Spanish Empire. In this rousing work of biography and geopolitical history, Marie Arana deftly chronicles his epic life with propulsive prose, including a killer first sentence: “They heard him before they saw him: the sound of hooves striking the earth, steady as a heartbeat, urgent as a revolution.”

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang

Ever read a biography of a fictional character? In the 1930s and 1940s, Charlie Chan came to popularity as a Chinese American police detective in Earl Derr Biggers’s mystery novels and their big-screen adaptations. In writing this book, Yunte Huang became something of a detective himself to track down the real-life inspiration for the character, a Hawaiian cop named Chang Apana born shortly after the Civil War. The result is an astute blend between biography and cultural criticism as Huang analyzes how Chan served as a crucial counterpoint to stereotypical Chinese villains in early Hollywood.

Random House Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Nancy Milford

Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the most fascinating women of the twentieth century—an openly bisexual poet, playwright, and feminist icon who helped make Greenwich Village a cultural bohemia in the 1920s. With a knack for torrid details and creative insights, Nancy Milford successfully captures what made Millay so irresistible—right down to her voice, “an instrument of seduction” that captivated men and women alike.

Simon & Schuster Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

Few people have the luxury of choosing their own biographers, but that’s exactly what the late co-founder of Apple did when he tapped Walter Isaacson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. Adapted for the big screen by Aaron Sorkin in 2015, Steve Jobs is full of plot twists and suspense thanks to a mind-blowing amount of research on the part of Isaacson, who interviewed Jobs more than forty times and spoke with just about everyone who’d ever come into contact with him.

Brand: Random House Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), by Stacy Schiff

The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov once said, “Without my wife, I wouldn’t have written a single novel.” And while Stacy Schiff’s biography of Cleopatra could also easily make this list, her telling of Véra Nabokova’s life in Russia, Europe, and the United States is revolutionary for finally bringing Véra out of her husband’s shadow. It’s also one of the most romantic biographies you’ll ever read, with some truly unforgettable images, like Vera’s habit of carrying a handgun to protect Vladimir on butterfly-hunting excursions.

Greenblatt, Stephen Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt

We know what you’re thinking. Who needs another book about Shakespeare?! But Greenblatt’s masterful biography is like traveling back in time to see firsthand how a small-town Englishman became the greatest writer of all time. Like Wroe’s biography of Pontius Pilate, there’s plenty of speculation here, as there are very few surviving records of Shakespeare’s daily life, but Greenblatt’s best trick is the way he pulls details from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets to construct a compelling narrative.

Crown Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

When Kiese Laymon calls a book a “literary miracle,” you pay attention. James Baldwin’s legacy has enjoyed something of a revival over the last few years thanks to films like I Am Not Your Negro and If Beale Street Could Talk , as well as books like Glaude’s new biography. It’s genuinely a bit of a miracle how he manages to combine the story of Baldwin’s life with interpretations of Baldwin’s work—as well as Glaude’s own story of discovering, resisting, and rediscovering Baldwin’s books throughout his life.

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The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2022

Featuring buster keaton, jean rhys, bernardine evaristo, kate beaton, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Memoir and Biography .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (Liveright) 17 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“One of the many triumphs of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves is that he manages to find a form that accommodates the spectacular changes that have occurred in Ireland over the past six decades, which happens to be his life span … it is not a memoir, nor is it an absolute history, nor is it entirely a personal reflection or a crepuscular credo. It is, in fact, all of these things helixed together: his life, his country, his thoughts, his misgivings, his anger, his pride, his doubt, all of them belonging, eventually, to us … O’Toole, an agile cultural commentator, considers himself to be a representative of the blank slate on which the experiment of change was undertaken, but it’s a tribute to him that he maintains his humility, his sharpness and his enlightened distrust …

O’Toole writes brilliantly and compellingly of the dark times, but he is graceful enough to know that there is humor and light in the cracks. There is a touch of Eduardo Galeano in the way he can settle on a telling phrase … But the real accomplishment of this book is that it achieves a conscious form of history-telling, a personal hybrid that feels distinctly honest and humble at the same time. O’Toole has not invented the form, but he comes close to perfecting it. He embraces the contradictions and the confusion. In the process, he weaves the flag rather than waving it.”

–Colum McCann ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh (Milkweed)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Assured and affecting … A powerful and bracing memoir … This is a book that will make you see the world differently: it asks you to reconsider the animals and insects we often view as pests – the rat, for example, and the moth. It asks you to look at the sea and the sky and the trees anew; to wonder, when you are somewhere beautiful, whether you might be in a thin place, and what your responsibilities are to your location.It asks you to show compassion for people you think are difficult, to cultivate empathy, to try to understand the trauma that made them the way they are.”

–Lynn Enright ( The Irish Times )

3. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly)

14 Rave • 4 Positive

“It could hardly be more different in tone from [Beaton’s] popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant … Yes, it’s funny at moments; Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction; it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment …

There are some gorgeous drawings in Ducks of the snow and the starry sky at night. But the human terrain, in her hands, is never only black and white … And it’s this that gives her story not only its richness and depth, but also its astonishing grace. Life is complex, she tell us, quietly, and we are all in it together; each one of us is only trying to survive. What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book. It really does deserve to win all the prizes.”

–Rachel Cooke ( The Guardian )

4. Stay True by Hua Hsu (Doubleday)

14 Rave • 3 Positive

“… quietly wrenching … To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice; nor is it mainly about being Asian American, even though there are glimmers of that too. Hsu captures the past by conveying both its mood and specificity … This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life … Hsu is a subtle writer, not a showy one; the joy of Stay True sneaks up on you, and the wry jokes are threaded seamlessly throughout.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

5.  Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo (Grove)

13 Rave • 4 Positive

“Part coming-of-age story and part how-to manual, the book is, above all, one of the most down-to-earth and least self-aggrandizing works of self-reflection you could hope to read. Evaristo’s guilelessness is refreshing, even unsettling … With ribald humour and admirable candour, Evaristo takes us on a tour of her sexual history … Characterized by the resilience of its author, it is replete with stories about the communities and connections Evaristo has cultivated over forty years … Invigoratingly disruptive as an artist, Evaristo is a bridge-builder as a human being.”

–Emily Bernard ( The Times Literary Supplement )

1. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

14 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Rundell is right that Donne…must never be forgotten, and she is the ideal person to evangelise him for our age. She shares his linguistic dexterity, his pleasure in what TS Eliot called ‘felt thought’, his ability to bestow physicality on the abstract … It’s a biography filled with gaps and Rundell brings a zest for imaginative speculation to these. We know so little about Donne’s wife, but Rundell brings her alive as never before … Rundell confronts the difficult issue of Donne’s misogyny head-on … This is a determinedly deft book, and I would have liked it to billow a little more, making room for more extensive readings of the poems and larger arguments about the Renaissance. But if there is an overarching argument, then it’s about Donne as an ‘infinity merchant’ … To read Donne is to grapple with a vision of the eternal that is startlingly reinvented in the here and now, and Rundell captures this vision alive in all its power, eloquence and strangeness”

–Laura Feigel ( The Guardian )

2. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland (Harper)

12 Rave • 3 Positive

“Compelling … We know about Auschwitz. We know what happened there. But Freedland, with his strong, clear prose and vivid details, makes us feel it, and the first half of this book is not an easy read. The chillingly efficient mass murder of thousands of people is harrowing enough, but Freedland tells us stories of individual evils as well that are almost harder to take … His matter-of-fact tone makes it bearable for us to continue to read … The Escape Artist is riveting history, eloquently written and scrupulously researched. Rosenberg’s brilliance, courage and fortitude are nothing short of amazing.”

–Laurie Hertzel ( The Star Tribune )

3. I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys by Miranda Seymour (W. W. Norton & Company)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Pan

“…illuminating and meticulously researched … paints a deft portrait of a flawed, complex, yet endlessly fascinating woman who, though repeatedly bowed, refused to be broken … Following dismal reviews of her fourth novel, Rhys drifted into obscurity. Ms. Seymour’s book could have lost momentum here. Instead, it compellingly charts turbulent, drink-fueled years of wild moods and reckless acts before building to a cathartic climax with Rhys’s rescue, renewed lease on life and late-career triumph … is at its most powerful when Ms. Seymour, clear-eyed but also with empathy, elaborates on Rhys’s woes …

Ms. Seymour is less convincing with her bold claim that Rhys was ‘perhaps the finest English woman novelist of the twentieth century.’ However, she does expertly demonstrate that Rhys led a challenging yet remarkable life and that her slim but substantial novels about beleaguered women were ahead of their time … This insightful biography brilliantly shows how her many battles were lost and won.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Wall Street Journal )

4. The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

9 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Grisly yet inspiring … Fitzharris depicts her hero as irrepressibly dedicated and unfailingly likable. The suspense of her narrative comes not from any interpersonal drama but from the formidable challenges posed by the physical world … The Facemaker is mostly a story of medical progress and extraordinary achievement, but as Gillies himself well knew—grappling daily with the unbearable suffering that people willingly inflicted on one another—failure was never far behind.”

5. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life by James Curtis (Knopf)

8 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Keaton fans have often complained that nearly all biographies of him suffer from a questionable slant or a cursory treatment of key events. With Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life —at more than 800 pages dense with research and facts—Mr. Curtis rectifies that situation, and how. He digs deep into Keaton’s process and shows how something like the brilliant two-reeler Cops went from a storyline conceived from necessity—construction on the movie lot encouraged shooting outdoors—to a masterpiece … This will doubtless be the primary reference on Keaton’s life for a long time to come … the worse Keaton’s life gets, the more engrossing Mr. Curtis’s book becomes.”

–Farran Smith Nehme ( The Wall Street Journal )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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15 Memoirs and Biographies to Read This Fall

New autobiographies from Jemele Hill, Matthew Perry and Hua Hsu are in the mix, along with books about Martha Graham, Agatha Christie and more.

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By John Williams ,  Joumana Khatib ,  Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter

• Published Sept. 8, 2022 Updated Sept. 15, 2022

Solito: A Memoir , by Javier Zamora

When he was 9, Zamora left El Salvador to join his parents in the United States — a dangerous trek in the company of strangers that lasted for more than two months, a far cry from the two-week adventure he had envisioned. Zamora, a poet, captures his childhood impressions of the journey, including his fierce, lifesaving attachments to the other people undertaking the trip with him.

Hogarth, Sept. 6

A Visible Man: A Memoir , by Edward Enninful

The first Black editor in chief of British Vogue reflects on his life, including his early years as a gay, working-class immigrant from Ghana, and his path to becoming one of the most influential tastemakers in media.

Penguin Press, Sept. 6

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman , by Lucy Worsley

Not many authors sell a billion books, but Christie’s nearly 70 mysteries helped her do just that. Born in 1890, she introduced the world to two detectives still going strong in film adaptations and elsewhere: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Her life even included its own mystery, when she vanished for 11 days in 1926 . Worsley, a historian, offers a full-dress biography.

Pegasus Crime, Sept. 8

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands , by Kate Beaton

This graphic memoir follows Beaton, a Canadian cartoonist, who joins the oil rush in Alberta after graduating from college. The book includes drawings of enormous machines built to work the oil sands against a backdrop of Albertan landscapes, boreal forests and northern lights.

Drawn and Quarterly, Sept. 13

Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir , by Jann S. Wenner

In 2017, Joe Hagan published “Sticky Fingers,” a biography of Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine. Now Wenner recounts his life in his own words, offering an intimate look at his time running the magazine that helped to change American culture.

Little, Brown, Sept. 13

Stay True: A Memoir , by Hua Hsu

A New Yorker staff writer reflects on a life-changing college friendship cut short by tragedy. Hsu — interested in counterculture, zines and above all music — seemed to have little in common with Ken, a Dave Matthews Band-loving fraternity brother, with the exception of their Asian American heritage. In spite of their differences, they forged a close bond; this is both a memoir of their relationship but also Hsu’s journey to adulthood as he makes sense of his grief.

Doubleday, Sept. 27

Wild: The Life of Peter Beard: Photographer, Adventurer, Lover , by Graham Boynton

A biography of the photographer Peter Beard, who had a fondness for risk, drugs and beautiful women. Boynton, a journalist and author, was a friend of Beard’s for more than 30 years.

St. Martin’s, Oct. 11

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir , by Paul Newman

When Newman and his iconic blue eyes died in 2008, the actor left behind taped conversations about his life, which he had put together with hopes of writing his life story. Now, with the participation of Newman’s daughters, the transcripts have been turned into this book, which sees Newman on his early life, his troubles with drinking and his shortcomings as a husband and parent, as well as his decorated career.

Knopf. Oct. 18

Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman

Rickman, the English stage and screen actor who died in 2016, was famous for his roles in “Die Hard,” the Harry Potter movies, “Love Actually” and many other films. He kept a diary for 25 years, about his work, his political activism, his friendships and other subjects, and they promise to be “anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid.”

Henry Holt, Oct. 18

README.txt: A Memoir , by Chelsea Manning

Manning, a former Army analyst, shared classified documents about the U.S. military’s operations in Iraq with WikiLeaks. In this memoir, she explores her childhood and what drew her to the armed services, her eventual disillusionment with the military and her life as a trans woman.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Oct. 18

The White Mosque: A Memoir , by Sofia Samatar

Samatar, a novelist, turns to nonfiction in this complex work combining religious and personal history. Raised in the United States, the daughter of a Swiss-Mennonite and a Somali-Muslim, Samatar recounts her life while relating a pilgrimage she undertook retracing the route of German-speaking Mennonites who founded a village in Central Asia in the 1800s.

Catapult, Oct. 25

Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern , by Neil Baldwin

The biographer Baldwin’s eclectic list of subjects has included William Carlos Williams, Man Ray, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Here he turns his attention to Martha Graham, the American choreographer who revolutionized modern dance and founded her own company, which is still going strong, in 1926.

Knopf, Oct. 25

Uphill: A Memoir , by Jemele Hill

Hill, now a contributing writer at The Atlantic, rose to fame as a TV anchor on ESPN. Her memoir covers the time in 2017 when ESPN suspended her (she had criticized the politics of the Dallas Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, and had called President Trump a white supremacist). But the book offers a much broader canvas that includes her upbringing in Detroit and the trauma of generations of women in her family.

Henry Holt, Oct. 25

Friends, Lovers and the Terrible Thing: A Memoir , by Matthew Perry

Perry, who played Chandler Bing on “Friends,” has been candid about his substance abuse and sobriety. In this memoir, he returns again to discussions of fame and addiction, but also reaches back to his childhood.

Flatiron, Nov. 1

I Want to Die, but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki: A Memoir , by Baek Sehee. Translated by Anton Hur.

A best seller in South Korea, Baek’s memoir recounts her struggles with depression and anxiety, told through discussions with her therapist, which she recorded over a 12-week period. The therapy sessions are interspersed with short essays that explore her self-doubt and how feelings of worthlessness were reinforced by sexism.

Bloomsbury, Nov. 1

Elizabeth A. Harris writes about books and publishing for The Times.  More about Elizabeth A. Harris

Alexandra Alter writes about publishing and the literary world. Before joining The Times in 2014, she covered books and culture for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, she reported on religion, and the occasional hurricane, for The Miami Herald. More about Alexandra Alter

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When Reese Witherspoon is making selections for her book club , she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves.

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Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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The 30 best biographies to add to your reading list

Some stories involve incredible, larger-than-life characters. these are the best biographies ever written..

Writing a great biography is no easy task. The author is charged with capturing some of the most iconic and influential people on the planet, folks that often have larger than life personas. To capture that in words is a genuine challenge that the best biographers relish.

The very best biographies don't just hold a mirror up to these remarkable characters. Instead, they show us a different side of them, or just how a certain approach of philosophy fueled their game-changing ways. Biographies inform, for certain, but they entertain and inspire to no end as well.

Below, we gathered a comprehensive list of the best biographies ever written. Some of these biographies were selected because of the subject matter and others were chosen because of the biographer. It’s often said that reading biographies is the best way to gain new knowledge, so we suggest you start with these great selections. If you love history, you’ll certainly want to include these best history books to your home library.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro

The former parks commissioner of New York, Robert Moses was a man who got power, loved power, and was transformed by power. This 1,000-plus page biography could be the definitive study of power and legacy. It’s a great learning tool of mostly what not to be and who not to become.

Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

Totto-Chan is a special figure in modern Japanese culture and is on the same celebrity status level as Oprah is to us here in the United States. The book describes the childhood in pre-World War II Japan of a misunderstood girl who suffered from attention disorders and excessive energy and who later was mentored by a very special school principal who truly understood her. The book has sold more than 5 million copies in Japan.

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Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith

The man who was responsible for winning World War II, twice prevented the use of nuclear weapons, and attempted to keep our soldiers out of Vietnam, all while making it look easy, is none other than Dwight D. Eisenhower. This biography is a history lesson as well as an opportunity to get inside the mind of a brilliant man.

Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson

This particular biography dates back more than 50 years, which means it was written without the worry of being politically correct or controversial, but instead focused on providing a conclusive picture of the man. Modern enough to be historically accurate, this biography details a lot of the little-known facts about Mr. Edison in addition to his accomplishments, as well as his failures.

Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office by Zach O’Malley Greenburg

Empire State of Mind is both an unofficial biography of the rap mogul Jay-Z as well as a business book. It shows how the rapper hustled his way to the top of the music industry to become one of the most powerful and influential people in music.

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer

The story of the professional football player who gave up a $3 million NFL contract to join the Army Rangers after 9/11, only to die under suspicious circumstances in the hills of Afghanistan, is a book about everything that is right and wrong with the U.S. military. Pat Tillman wasn’t perfect, but he was a man we could all learn something from. His incredible story is one of bravery and selflessness -- and will forever be tied to the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Titan: The Life of John. D. Rockefeller Sr. by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow has written some of the best biographies of our time. In this 832-page biography of John. D. Rockefeller, he shares the main lessons you would take away from someone like Rockefeller, a strangely stoic, incredibly resilient, and -- despite his reputation as a robber baron -- humble and compassionate man. Most successful people get worse as they age, but Rockefeller instead became more open-minded and more generous. The biography also details his wrongdoings and permits you the opportunity to make your own judgment on Rockefeller’s character.

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Another example of Chernow’s brilliance in biographical writing is given in his biography of George Washington. Today, we study Washington not only for his against-the-odds military victory over a superior British Army but also for his strategic vision, which is partially responsible for many of the most enduring American institutions and practices. It’s another long read of the type Chernow is famous for, but it's also a page-turner. Although it’s intimidating to look at, the reading time goes by quickly.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson has written some of the greatest biographies in contemporary literature. Our modern-day genius, Steve Jobs, will forever be remembered as the mastermind who brought us Apple. This biography shows Jobs at his best, which includes illustrations of his determination and creativity but also details the worst of him, including his tyrannical and vicious ways of running a business (and his family). From this book, you will learn to appreciate the man for the genius that he was, but it will most likely not inspire you to follow in his path.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

Most depictions show the Mongols as bloodthirsty pillagers, but in this biography, we are also shown how they introduced many progressive advances to their conquered nations. You will learn how Genghis Khan abolished torture, permitted universal religious freedom, and destroyed existing feudal systems.

Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time by Joseph Frank

his five-volume retelling of the life and times of Russian literary giant Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered the best biography available on the subject. The mammoth exploration sheds light on Dostoevsky's works, ideology, and historical context. For those who are not specifically interested in the famous author, the also book paints a picture of 19th-century Russia.

Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man by Martin Kemp

Kemp’s account of da Vinci’s life and work is considered the go-to biography of the famous Renaissance figure. This incredible book sheds light on one of the most creative figures who ever lived, guiding readers through a fully integrated account of his scientific, artistic, and technological works, as well as the life events that helped form the man that made them.

Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury by Leslie-Ann Jones

After the massive success of the movie recently released about rock legend Freddie Mercury and his band, Queen, you might be interested in learning more about the frontman. This biography draws from hundreds of interviews with key figures in his life to create a revealing glimpse into Mercury’s life.

Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes by Donald Barlett

This is an epic biography of an epic man. It shows the heights of his incredible success as well as the depths of his inner struggles. Readers learn about the tough but eccentric figure in a story that details his incredible success as an aviator, film producer, and more.

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

The brilliant mathematician, cytologist, and computer pioneer Alan Turing is beautifully depicted in this biography. It covers his heroic code-breaking efforts during World War II , his computer designs and contributions to mathematical biology in the years following, and the vicious persecution that befell him in the 1950s when homosexual acts were still a crime and punishable by law.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Of course, we couldn’t highlight Ron Chernow’s best works without including his biography on Alexander Hamilton , which is not only the inspiration for a hit Broadway musical but also a work of creative genius itself. Another more than 800-page book (an ongoing theme for Chernow biographies), this book details every knowable moment of the youngest Founding Father’s life, from his role in the Revolutionary War and early American government to his sordid affair with Maria Reynolds. If you’ve seen the musical, this book will help answer a lot of those burning questions that you may have.

Frida: The Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

The focal point of this biography is not the suffering that was endured by Frida Kahlo, but instead, her artistic brilliance and her immense resolve to leave her mark on the world. Herrera’s 1983 biography of one of the most recognizable names in modern art has since become the definitive account of her life.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Recommended reading for any adventurer or explorer -- the story of Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, who hitchhiked to Alaska and disappeared into the Denali wilderness in April 1992 only to have his remains discovered in his shelter five months later -- Into the Wild retraces his steps along the trek, attempting to discover what the young man was looking for on his journey. Krakauer delivers one of the best biography books in recent memory.

Prince: A Private View by Afshin Shahidi

Compiled after the superstar’s untimely death in 2016, this intimate snapshot into the life of Prince is largely visual. The author served as the musician’s private photographer from the early 2000s until his passing. You already know the expression, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and in this case, they are worth a lot more.

Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson

The “Kennedy Curse” didn’t bring forth an assassination or a mysterious plane crash for Rosemary Kennedy, although her fate might have been the worst of them all. As if her botched lobotomy that left her almost completely incapacitated weren’t enough, her parents then hid her away from society, almost never to be seen again. Penned by Kennedy scholar Kate Larson, the full truth of her post-lobotomy life is finally revealed.

Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is likely the most divisive U.S. president of modern times. The comprehensive biography of Trump is reported by a team of award-winning Washington Post journalists and co-authored by investigative political reporter Michael Kranish and senior editor Marc Fisher. The book gives the reader an insight into Trump, from his upbringing in Queens to his turbulent careers in real estate and entertainment to his astonishing rise as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang

Most are familiar with the revolutionary Mao Zedong. This carefully curated biography by Jung Chang digs deeper into the life of the "Red Emperor." You won't find these interviews and stories about the world leader in history books alone. This extensive account of the man known simply as Mao begins with a horrific statistic: He was responsible for the deaths of more than 70 million people during his regime.

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell 

Biographies often give us the stories of people we know and love, but they can also reveal new stories about people that may have been lost to history. In her bestseller, Sonia Purnell tells the story of Virginia Hall, a prolific and heroic spy from World War II who took down the Axis Powers on one leg. 

Black Boy by Richard Wright

A standard biography is usually given by a historian after years and years of research and writing, but sometimes it’s better to go straight to the source. In his memoir, Richard Wright details his life as he recalls it as a black American in the 20th century. Black Boy is a harsh, painful, beautiful, and revealing read about race in the United States -- and about a towering figure of literature. 

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

Isaacson represents the gold standard for contemporary biographers, and his tome on Leonardo da Vinci was a bestseller for a reason. Isaacson is able to show a detailed, intimate portrait of the most famous painter of all time from centuries away.

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Want to know how the biggest sports company of all time came to be? Hear it from the man himself. Phil Knight’s book takes you through how his little sneaker company in Oregon became the worldwide leader in sportswear. 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley

One of the most famous biographies ever, The Autobiography of Malcolm X remains a classic and an important read. Malcolm X’s politics, though controversial at the time and today, is a valuable and provocative perspective that will make you reconsider how you think about America and the American Dream. 

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Long before becoming Jon Stewart’s successor on The Daily Show, Trevor Noah lived many, many lifetimes. Born to apartheid South Africa, Noah’s story is one of perseverance and triumph, and one that he manages to make funny by some sort of magic trick. 

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae

Of course, today, you know Issa Rae as the writer, actor, and star of HBO’s Insecure, but before her hit show came her webseries and book of the same name, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. Rae’s memoir wrestles with the idea of being an introvert in a world that considers Black people inherently cool.

Robin by Davie Itzkoff

One of the most beloved comedians and actors of all time, Robin Williams' passing in 2014 shook fans across generations. In his book, New York Times culture reporter Dave Itzkoff covers the life, work, and emotions of one of the most complicated and misunderstood comedians ever. Oh captain, my captain...

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Mark Stock is a writer from Portland, Oregon. He fell into wine during the Recession and has been fixated on the stuff since. He spent years making, selling, and sipping Pinot Noir in the Dundee Hills before a full return to his journalistic roots in 2016. He's helplessly tied to European soccer, casting for trout, and grunge rock. In addition to The Manual, he writes for SevenFifty Daily , Sip Northwest , The Somm Journal , The Drake , Willamette Week , Travel Oregon , and more. He has a website and occasionally even updates it: markastock.com .

Send all editorial inquiries  HERE .

We're living in crazy times, especially since this whole pandemic mess started a few long years ago. With so much instability out there, it's easy to feel, well, a little uneasy. That's why it's not a bad idea to consider a few self-defense weapons to have at your disposal, just in case. You never know really know what lies ahead but you can be prepared if things do go very, very wrong.

There are many options out there, but the best of the bunch are packable, discreet, effective, and non-lethal (because you don't necessarily have to put somebody six feet under to "take them out"). Now, it's one thing to have one of these on your person and quite another to use it safely and properly. So make sure you know what you're dealing with beforehand and maybe even set up some training time with your new tool. Whether you're planing to get (intentionally) lost in the backcountry or just milling about in the city, it's not a bad idea to consider getting one of these. Here are the best self-defense weapons for protecting yourself in 2023.

We live among walking legends, from LeBron James and Steven Spielberg to Paul McCartney and Meryl Streep. In the category of writing, Stephen King is among the very best. The 76-year-old from Maine has written countless classics, with a signature ability to both instill fear and keep readers helplessly attached to the plot.

Dubbed the "king of horror," King is a living icon, still turning out quality material. Some of the scariest concepts that continue to creep you out — the clowns, the twins in the hallway, the buried pets — are the handy work of King. It's no wonder many consider him to be one of the greatest writers of all time.

Anytime you're wondering what's on TV, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new shows and movies at your disposal. Every weekend brings new debuts across a wide array of streaming services, and it can be hard to keep track of what's worth checking out and what you can skip. Thankfully, we've got you covered with recommendations for movies and TV shows across a wide array of different streaming services. This is what to watch this weekend.

Best new shows to watch What to watch on Netflix

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
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• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
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Best Biographies

The best biographies of 2023: the national book critics circle shortlist, recommended by elizabeth taylor.

Winner of the 2023 NBCC biography prize

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

Talented biographers examine the interplay between individual qualities and greater social forces, explains Elizabeth Taylor —chair of the judges for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Here, she offers us an overview of their five-book shortlist, including a garlanded account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover and a group biography of post-war female philosophers.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge

Mr. B: George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century by Jennifer Homans

Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill & Rachael Wiseman

Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs

1 G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

2 the grimkés: the legacy of slavery in an american family by kerri k. greenidge, 3 mr. b: george balanchine’s twentieth century by jennifer homans, 4 metaphysical animals: how four women brought philosophy back to life by clare mac cumhaill & rachael wiseman, 5 up from the depths: herman melville, lewis mumford, and rediscovery in dark times by aaron sachs.

I t’s a pleasure to have you back , Elizabeth—this time to discuss the National Book Critics Circle’s 2023 biography shortlist. You’ve been chair of the judging panel for a while, so you’re in a great position to tell us whether it has been a good year for biography.

That comes through in the shortlist, I think. There’s a real range here. I think any reader is bound to find something to appeal to their tastes.

Shaping a shortlist seems quite like arranging a bouquet. A clutch of peony, begonia, or orchid stems…each may be lovely, an exemplar in its own way. We aspire to assemble a glorious arrangement—a quintet of blooms that reflect the wildly varied human experiences represented in the verdant garden of biography.

Let’s talk about G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century first, then, shall we? It is your 2023 winner of the NBCC’s prize for best biography; it also won a Pulitzer Prize . It’s also, and correct me if I’m wrong, the most traditional of the biographies that made the list.

G-Man is traditional in as much as Beverly Gage captures the full sweep of Hoover’s life, cradle to grave: 1895 to 1972. In that way, structurally G-Man sits aside the epics of David McCullough ( Truman , John Adams ) and Ron Chernow ( Grant , Alexander Hamilton ).

Unlike those valorized national leaders, Hoover answered to no voters. The quintessential ‘Government Man,’ a counselor and advisor to eight U.S. presidents , of both political parties, he was one of the most powerful, unelected government officials in history. He reigned over the Federal Bureau of Investigations from 1924 to 1972. Hoover began as a young reformer and—as he accrued power—was simultaneously loathed and admired. Through Hoover, Gage skilfully guides readers through the full arc of 20th-century America, and contends: “We cannot know our own story without understanding his.”

In G-Man , Yale University professor Gage untangles the contradictions in Hoover’s aspirations and cruelty, and locates the paradoxical American story of tensions and anxieties over security, masculinity, and race.

“This year, many biographies were deeply rooted in American soil that required years of research to till”

Hoover lived his entire life in Washington D.C., and Gage entwines his story in the city’s evolution into a global power center and delves deeply into the dark childhood that led him to remain there for college. Critical to understanding Hoover, Gage demonstrates, was his embrace of the Kappa Alpha fraternity; its worldview was informed by Robert E. Lee and the ‘Lost Cause’ of the South , in which racial equality was unacceptable. He shaped the F.B.I. in his image and recruited Kappa Alpha men to the Bureau.

For Hoover, Gage writes, Kappa Alpha was a way to measure character, political sympathies, and, of course, loyalty. One of those men was Clyde Tolson, and Gage documents their trips to nightclubs, the racetrack, vacations, and White House receptions. Hoover did not acknowledge that he and Tolson were a couple, but in the end their separate burial plots were a few yards from one another.

While Hoover feels very much alive on the page, Gage captures the full sweep of American history, chronicling events from the hyper-nationalism of the early part of the century, moving into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., making use of newly unclassified documents. When Hoover’s F.B.I. targeted Nazis and gangsters, there was clarity about good guys and bad guys. But by the mid-century, as the nation began to fracture, he regarded calls for peace and justice as threats to national security. Among the abuses of power committed by Hoover’s F.B.I., for instance, was the wiretapping and harassment of King.

Beyond Hoover’s malfeasance, Gage emphasizes that Hoover was no maverick. He tapped into a dark part of the national psyche and had public opinion on his side. Through Hoover, Americans could see themselves, and, as Gage argues, “what we valued and refused to see.”

A biography like this does make you realize how deeply world events might be impacted or even partially predicted by the family background or the personalities of a small number of key individuals.

We should step through the rest of the books on your 2023 biography shortlist. Let’s start with Kerri K. Greenidge’s The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family , which is the story not only of the Grimké Sisters Sarah and Angelina, two well-known abolitionists, but Black members of their family as well.

I was eager to read The Grimkés as I had admired Greenidge’s earlier biography, Black Radical , about Boston civil rights leader and abolitionist newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter. Greenidge, a professor at Tufts University, brings her unique, perceptive eye to African American civil rights in the North.

Now Greenidge’s The Grimkés sits on my bookshelf next to The Hemingses of Monticello , the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Annette Gordon-Reed who exposed the contradictions of one of the most venerated figures in American history, Thomas Jefferson. In the Grimke family, Greenidge has found a gnarled family tree, deeply rooted in generations of trauma.

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke have been exalted as brave heroines who defied antebellum Southern piety and headed northward to embrace abolition. Greenridge makes the powerful case that, in clinging to this mythology, a more troubling story is obscured. In the North, as the Grimké sisters lived comfortably and agitated for change, they enjoyed the financial benefits of their slaveholding family in South Carolina.

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After the Civil War, they learned that their brute of a brother had fathered at least two sons with a woman whom he had enslaved. The sisters provided some financial assistance in the education of these two young men, one attended Harvard Law School and the other Princeton Divinity School—and did not let their nephews forget it.

Not only does Greenidge provide a revisionist history of the Grimke sisters, but she also takes account of the full Grimké family and extends their story beyond the 19th century. She delves into the dynamics of racial subordination and how free white men who conceive children — whether from rape or a relationship spanning decades with enslaved women—destroy families. Generations of children are haunted by this history.  Poignantly, Greenidge evokes the life and work of the sisters’ grandniece Angelina (‘Nana’) Weld Grimké , a talented—and troubled—queer playwright and poet, who carried the heavy weight of the generational trauma she inherited.

This sounds like a family saga of the kind you might be more likely to find in fiction.

Let’s turn to Mr B . : George Balanchine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans, the story of the noted choreographer. Why did this make your shortlist of the best biographies of 2023?

The perfect match of biographer and subject! A dancer who trained with Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in New York and is now dance critic for The New Yorker, Homans has written a biography of the man known as ‘the Shakespeare of Dance.’ In felicitous prose, Homans channels the dancer’s experience onto the page, from the body movements that can produce such beauty to the aching tendons and ligaments. Training is transformation, Homan writes, and working with Balanchine was a kind of metamorphosis tangled with pain. She evokes the dances so vividly that one can almost hear the music.

“At the heart of biography is the quest to understand the interplay between individual and social forces”

Homans captures Balanchine in a constant state of reinvention, tracing his life from Czarist Russia to Weimar Berlin , finally making his way to post-war New York where he revitalized the world of ballet by embracing modernish, founding New York City Ballet in 1948. Balanchine was genius whose personal history shape-shifted over the years. Homans grounds Mr. B in more than a hundred interviews, and draws from archives around the world.

Homans captures Balanchine’s charisma and cultural importance, but Mr. B. is no hagiography. Homans grasps the knot of sex and power over women used in his work. He married four times, always to dancers. They were all the same kind of swan-necked, long-waisted, long-limbed women, and although Homans does not write this, his company often sounds more like a cult than art.

And, of course, there is the matter of weight, which Homans dealt with directly, as did Balanchine. He posted a sign: ‘BEFORE YOU GET YOUR PAY—YOU MUST WEIGH.’

I don’t think I’ve ever considered reading a ballet biography before, but it sounds fascinating.

The next book on the NBCC’s 2023 biography shortlist brings us to Oxford, England. This is Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman.

At the outset of World War II , a quartet of young women, Oxford students—Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley—were “bored of listening to men talk about books by men about men,” as Mac Cumhaill, a Durham University professor, and Wiseman, a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, write. In their marvelous group biography, MacCumhaill and Wiseman vivify how the friendships of these women congealed to bring “philosophy back to life.”

As their male counterparts departed for the front lines, this brilliant group of women came together in their dining halls and shared lodging quarters to challenge the thinking of their male colleagues. In the shadows of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, these friends rejected the logical positivists who favoured empirical scientific questions. They didn’t really create a distinct philosophical approach as much as they shared an interest in the metaphysics of morals.

Brilliant. A book that is ostensibly ‘improving’ but which turns out to be absolutely chock-full of gossip sounds perfect to me. Let’s move on to the fourth book on the NBCC’s 2023 biography shortlist, which is Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs.

A biography about writing biography ! Very meta, and very much in the interdisciplinary tradition of American Studies. In his gorgeous braid of cultural history, Cornell University professor Sachs   entwines the lives and work of poet and fiction writer Herman Melville (1819-1891) and the philosopher and literary critic Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), illuminating their coextending concerns about their worlds in crisis.

While Melville is now firmly ensconced in the American canon, most appreciation and respect for him was posthumous. The 20th-century Melville revival was largely sparked by a now overlooked Mumford, once so prominent that he appeared on a 1936 Time  magazine cover.

Sachs brilliantly provides the connective tissue between Melville and his biographer Mumford so that these writers seem to be in conversation with one another, both deeply affected by their dark times.

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As Mumford grappled with tragedies wrought by World War I, the 1918 flu pandemic and urban decay, Melville had dealt with the bloody Civil War , slavery , and industrialization. In a certain way, this book is about the art of biography itself, two writers wrestling with modernity in a bleak world. In delving into Melville’s angst, Mumford was thrust into great turmoil. Sachs evokes so clearly and painfully this bond that almost did Mumford in, and writes that “Melville, it turns out, was Mumford’s white whale.”

There’s a real sense of range in this shortlist. But do you get a sense of there being certain trends in biography as a genre in 2023?

In many ways, this is a golden era for biography. There are fewer dull but worthy books, more capacious and improvisational ones. More series of short biographies that pack a big punch. We see more group biographies and illustrated biographies. But just as figures and groups once considered marginal are being centered, records that document those lives are vanishing.

The crisis in local news and the homogenization of national and international news will soon be a crisis for biographers and historians. Where would historians be without the ‘slave narratives’ from the Federal Writers Project , or the Federal Theatre Project ? Reconstruction of public events—federal elections, national tragedies, and so on—may be possible, but we lose that wide spectrum of human experience. We need to preserve these artifacts and responses to events as they happen. Biographies are time-consuming labors of love and passion, and are often expensive to produce. We need to ensure that we are generating and saving the emails, the records, the to-do lists of ordinary life.

The affluent among us will always be able to commission histories of their companies or families, but are those the only ones that will endure?

June 30, 2023

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor is a co-author of American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley; His Battle for Chicago and the Nation with Adam Cohen, with whom she also cofounded The National Book Review. She has chaired four Pulitzer Prize juries, served as president of the National Book Critics Circle, and presided over the Harold Washington Literary Award selection committee three times. Former Time magazine correspondent in New York and Chicago and long-time literary editor of the Chicago Tribune, she is working on a biography of women in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras for Liveright/W.W. Norton.

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The 21 most captivating biographies of all time

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• Biographies illuminate pivotal times and people in history. 
• The biography books on this list are heavily researched and fascinating stories.
• Want more books? Check out the best classics , historical fiction books , and new releases.

For centuries, books have allowed readers to be whisked away to magical lands, romantic beaches, and historical events. Biographies take readers through time to a single, remarkable life memorialized in gripping, dramatic, or emotional stories. They give us the rare opportunity to understand our heroes — or even just someone we would never otherwise know. 

To create this list, I chose biographies that were highly researched, entertainingly written, and offer a fully encompassing lens of a person whose story is important to know in 2021. 

The 21 best biographies of all time:

The biography of a beloved supreme court justice.

"Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.25

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a Supreme Court Justice and feminist icon who spent her life fighting for gender equality and civil rights in the legal system. This is an inspirational biography that follows her triumphs and struggles, dissents, and quotes, packaged with chapters titled after Notorious B.I.G. tracks — a nod to the many memes memorializing Ginsburg as an iconic dissident. 

The startlingly true biography of a previously unknown woman

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $8.06

Henrietta was a poor tobacco farmer, whose "immortal" cells have been used to develop the polio vaccine, study cancer, and even test the effects of an atomic bomb — despite being taken from her without her knowledge or consent. This biography traverses the unethical experiments on African Americans, the devastation of Henrietta Lacks' family, and the multimillion-dollar industry launched by the cells of a woman who lies somewhere in an unmarked grave.

The poignant biography of an atomic bomb survivor

"A Song for Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai: Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb" by Paul Glynn, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.51

Takashi Nagai was a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. A renowned scientist and spiritual man, Nagai continued to live in his ruined city after the attack, suffering from leukemia while physically and spiritually helping his community heal. Takashi Nagai's life was dedicated to selfless service and his story is a deeply moving one of suffering, forgiveness, and survival.

The highly researched biography of Malcolm X

"The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X" by Les Payne and Tamara Payne, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $18.99

Written by the investigative journalist Les Payne and finished by his daughter after his passing, Malcolm X's biography "The Dead are Arising" was written and researched over 30 years. This National Book Award and Pulitzer-winning biography uses vignettes to create an accurate, detailed, and gripping portrayal of the revolutionary minister and famous human rights activist. 

The remarkable biography of an Indigenous war leader

"The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History" by Joseph M. Marshall III, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $14.99 

Crazy Horse was a legendary Lakota war leader, most famous for his role in the Battle of the Little Bighorn where Indigenous people defeated Custer's cavalry. A descendant of Crazy Horse's community, Joseph M. Marshall III drew from research and oral traditions that have rarely been shared but offer a powerful and culturally rich story of this acclaimed Lakota hero.

The captivating biography about the cofounder of Apple

"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.75

Steve Jobs is a cofounder of Apple whose inventiveness reimagined technology and creativity in the 21st century. Water Issacson draws from 40 interviews with Steve Jobs, as well as interviews with over 100 of his family members and friends to create an encompassing and fascinating portrait of such an influential man.

The shocking biography of a woman committed to an insane asylum

"The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear" by Kate Moore, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $22.49

This biography is about Elizabeth Packard, a woman who was committed to an asylum in 1860 by her husband for being an outspoken woman and wife. Her story illuminates the conditions inside the hospital and the sinister ways of caretakers, an unfortunately true history that reflects the abuses suffered by many women of the time.

The defining biography of a formerly enslaved man

"Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $12.79

50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States, Cudjo Lewis was captured, enslaved, and transported to the US. In 1931, the author spent three months with Cudjo learning the details of his life beginning in Africa, crossing the Middle Passage, and his years enslaved before the Civil War. This biography offers a first-hand account of this unspoken piece of painful history.

The biography of a famous Mexican painter

"Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo" by Hayden Herrera, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $24.89

Filled with a wealth of her life experiences, this biography of Frida Kahlo conveys her intelligence, strength, and artistry in a cohesive timeline. The book spans her childhood during the Mexican Revolution, the terrible accident that changed her life, and her passionate relationships, all while intertwining her paintings and their histories through her story.

The exciting biography of Susan Sontag

"Sontag: Her Life and Work" by Benjamin Moser, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $20.24

Susan Sontag was a 20th-century writer, essayist, and cultural icon with a dark reputation. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, archived works, and photographs, this biography extends across Sontag's entire life while reading like an emotional and exciting literary drama.

The biography that inspired a hit musical

"Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $11.04

The inspiration for the similarly titled Broadway musical, this comprehensive biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton aims to tell the story of his decisions, sacrifice, and patriotism that led to many political and economic effects we still see today. In this history, readers encounter Hamilton's childhood friends, his highly public affair, and his dreams of American prosperity. 

The award-winning biography of an artistically influential man

"The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke" by Jeffrey C Stewart, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $25.71

Alain Locke was a writer, artist, and theorist who is known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Outlining his personal and private life, Alain Locke's biography is a blooming image of his art, his influences, and the far-reaching ways he promoted African American artistic and literary creations.

The remarkable biography of Ida B. Wells

"Ida: A Sword Among Lions" by Paula J. Giddings, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.99

This award-winning biography of Ida B. Wells is adored for its ability to celebrate Ida's crusade of activism and simultaneously highlight the racially driven abuses legally suffered by Black women in America during her lifetime. Ida traveled the country, exposing and opposing lynchings by reporting on the horrific acts and telling the stories of victims' communities and families. 

The tumultuous biography that radiates queer hope

"The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk" by Randy Shilts, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $11.80

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California who was assassinated after 11 months in office. Harvey's inspirational biography is set against the rise of LGBTQIA+ activism in the 1970s, telling not only Harvey Milk's story but that of hope and perseverance in the queer community. 

The biography of a determined young woman

"Obachan: A Young Girl's Struggle for Freedom in Twentieth-Century Japan" by Tani Hanes, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $9.99

Written by her granddaughter, this biography of Mitsuko Hanamura is an amazing journey of an extraordinary and strong young woman. In 1929, Mitsuko was sent away to live with relatives at 13 and, at 15, forced into labor to help her family pay their debts. Determined to gain an education as well as her independence, Mitsuko's story is inspirational and emotional as she perseveres against abuse. 

The biography of an undocumented mother

"The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story" by Aaron Bobrow-Strain, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $18.40

Born in Mexico and growing up undocumented in Arizona, Aida Hernandez was a teen mother who dreamed of moving to New York. After being deported and separated from her child, Aida found herself back in Mexico, fighting to return to the United States and reunite with her son. This suspenseful biography follows Aida through immigration courts and detention centers on her determined journey that illuminates the flaws of the United States' immigration and justice systems.

The astounding biography of an inspiring woman

"The Black Rose: The Dramatic Story of Madam C.J. Walker, America's First Black Female Millionaire" by Tananarive Due, available on Amazon for $19

Madam C.J. Walker is most well-known as the first Black female millionaire, though she was also a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and born to former slaves in Louisiana. Researched and outlined by famous writer Alex Haley before his death, the book was written by author Tananarive Due, who brings Haley's work to life in this fascinating biography of an outstanding American pioneer.

A biography of the long-buried memories of a Hiroshima survivor

"Surviving Hiroshima: A Young Woman's Story" by Anthony Drago and Douglas Wellman, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.59

When Kaleria Palichikoff was a child, her family fled Russia for the safety of Japan until the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima when she was 22 years old. Struggling to survive in the wake of unimaginable devastation, Kaleria set out to help victims and treat the effects of radiation. As one of the few English-speaking survivors, Kaleria was interviewed extensively by the US Army and was finally able to make a new life for herself in America after the war.

A shocking biography of survival during World War II

"Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival" by Laura Hillenbrand, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $8.69

During World War II, Louis Zamperini was a lieutenant bombardier who crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1943. Struggling to stay alive, Zamperini pulled himself to a life raft where he would face great trials of starvation, sharks, and enemy aircraft. This biography creates an image of Louis from boyhood to his military service and depicts a historical account of atrocities during World War II.  

The comprehensive biography of an infamous leader

"Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.39

Mao was a Chinese leader, a founder of the People's Republic of China, and a nearly 30-year chairman of the Chinese Communist Party until his death in 1976. Known as a highly controversial figure who would stop at very little in his plight to rule the world, the author spent nearly 10 years painstakingly researching and uncovering the painful truths surrounding his political rule.

The emotional biography of a Syrian refugee

"A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival" by Melissa Fleming, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.33

When Syrian refugee Doaa met Bassem, they decided to flee Egypt for Europe, becoming two of thousands seeking refuge and making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. After four days at sea, their ship was attacked and sank, leaving Doaa struggling to survive with two small children clinging to her and only a small inflation device around her wrist. This is an emotional biography about Doaa's strength and her dangerous and deadly journey towards freedom.

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Best Biographies

Discover the lives of remarkable individuals through the best biographies, chosen from a wide array of reputable literary sources and biography enthusiasts. these compelling reads offer intimate portraits and have earned accolades across numerous literary discussions..

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Blog – Posted on Friday, Aug 07

30 best memoirs of the last century.

We’ve swung back round to the 20s, and they’re not exactly off to a roaring start. So, what better time to take a look back at some of the best memoirs of the last century? Whatever you’re here for — to escape , to search for hope, or to clear your head with a good cathartic cry — we’ve got you covered! 

Unlike an autobiography, which tells the story of the author’s life chronologically, memoirs dive deep into the nitty-gritty of their most intimate memories, exploring emotional truths and the way these make them feel. For this reason, there’s no better way to step into someone else’s shoes.

Some books on this list will take you back in time — to cafes in 1920s Paris or the 70s in downtown New York — while others will push you to new and unfamiliar frontiers of thought. We’ve included several famous memoirs, but we’ve also made some room for a few underrated ones. Whichever books make it onto your reading list, prepare yourself to be kicked right in the feels: tears will be spilled, guts will be wrenched, and lives will be changed. 

1. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (1933)

Orwell, a penniless writer in his 20s, exposes the underworld of these glamorous cities in a memoir of two parts. First, a swanky restaurant in Paris, where he slaves for subsistence wages at the bottom of the culinary food chain. Then London, where he tramps the streets among the most desperately poor, going between workhouses and prison-like ‘spikes’ for a few hours’ sleep in a bug-infested bunk. Lacking in self-pity but brimming with compassion, Orwell gives his audience an unprecedented look at the unrelenting drudgery of life in poverty. Despite its publication date, this readable and sometimes even humorous memoir remains an enduring reminder of the trappings of class systems.

2. West with the Night by Beryl Markham (1942)

In 1936, Beryl Markham took off from England aiming to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic solo , and the first pilot to fly westward against the winds. 20 hours later, Markham crash-landed in Nova Scotia and became an instant celebrity. But she was much more than just a record-breaking pilot: her memoir tells the spellbinding story of her life in Kenya as a bush pilot and racehorse trainer. And though she wasn’t wholly beyond the racism of her day, Markham was out of step with her times, and shows skepticism towards the European tendency to exoticize and flatten Africa. After reading West with the Night , Hemingway famously wrote to his editor saying, “She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer.”

3. Black Boy by Richard Wright (1945)

This powerful memoir about a black man’s coming-of-age in the Jim Crow South evokes the struggle for African-American identity in the bitter decades before civil rights. In the first of Wright’s arresting vignettes, he’s four years old and “angry, fretful, and impatient” as he sets fire to his family home. Deserted by his father and at odds with his sick mother, Richard continues on the path of “rejection, rebellion, and aggression.” This, he declares, was the only way to be real in a world of white hostility and subjugation. Propelled by his pursuit of knowledge, Wright goes on to seek justice north. Black Boy is a difficult but important read that has fully earned its position among the best memoirs for its stark depiction of racial tension.

4. Night by Elie Wiesel (1956)

In his memoir Night , Elie Wiesel recounts his experience in the Nazi death camps that eviscerated his family. In unsentimental detail he describes the dehumanising power of hunger, the conditions that strained his identity, and a profound crisis of faith. Just 15-years-old when he was sent to Auschwitz, Wiesel writes through the eyes of a teenager plunged into an unprecedented moral hinterland. His innocence, but also his courage, shines from every page as he stares, unfaltering, into the countenance of the Nazi’s virulent anti-Semitism. Night is an essential companion to The Diary of Anne Frank , one of the most famous memoirs of the Second World War: “Where Anne Frank’s book ends,” Wiesel once said, “mine begins.”

5. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (1964)

In 1956, at the end of his career, Hemingway was spurred into reminiscence by the rediscovery of some old notebooks. The memories he puts to page in this beloved memoir are of his life as an unknown author in 1920s Paris. Scintillating with the romance of the city and studded with stars including F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce, this memoir is a must-read for fans of 20th century literature. Though it was written when Hemingway was in a state of terminal decline, one of the most remarkable things about A Moveable Feast is how sure and hopeful it seems. His Paris sketches are affectionate, fun, and full of wit.

6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)

The first volume of Maya Angelou’s memoirs depicts her life from the ages of three to sixteen, spent mostly in the Deep South during the Depression-wracked 1930s. Angelou and her brother endure the ache of abandonment as well as the prejudice of the “powhitetrash” when they are sent to live with their grandmother in a “musty little town” in Arkansas. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings traces Angelou’s growth as she finds the inner strength to struggle against the shackles of racism and misogyny. Angelou also discovers the empowering quality of books in this testament to the ability of storytelling to bridge divides and heal wounds.

7. Conundrum by Jan Morris (1974)

Best remembered as one of the first accounts of gender transition, Conundrum is perhaps the most extraordinary journey that travel writer Jan Morris has taken her readers on. As a reporter in England and Egypt, Morris went everywhere and met everyone. She climbed mountains and crossed deserts. She also had a long marriage and four children. Morris regarded every second of her life as a grand adventure, including the difficult decision to bring her hidden world into the open, undergo hormone treatment, and eventually risk the experimental surgery that turned her into the woman she truly was. “To me gender is not physical at all, but is altogether insubstantial,” she writes. “It was a melody that I heard within myself.”

8. This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff (1989)

Wolff’s prose lights up this boyhood memoir set in 1950s America, which reads and entertains as easily as a novel. Divorced mother and son hit the road, fleeing a violent boyfriend, trying to change their luck and maybe get rich as uranium prospectors. But Wolff’s mom soon links up with another man, and Wolff finds himself in a battle of wills with a hostile stepfather. So begins an escalation of various schemes, which lead to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility. In clear and hypnotic language, Wolff re-creates the frustrations, cruelties, and joys of adolescence, managing to be both poignant and humorous.

9. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang (1991)

Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans : a gripping tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of survival. Published two years after the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, this harrowing memoir arrived at the perfect time to satisfy a readership hungry for insight into life under the Chinese Communist party. Across three generations of women — her grandmother given to a warlord as a concubine, her Communist mother, and herself — Chang captures the cycles of violent drama visited on her family and millions of others during the terrible history of China’s twentieth century. Breathtaking in its scope and unforgettable in its writing, Wild Swans belongs among the best memoirs of all time.

10. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy (1994)

When Lucy Grealy was nine years old, she was stricken with a virulent form of bone cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma and had to undergo radical surgery to remove half of her jaw. For twenty years, Lucy endured the searing pain of peer rejection, the paralysing fear of never being loved, and a heartbreaking sense of disfigurement.  Despite her struggle to come to terms with her appearance, Grealy writes without self-pity or sentimentality. Full of wit, style, and class, this powerful memoir is a moving meditation on beauty and the premium we put on a woman’s face.

11. The Liars' Club by Mary Karr

Karr’s childhood in a swampy East Texas refinery town features a hard-drinking, fist-swinging father, an oft-married mother whose outlaw spirit tips over into psychosis, and a grandma who carries a hacksaw in her handbag. Yet what makes this memoir so extraordinary is that The Liars’ Club is often very funny. Karr paints a harsh world with raw and often painful honesty, but she does so with intelligent humour, comic vividness, and poetically slangy prose. Packed with eccentrics, this classic is eccentric in its own right — one of the best memoirs ever written about growing up in America.

12. The Color of Water by James McBride (1995)

McBride explores his mother’s past and his own upbringing in this powerful and poignant memoir. Ruth McBride was born Rachel Shilsky — the daughter of a failed Orthodox Jewish rabbi who fled Poland for Virginia. A self-declared “light-skinned” woman, Ruth adopted Christianity and founded a black Baptist church in her Red Hook Living room. She demanded good grades from her brood of 12 and commanded their respect. “God is the color of water,” she taught, firmly convinced that life’s blessings and values eclipse race. And though issues of race and religion are present throughout this memoir of mother and son, its triumph is that it transcends those issues to be a story of family love.

13. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt (1996)

This Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir tells the bittersweet tale of McCourt’s childhood in the slums of Limerick and tenements of Brooklyn.  “Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood,” McCourt writes. “Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” With too many children and too little money, McCourt’s unforgettable family is constantly brought to the brink of disaster by his father’s drinking habits. Yet, in the face of overwhelming odds, this is a story of survival, strength, and the love that can emerge from personal pain. Every page of Angela’s Ashes is imbued with McCourt’s humour and compassion, giving it the vitality of a work of fiction.

14. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (1997)

In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the glamorous and witty editor-in-chief of French Elle , suffered a catastrophic stroke and lapsed into a coma. Bauby was left paralysed and speechless — a victim of locked-in syndrome. His mind, however, was unimpaired. Using his only functioning muscle — his left eyelid — Bauby painstakingly dictated his best-selling memoir by blinking in response to a recited alphabet. By turns wistful, mischievous, angry, and witty, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly records Bauby’s lonely existence, but also his determination to live as fully in his mind as he had done in his body.

15. Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel (2003)

When she was 19, Mantel began suffering not only the pain of illness, but also the pain of misdiagnosis. One after another, doctors gave her several new identities: neurotic, malingerer, and, eventually, hysterectomy patient. As a result of endometriosis, the dreamy child, destined to become a knight errant, received a new personality — dark and jittery — and a new, much bigger body, too. Mantel's ghosts are the ones that prevented her from ever settling on a version of herself that felt right: her stepfather, the daughter she never had, and nameless remnants of lives she never led. In Giving Up the Ghost, Mantel attempts “to seize the copyright in myself.” She does so with a fine ear and a furious intelligence.

16. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)

In simple and expressive lines, Satrapi’s graphic memoir tells the story of her childhood in Tehran during the turbulent years that saw the overthrow of the Shah, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the ensuing Iran-Iraq war. Satrapi’s child’s-eye view of the revolution and the rise of fundamentalism, as well as of her brutal family history, achieves a stark and shocking impact. Just as powerful, however, are the moments of childhood: the warmth of her family, her complicated relationship with religion, and her penchant for challenging hypocrisy. Personal yet political, humorous yet haunting, Persepolis is a wholly original book, and an essential read.

17. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)

Joan Didion, an exemplar of cool, brilliant aloofness, unravels in this troubled and meditative memoir about the sudden loss of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the frightening illness of her daughter, Quintana. The Year of Magical Thinking explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of marriage and an account of loss that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion, Didion’s memoir has quickly become a classic on grief and mourning.

18. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2006)

Alison Bechdel’s darkly funny memoir, told with the help of her gothic artwork, is an elaborately layered account of life and artifice that sprung from her father’s suicide. Bechdel’s father was a distant parent, a historic preservation expert, a funeral home director, a high school English teacher, and a closeted homesexual hiding erotic relationships with his students (as well as the family babysitter). Ultimately, Bechdel herself comes out as a lesbian — a revelation she renders as both funny and heartbreaking. Fun Home is a deeply moving coming-of-age story that swims along literary lines, honoring the works of authors who nourished Bechdel, including Kate Millet, Proust, and Oscar Wilde.

19. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah (2007)

Is this how wars are fought now — by children, hopped up on drugs and wielding AK-47s? Beah’s memoir stands as a vivid testament to his time as one of 300,000 nameless and faceless child soldiers around the world. When Sierra Leone descended into a brutal civil war, Ishmael was inducted into a government corps of child soldiers. As Beah takes us through a life of battles, promotions, and unfathomable acts of cruelty, we almost forget he is just a boy. It’s only when we catch a glimpse of his childish innocence that the horror and despair of the situation hits home. A Long Way Gone admonishes us to recognise how war and violence consumes everything in society, especially children.

20. Just Kids by Patti Smith (2010)

In 1967, Patti Smith — a young, aspiring poet — headed to New York with nothing in her purse. She found a job in a bookstore, where she met budding artist Robert Maplethorpe. Equally inspired and determined, their chance meeting led to a romance and a lifelong friendship that would carry each to international success they’d never dreamed of. Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, flows through downtown New York in all its energy and squalor, from the Chelsea Hotel to Max’s Kansas City, and follows an endless supply of captivating subjects — literary lights, musicians and artists — to whom she is genuinely devoted. Even for someone with no interest in the renaissance woman of the punks, this beautifully written memoir is a masterpiece of social observation and self-scrutiny.

21. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (2011)

“Why be happy when you could be normal?” is the question Jeanette’s adoptive mother, Mrs Winterson, asked her daughter as she evicted her for taking up with a second girlfriend. This abusive, Pentecostal giantess will be familiar to readers of Jeanette’s 1985 autobiographical novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit , which Jeanette now calls a cover story: a painful past written over and repainted. In Why Be Happy she tells readers how this past rose to haunt her, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. Turbulent and moving, but wriggling with humor, this has to be one of the best memoirs about the search for somewhere to belong.

22. Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala (2013)

Deraniyagala’s memoir opens inside a literal wave: the tsunami that swept onto the southern coast of Sri Lanka in 2004, killing her husband, her two sons, and her parents. Deraniyagala  miraculously survived, but the loss plunged her into darkness. In the first months following the disaster, she had to be constantly protected against the danger of harming herself as she grappled with the horror of her reality. Wave is the engrossing and poised account of grief that follows Deraniyagala on her journey back through the life she’s mourning. Gradually, she learns to find the difficult balance between the unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family alive in her memory —  and begins to find some light herself through the very act of writing

23. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (2013)

In this harrowing memoir, novelist Jesmyn Ward pays tribute to five young black men in her life who died over the span of just four years, lost to suicide, drugs, or accidents. She describes with tenderness the lives these men lived before they were devoured by her Mississippi hometown, “pinioned beneath poverty and history and racism.” Their fates twine with her own childhood of instability and hardship — then later, the survivor’s guilt that washes over her in the wake of their premature deaths. This deeply felt and heartbreaking memoir is also a powerful investigation into the terrible risks inherent in simply trying to live as a young black man in the rural south. But Ward never allows her subjects to become symbolic: instead, she renders them individual and irreplaceable.

24. H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (2014)

Since childhood, Helen Macdonald has been obsessed with birds of prey. So when her father dies suddenly on a London street, she seeks to escape her grief by training one of nature’s most vicious predators — a goshawk. With unflinching honesty, Macdonald grapples with the kind of thoughts most of us reserve for 4am: the finality of death, the paralysis of self-doubt, the loss of the natural world, and… the raptor lurking in the other room. She comes to understand that her bond with the hawk is partly due to a desire to find her father, as hawks are often thought to be messengers to a world beyond. But as the bird matures into a confident hunter, Macdonald makes a new discovery: that moving forward means leaving things behind. This beautiful, erudite, and very British book takes its rightful place among the greatest memoirs of all time.

25. Negroland by Margo Jefferson (2015)

More a state of mind than a physical location, Jefferson’s title refers to “a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty.” Jefferson was born in 1947 into upper-crust black Chicago — a world of exclusive networks and clubs, where skin color and hair texture were relentlessly evaluated alongside scholarly and professional achievements. They saw themselves as representatives of a “Third Race, poised between the masses of Negroes and all classes of Caucasians,” and insisted on exceptionalism. A brilliant, freewheeling memoir, that has been compared to jazz , Negroland opens an unflinching, introspective eye on the American black bourgeoisie mindset.

26. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2015)

In one of the best memoirs of the 21st century, Nelson applies literary and analytical theory to her own love story with fluidly-gendered artist Harry Dodge. Told non-linearly in brief, loaded fragments, The Argonauts chronicles the way Nelson’s body is made “more ‘female’” by pregnancy while Dodge’s body — transformed by surgery and testosterone — becomes “more and more ‘male.’” However, to confine bodies to these labels is reductive, Nelson goes on to explain. Offering fresh and fierce reflections on queer desire, queer family making, and the limits of the gender binary , as well as on motherhood and feminism, this is a timely and hugely enlightening read.

27. Barbarian Days by William Finnegan (2015)

New Yorker writer William Finnegan has been roaming the world’s outer reaches for over 40 years, chronicling everything from drug cartels in Mexico to billionaire mining tycoons in Australia. The constant thread throughout all of these journeys? Waves.  Barbarian Day s is a soaring ode to his one great love and obsession — surfing. To devotees, surfing is much more than a sport: it’s a demanding study, a joy-drenched, adrenaline-fueled addiction, and a passionate way of life. Finnegan is a magnificent writer, as adept at conjuring waves from memory as he is at describing the friendships between disciples of the ocean. This account of his full, wind-chapped life is one of the most outstanding sporting memoirs you’ll encounter.

28. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016)

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing his training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. When Breath Becomes Air was written in the final 22 months of his life and published posthumously. Facing his own mortality just as he and his wife are bringing new life into the world, Kalanithi is forced to examine a question that “possessed” him as a medical student: “What, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life?” Deftly identifying universal truths amidst emotional devastation, this is a devastating yet inspiring memoir about terminal illness, and a profoundly rewarding read.

29. Hunger by Roxane Gay (2017)

In Hunger , Roxane Gay casts an insightful eye on her young life — including the devastating abuse that acted as the catalyst for her weight gain — and brings readers into her present: the reality of living as a sizable woman in today’s world. By bravely confronting her emotional and psychological struggles, Gay taps into our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health, and elicits a compassionate response. Writing with vulnerability and authority, she explores the tension between desire and denial, self-comfort and self-care, and shows us how to be decent to ourselves, and to one another.

30. Heavy by Kiese Laymon (2018)

The final installment on our list of the 30 best memoirs, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets and lies does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on moral collapse. This gorgeous and gutting book begins with Laymon’s childhood in Mississippi and continues through twenty-five years of abuse, anguish, sex, writing, and fraught relations with both his family and himself. In this fearless memoir, Laymon illuminates national failures with a personal narrative, reflecting with piercing intellect on both the state of American society and his own experience growing up within it.

Want to read about more extraordinary people? Check out our post on the 30 best biographies ! Or, if you’ve been inspired to change your life, we’ve got you covered with 35 inspirational books that’ll do just that!

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Me and Mr Jones by Suzi Ronson

Queen victoria and her prime ministers by anne somerset, byron: a life in ten letters by andrew stauffer, keir starmer: the biography by tom baldwin, hardy women by paula byrne, the woman in me by britney spears, marcia williams by linda mcdougall, lou reed: the king of new york by will hermes, dinner with joseph johnson by daisy hay, original sins by matt rowland hill.

In 1971, Suzi Ronson (then Suzanne Fussey) was a 21-year-old hairdresser at a salon in Beckenham, southeast London, when one of her customers – Mrs Jones – mentioned her "artistic" son David, said Anthony Quinn in The Observer . The next week, Mrs Jones brought in David's wife, Angie, who was so delighted with the "outrageous" haircut Suzi gave her that she took her to meet David himself – "a pale and epicene young man" who had just started calling himself David Bowie. With the help of a German anti-dandruff product, Suzi transformed David's "mousy" hair into a "spiky red feather cut". It was the birth of the "look of Ziggy Stardust".

Suzi, infatuated with the couple and their bohemian world, became Bowie's stylist, and soon after went on the road with him and the Spiders from Mars. Five decades on, she has written an "honest and troubled memoir" of her time as his "hair'n'make-up mascot". It belongs to a niche genre – call it "I-was-Sinatra's-valet" – but her book offers a compelling portrait of Bowie "on the verge of stardom".

Ronson skilfully charts her drab suburban upbringing, so different from Bowie's "countercultural" mileu, said Deborah Levy in Literary Review . With "perfect pitch and tension", she recounts key moments in his early career – from his legendary performance of Starman on Top of the Pops in 1972 to the night a year later when he unexpectedly "retired" Ziggy Stardust.

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Her book makes a refreshing change from the hagiographic tone of most Bowie biographies, said John Aizlewood on iNews . Here, "the star emerges as cold": he sacks his drummer on his wedding day, and expects Suzi to procure him an "endless supply of young girls and boys". Suzi herself is soon "cut adrift", at which point she marries the guitarist Mick Ronson, who had also been ditched by Bowie. After that, the book loses its dynamism.

Much Bowie literature consists of "pretentious evaluation" of his lyrics and influences, said Suzanne Moore in The New Statesman . Ronson, by contrast, barely mentions his music, and instead focuses on practical matters – such as sewing the jewels onto Bowie's jockstrap, or worrying "about all the sweat breaking the zips of his costumes". She tells us that she slept with him once, but is "discreet" about the details. It makes for an engaging, often endearing account of the "magical rising of Ziggy, by the woman who put the colour in his hair".

Faber 320pp £20 ( £15.99 )

Elizabeth II once described her great-great-grandmother as a "believer in moderation in all things", said Matthew Dennison in The Telegraph . But as Anne Somerset demonstrates in this "masterly account" of Queen Victoria's relationships with the ten men who served as her prime ministers, Victoria was "frequently far from moderate". In her private letters and memoranda, she made clear her dislike of "vivisectionists, Russians and four-time prime minister William Ewart Gladstone" (depicted together, above). And she remained unswervingly convinced of her right to meddle in politics – railing, for instance, against the "miserable democrats" in the Liberal Party. This caused friction, inevitably. Gladstone referred to her as "the leader of the opposition". Even the Conservative Disraeli, who was one of her favourites, found her "wilful and whimsical, like a spoilt child". 

"Victoria supposedly wrote 60 million words during her reign, or 2,500 a day," said Gerard DeGroot in The Times . Somerset has immersed herself in this "huge mass of correspondence" – but while the result is "impressively well-researched", she doesn't entirely succeed in her apparent mission to "emphasise Victoria's positive contributions". Indeed, at one point she admits that her subject's behaviour "verged upon the monstrous".Covering Victoria's 63-year reign, from 1837, the book is billed as a "personal history" – but what it really reveals is the gap between "Victoria's public image and the queen her ministers saw". Perhaps this gap is inevitable: "for a constitutional monarchy to work", reverence "must be heaped on an individual who might, in truth, be a despot, a psychopath or an idiot". Nevertheless, this account is an "eye-opener", and Victoria's reputation does not emerge well from it.

What we see is that Victoria "loved power", said Philip Mansel in The Spectator . She was an enthusiastic reader of despatches. "Far from being fatigued with signatures and business, I like the whole thing exceedingly," she wrote in 1837. She also appreciated "British patriotism, British successes", and what she called the "deep devotion and loyalty of my people". Despite the "tragic living conditions" of many of her subjects, she was cheered even on her last visit to Ireland in April 1900, although she couldn't stand the Irish: "abominable... a dreadful people". As Somerset's "magnificent, disturbing" history reminds us, in the 19th century, "most people wanted more monarchy, not less". 

William Collins 576pp £30; ( £23.99 ) 

"Mad, bad and dangerous to know" was how Lady Caroline Lamb famously characterised Lord Byron. It's a fair description, in many ways, said John Banville in The Guardian . But George Gordon, the 6th Baron Byron, "must also have been, at the simplest level, wonderful company". He didn't take himself too seriously, and his lust for life was immense: "I shall not live long," he wrote to his publisher John Murray in 1819, "& for that reason I must live while I can." In Byron: A Life in Ten Letters, Andrew Stauffer uses Bryon's "vivid and hugely entertaining letters" as a series of entry points into his tempestuous life. Each chapter begins with an extract from a letter; Stauffer then discusses the context that inspired it. It is an impressively "rounded portrait, venereal scars and all, of one of the prime movers of the Romantic movement".

Stauffer concedes that his approach is not particularly original, said D.J. Taylor in The Wall Street Journal : fragmented biographies are in vogue. "But there is something about Byron's headlong scamper about the world of his day that lends itself to this miniaturist treatment". We first see him as a Cambridge undergraduate, "planning endless bachelor parties"; then en route to Greece in 1810, where he swims the Hellespont with his friend Lt William Ekenhead; and later writing ghost stories on Lake Geneva with Percy and Mary Shelley. "The letters are practically Messianic in their intensity, aflame with relish for the incidental scenery or the women Byron is pursuing." It's a wonder, given the pace at which he lived his 36 years, that Byron had any time for serious writing.

The poet depicted in these pages often emerges as a "cold-hearted shit", said John Walsh in The Sunday Times . During his short-lived marriage to Annabella Milbanke – a "brilliant mathematician with a strong moral centre" – he installed his half-sister Augusta Leigh at their Piccadilly home, and "made the women compete with each other in caressing him". The night his wife gave birth, he "sat in the empty drawing room below, throwing empty bottles at the ceiling". In time, polite opinion turned against him, and he left England, never to return. Stauffer sometimes brings an incongruously "21st century perspective to 19th century behaviour": he describes Byron as a "sex tourist in Italy", and talks of Shelley's bisexual experiences as "polyamory". But no matter. This is a "devilishly readable book", which brings Regency England to "howling life", and its "disgraceful but irresistible subject into dazzling focus".

CUP 300pp; £25 (£19.99)  

Although Keir Starmer is almost certain to be our next prime minister, he remains an "oddly elusive" figure, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian . People often complain that they don't really know what he stands for, and he talks about personal matters somewhat stiffly, as if holding something back. All this makes a book such as Keir Starmer: The Biography feel long overdue. Tom Baldwin is a former journalist who worked for five years as a Labour spin doctor; he was originally recruited to ghostwrite Starmer's own memoir, but Starmer backed out of the project last year, agreeing instead to cooperate on this biography. The result, while not exactly revelatory – Baldwin warns that his pages won't be "spattered with blood" – does a job that "very precisely mirrors its subject": it is careful, nuanced and eminently capable. "It is, in short, as intimate an insight into Britain's likely next prime minister as readers are probably going to get." 

The most interesting chapters concern Starmer's "difficult early life", said Robert Shrimsley in the FT . Starmer grew up in a cramped semi in Surrey with a "seriously ill mother", Jo (she had Still's disease); a "cold, difficult" father, Rodney (a toolmaker); and three siblings (one of whom, Nick, has learning difficulties). Television was banned in the Starmer household, the "radio played only Beethoven or Shostakovich", and Rodney "barracked and bullied" visiting schoolfriends, said Patrick Maguire in The Times . Although Starmer was the only one of the siblings to go to grammar school and university, and then became a leading barrister, his dad never once told him he made him proud. Only after his death in 2018 did Starmer find out this wasn't "the full story": hidden in his father's wardrobe was a "scrapbook of every newspaper story about his son".

Many politicians pose as regular people, but Starmer emerges from this as someone who really is quite ordinary, said Matthew d'Ancona in the Evening Standard . He is happiest spending time with his family, or organising weekend eight-a-side football games. As his deputy, Angela Rayner, puts it: he is "the least political person I know in politics". The "one nagging question" is how much Baldwin's political sympathies have coloured his portrait, said Ben Riley-Smith in The Daily Telegraph . Had he discovered "less laudable aspects of Sir Keir's story", would he have "forensically interrogated" them? This may not, then, quite be a definitive biography – but it is engaging and "skilfully done".

The fame of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy rested largely on the heroines he created, said Norma Clarke in Literary Review. With the likes of Tess Durbeyfield (Tess of the d'Urbervilles) and Sue Bridehead (Jude the Obscure), he displayed, as one young reader wrote to him, a "complete understanding of a woman's soul". But as Paula Byrne shows in this fascinating book, the women Hardy knew in real life were less fortunate. Byrne doggedly details them all, from Hardy's "strong-minded" mother, Jemima, to the "pretty girls" who "turned his head" in his youth, to his wives, Emma Gifford and Florence Dugdale (pictured, with Hardy). Hardy's women, she concludes, "paid a large price" for the "magnificent fictional women he invented". "In a sign of trouble to come, young Hardy fell in love violently and often," said Susie Goldsbrough in The Times . His first serious entanglement, says Byrne, "was with a Dorset maidservant called Eliza Nicholls, whom he dumped for her young sister". 

In his mid-30s, Hardy married Emma, a solicitor's daughter. Although initially happy, the marriage soured as "Emma gained weight" and became increasingly eccentric. By the time of her death, aged 72, in 1912, she was living in the attic of their Dorset home – and the much younger Florence was living with them, having been employed as Hardy's typist. After Hardy married Florence in 1914, she had to put up with him "enthusiastically mourning the wife he had spent years complaining about" – and who now became the subject of an "astonishing" series of love poems. Although Byrne is sometimes hampered by a lack of evidence (Hardy destroyed most of Emma's letters, together with the journal she wrote about him), this is still an "absorbing" portrait of the women who suffered for Hardy's art.

William Collins 656pp; £25 ( £19.99 )

In January 2008 – 11 months after the notorious occasion when she shaved off her own hair in a Los Angeles salon – Britney Spears was asked by her parents to meet them at their beach house, said Anna Leszkiewicz in The New Statesman . "There she was ambushed by police and taken to hospital against her will." A month later, the state of California placed the pop star under a "conservatorship" – a legal arrangement giving her father, Jamie, full control of her finances and personal life. For the next 13 years, Spears was "told what to eat, what medication to take, when she could see her children", even when she could and couldn't use the lavatory. Meanwhile, her father "paid himself a $6m salary" from the proceeds of her endless concerts and recordings. It's no surprise, in the circumstances, that Spears's memoir reads "like a dark fairy tale". Powerful and compellingly candid, it tells of how a "young girl, both adored and vilified for her beauty, talent and fame", was effectively "imprisoned" by her jealous and avaricious family.

The truth, of course, is that Spears had always been controlled and infantilised, said Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph . She became a "people-pleasing child performer" at a young age, supporting her family by appearing in theatrical musicals. Aged 16, male music executives moulded her into "America's teen pop princess" – and soon she was being taken advantage of by "narcissistic self-serving boyfriends", and "hounded by paparazzi". When she rebelled against her "powerlessness", her sanity was called into question – a process she "specifically likens to a witch trial". Her memoir, written without self-pity, is gripping and "forensically convincing". Finally, we know what it feels like to be the "madwoman in the attic of pop".

Gallery 288pp £25, ( £19.99 )

"Imagine a story of sex, drugs and secrets inside Downing Street. A story of a political wife accused of meddling, and a resignation honours list mired in scandal," said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian . But no, it's not the one you're imagining: this biography by Linda McDougall tells the "irresistible tale" of Marcia Williams, political secretary and "office wife" to Labour PM Harold Wilson. Baroness Falkender, as she became in 1974, was one of the most controversial and vilified political figures of the 1960s and 1970s. According to many, she was a "hysterical tyrant" with a "dark hold" over Wilson. McDougall offers a more nuanced portrait. Without ignoring Williams's flaws, she outlines the strains she must have been under, as a high-achieving woman with a troubled personal life living in rampantly sexist times. Her Williams, while "no heroine", is "fascinating". 

Williams, the daughter of a Northamptonshire builder, first met Wilson in the mid-1950s, when she became a secretary at Labour HQ, said Frances Wilson in The Daily Telegraph . She began sending the then-shadow chancellor anonymous letters, alerting him to machinations within the party. She soon became Wilson's private secretary – at which point, McDougall admits, they probably had a brief affair. (She later allegedly told Wilson's wife, Mary: "I went to bed with your husband six times in 1956 and it wasn't satisfactory.") In 1964, when Wilson became PM, he appointed Williams his political secretary, a newly created role that made her one of Britain's first unelected political advisers. She stayed in it when Wilson lost power in 1970, and went with him back to Downing Street when he regained it in 1974.

It was then that Private Eye revealed that "Lady Forkbender" had a shocking secret, said Anne de Courcy in The Spectator . In 1968 and 1969, Williams had given birth to two children – the result of an affair with political journalist Walter Terry. The births had been hushed up; Williams concealed her pregnancies by wearing a baggy coat at work. Amid a public outcry, McDougall suggests, Williams resorted to taking amphetamine pills and Valium, "prescribed by Wilson's doctor", which contributed to the "hysterical outbursts" for which she became known. Further scandal followed in 1976, when it was revealed that Williams had hand-written Wilson's controversial resignation honours list (dubbed the "Lavender List") on a sheet of lilac paper. McDougall's sympathetic book is a "gripping" portrait both of an "extraordinary woman", and of the "emotional dynamics of Downing Street".

Biteback 304pp; £25 ( £19.99 )

Lou Reed, the lead vocalist of the Velvet Underground, who died in 2013, already has a longish shelf of biographies. This one is the first to make use of his personal archive, "and it shows", said David Keenan in Literary Review . "It feels more like a coolly researched biography than one written by a passionate fan." What's more, Will Hermes tries to repackage the "violently aggressive, drug-huffing", gender-bending, "sexually unhinged" rock star to make him acceptable to the modern world: Reed and his circle were "nonbinary", Hermes informs us; he suggests that Reed was a troubled person who tried to become "someone good" (as he wrote in one of his best-loved songs, Perfect Day), not the sociopath that his behaviour suggested. The result is an "awkward love letter to the 20th century", but "the perfect biography of Lou Reed for 2023": a defensive depiction of a man whose stock in trade was "all that was difficult and dark and destructive in what it is to be human".

It's "the only Lou Reed bio you need to read", said Stephen Metcalf in The Washington Post . It's really two biographies: one of Lewis Allan Reed, the sensitive, middle-class, midcentury music fan; and one of the louche, sardonic, drug-addled persona he invented and inhabited. From Reed's early days with Andy Warhol to his  breakthrough as a solo star, with a little help from David Bowie, it's all there, written up with a judicious blend of "love and scepticism". Hermes doesn't conceal the evidence that Reed became a pampered celeb who could be as obnoxious to waiters as he was to journalists. But he's good on Reed's "musically confrontational" yet "unabashedly romantic" songwriting. The book gets the balance between the person and the poseur "exactly right".

Viking 560pp £25; (£19.99)

The radical publisher Joseph Johnson was a "key figure" in late 18th century London, said the FT . Many of the great minds of the age – Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, William Blake – attended his weekly salons. A biography of Johnson has long been overdue – and this one is "meticulous". It’s altogether a "delightful book", said The Times – one that gives its readers the "feeling of being at a rather elevated party".

Vintage £10.99; (£8.99)

This "devastatingly good" memoir recounts how its author "swapped a love of Jesus for a love of Class-A drugs", said The Daily Telegraph . Following his strict evangelical upbringing in Swansea, Hill won a scholarship to Harrow and then went to Oxford – where he became addicted to heroin. The themes of this book are not exactly original, said The Guardian . But it proves "propulsive" and "brilliant" – thanks to Hill's black humour and his "lacerating candour".

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14 Best Biography Authors To Try Today

Are you looking for a book that will leave you inspired? Take a look at these top 14 best biography authors.

It takes a special type of author to write an engaging biography about another person that is not dry and dull. Yet, biography authors often sail under the radar as their books bring to light the work and passion of their subjects. If you love reading about inspiring people, you will want to pick up a biography, but you’ll want to see that it comes from a good biographer. Over the years, several authors have made a living and won awards for their inspiring biographical accounts.

As you scour Amazon for your next inspiring read, consider making one of these top biography authors one on your list. You can read about war generals, feminist leaders, formerly enslaved people, theologians and more as you turn the pages of one of these works. Here are 14 of the best biography authors out there, along with information about the works that earned them these accolades. 

1. Martin Gilbert

2. elizabeth gaskell, 3. humphrey carpenter, 4. valerie boyd, 5. hermione lee, 6. deirdre bair, 7. hazel rowley, 8. david leeming, 9. peter conradi, 10. stacy schiff, 11. maya angelou, 12. charlotte gordon, 13. megan marshall, 14. david blight, best biography authors ranked.

Sir Martin Gilbert  was a famous historian who studied World War II in depth. His biography of Winston Churchill is a multi-volume work that he wrote after going through 15 tons of documents about the man. He is one of the leading historians of the 20th century and was the official biographer for Churchill. 

In addition to his biographical works on Churchill, Gilbert wrote extensively about the Holocaust and the Jewish experience. Gilbert was born in London, England, in 1936 to Jewish parents, which gave him a passion for the topic. During the war, he was evacuated on a boat full of children to Canada, eventually reuniting with his family and living in Wales until the end of the war. This experience during the war led Gilbert to his passion for writing about Churchill and the war in general.

• Hardcover Book
• Gilbert, Martin (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 1066 Pages - 05/20/1991 (Publication Date) - Henry Holt and Company (Publisher)

Elizabeth Gaskell was both a novelist and a biographer who lived in 1800s England. Her famous biography was The Life of Charlotte Brontë, in which she wrote about the moral and sophisticated aspects of the famous writer’s life. 

Gaskell was a well-bred woman who was known for her kind nature. She was mainly well-known for her ghost stories, and Charles Dickens helped her get her works published. She also claimed her writings were influenced by those of Jane Austen.

Throughout Gaskell’s body of work, the idea of Unitarianism comes through. She was also well-known for using dialect with her characters, capturing the local words of middle-class characters. If you like reading autobiography books, you might want to check out our round-up of famous memoirs .

• Gaskell, Elizabeth (Author)
• 544 Pages - 03/01/1998 (Publication Date) - Penguin Classics (Publisher)

Author of J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter received unrestricted access to Tolkien’s papers while writing the book. He followed the author’s journey as he created his famous books, and the biography is quite in-depth. Tolkien’s family considers it the official biography of the writer.

Carpenter lived most of his life in Oxford, England. He was born in 1946 and died in 2005. In addition to writing, he worked as a broadcaster for BBC Radio Oxford. 

In addition to his Tolkien biography, Carpenter wrote The Inlkings: C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends, which won the 1978 Somerset Maugham Award. This book told of the connection between these three famous writers and their impact on literary history.

• Humphrey Carpenter (Author)
• 304 Pages - 05/20/1997 (Publication Date) - Harcolscifi&Fantasy (Publisher)

Valerie Boyd was the biographer of Zora Neale Hurston. She wrote Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston to chronicle the author’s life. Boyd chose Hurston because she felt a deep connection with the author and felt she deserved to have a biography written by a black woman.

The work came with many accolades because it captured the humor and individualism of Hurston. She traveled throughout the country to speak on Hurston as well.

Boyd died from cancer in 2022 at the age of 58. Her last work, Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, was published after her death.

• Used Book in Good Condition
• Valerie Boyd (Author)
• 528 Pages - 12/24/2002 (Publication Date) - Scribner (Publisher)

Hermione Lee  is a prolific biographer who wrote biographies about Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and Penelope Fitzgerald. One of her most recent publications Tom Stoppard: A Life won American Vogue’s “Best Books of 2021” status and Top Books of 2021 by New York Times critics.

Lee lives in England, where she served as the President of Wolfson College and Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Oxford University. When she is not writing biographies, she often writes book reviews for The Guardian and The New York Review of Books

For her work, Lee won the 2014 James Tait Black Prize for Biographies, and her book on Penelope Fitzgerald was a New York Times Best 10 Books of 2014 book award winner.

• Hermione Lee (Author)
• 944 Pages - 10/05/1999 (Publication Date) - Vintage (Publisher)

Deirdre Bair is an American author known for her biographical works. She won the National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography in 1981. She also wrote six other biographies, including the biographies of Simone de Beauvoir, Al Capone, and Saul Steinberg. 

Bair was born in 1935 in Pittsburgh and earned a degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania followed by graduate degrees at Columbia University. She worked for the New Haven Register and Newsweek before becoming a professor at her alma mater. She died at the age of 84 in 2020.

Though it did not win, her autobiographical account Parisian Lives was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2020.

• Bair, Deirdre (Author)
• 760 Pages - 07/30/2016 (Publication Date) - Simon & Schuster (Publisher)

Though she was born in London,  Hazel Rowley  lived most of her in Australia before moving to New York She was well-known for her biographies including works on Cristina Stead, Richard Wright, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Her work Tete-a-Tete is her most famous, covering the lives of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. 

In addition to being a biographer, Rowley was an essayist. She had essays and articles published in The Best Australian Essays, The Times, and other publications. Rowley died suddenly of a brain aneurysm after contracting an MRSA infection in 2011. She was 59 at the time of her death.

• Rowley, Hazel (Author)
• 646 Pages - 05/20/1995 (Publication Date) - Henry Holt & Co (Publisher)

David Lemming writes primarily on myths and mythology, but his work James Baldwin: A Biography is quite engaging and gives him a spot on this list of the best biography authors of all time. He also wrote biographies on Beauford Delaney and Stephen Spender. 

Leeming worked as a philologist and Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. He was born in 1937 and continues to write and edit on the subject of mythology. For a period of time, he served as the Head of the English Department at Robert College in Istanbul. 

Leeming is a member of the Modern Language Association of America and is part of the Federation of University Teachers. He remains one of the leading authorities on the subject of mythology.

• Leeming, David (Author)
• 464 Pages - 02/24/2015 (Publication Date) - Arcade (Publisher)

Peter Conradi is a British author who wrote several popular biographies. His biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky and his biographies of Iris Murdoch are some of his greatest works. He also wrote A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson.

Condradi has an extensive teaching career under his belt with time spent teaching at South Bank Polytechnic, University of Colorado, Boulder, Kingston University, and Jagiellonian University in Poland. He now serves as an Emeritus Professor and freelance writer . He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

His book Iris Murdoch: A Life hit many “Best Books of the Year” lists in its year of publication. Condradi is a Buddhist and has several works on his religious beliefs in addition to his biographical works.

• Leithart, Peter J. (Author)
• 208 Pages - 09/26/2011 (Publication Date) - Thomas Nelson (Publisher)

Stacy Schiff  won the Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Vera Nabokov, and her body of work spans several excellent biographies. Cleopatra: A Life and Saint-Exupery: A Biography are two of her most famous works. 

Schiff was born in 1961 in Massachusetts. She has five biographies to her name, and she also worked as a senior editor for Simon and Schuster for many years. In addition to her books, she has several essays published in prominent magazines and newspapers.

Though she does not have a lot of books to her name yet, she has won numerous awards for them, including the George Washington Book Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, and the Lapham’s Quarterly Janus Prize.

• Schiff, Stacy (Author)
• 496 Pages - 04/04/2000 (Publication Date) - Random House Publishing Group (Publisher)

Though her work is autobiographical, it deserves a spot on this list. Maya Angelou’s The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou is the best telling of her story. It includes quite a bit of her poetry as well. 

Angelou was born in 1928 and was raised in the south. She became famous for her poetry and was part of the Harlem Writer’s Guild. Her work is heralded as a defense of the Black culture and is studied throughout the world to discuss themes of family, racism and identity.

Angelou holds the distinction of being the first Black woman to be featured on a US quarter. She died in 2014, and she won the Presidential Medal of Freedom before her death in 2010. You might be interested in exploring more autobiography books, check out our guide to the best autobiographies .

• Angelou, Maya (Author)
• 1184 Pages - 09/21/2004 (Publication Date) - Modern Library (Publisher)

Charlotte Gordon  wrote Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley. Both of these women were writers themselves, with Wollstonecraft writing A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Shelley writing Frankenstein. Gordon skillfully tells how the two women were alike in the biography, even though Wollstonecraft died just a week after giving birth to Shelley.

Gordon is a modern writer with three biographical books to her name. When she is not writing books, she reviews them for The Washington Post. She graduated from Harvard and attended Boston University for her master’s and doctoral degrees. 

Today, Gordon serves as the Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Endicott College. She has two books of poetry in addition to her three biographies.

• Gordon, Charlotte (Author)
• 672 Pages - 02/02/2016 (Publication Date) - Random House Trade Paperbacks (Publisher)

Megan Marshall wrote The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. This work about the “American Brontës” showcased how the three Peabody sisters influenced American literature.

Marshall got her start in writing and creating book reviews for The New Republic. She won multiple awards for her first book, The Peabody Sisters, and this launched her writing career. She continues to research and write and serves as a visiting professor for many universities around the globe. She is also a member of the Society of American Historians. 

Marshall also wrote Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, which tells the tale of Fuller’s influence on Thoreau as she served as the author’s first editor. This book earned Marshall the Pulitzer Prize.

• Marshall, Megan (Author)
• 624 Pages - 05/11/2006 (Publication Date) - Mariner Books (Publisher)

David Blight  wrote one of the most recent biographies of Frederick Douglass entitled Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. He also published A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, a work that combined two new slave narratives in an engaging tale of the push for freedom.

Today, Blight serves as Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University. He works on the board of several museums and historical societies and has a passion for history. 

Blight’s books have numerous awards behind them. Many focus on themes of the American Civil War, an area of history the professor is passionate about. Blight also reviews books for the New York Times and is a history consultant in the creation of many documentaries.

• Blight, David W. (Author)
• 912 Pages - 10/16/2018 (Publication Date) - Simon & Schuster (Publisher)

Bryan Collins is the owner of Become a Writer Today. He's an author from Ireland who helps writers build authority and earn a living from their creative work. He's also a former Forbes columnist and his work has appeared in publications like Lifehacker and Fast Company.

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Famous Authors: The 30 Greatest Writers Of All Time

Who are the most  most famous authors the world has ever known ? Perhaps that’s not the real question: we should instead be asking, ‘how can we judge’? With that in mind one can begin to talk about criteria. One can think about which famous writers had the most influence on the world as a result of what they wrote, or how their writings changed the world.

We don’t necessarily have to talk about their writing style or how good their prose is, as that is, in any case, far too subjective: their greatness could simply be about their ideas – ideas that grab the attention of the world and change the world’s perceptions forever. In that case the writing would only be a vehicle for the transmission of the idea they wish to convey. That idea or theory or research is the reason for writing the book.

And then, particularly if we are including Shakespeare as one of the influential writers, we need to look at what kind of writing we are talking about. Shakespeare falls into the fiction writer category and so, perhaps, to find our best writers we should look at other fiction writers whose work had something like the influence of William Shakespeare’s. It should therefore be clear that our list of the thirty greatest writers are all fiction writers. Our criterion will be that they should be poets, dramatists and prose fiction writers who have had a significant influence on the writers who came after them or on the direction of society.

But who, apart from Shakespeare, are the greatest writers of all time? Without further ado, here is a list of thirty of the greatest writers of all time offered by NoSweatShakespeare. It would be impossible to rank them so they are listed in order of their birth dates:

Homer ~850 BCE

Sophocles 496-406 BCE

Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 70 BCE – 19 BCE

The Evangelist, Mark (Author of the Gospel of St Mark) 1st Century CE

Dante (Durante degli Alighieri) 1265-1321

Geoffrey Chaucer 1343-1400

Francois Rabelais 1498-1553

Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Cortinas) 1547-1616

John Donne 1572-1631

John Milton 1608-1674

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 1694-1778

William Blake 1757-1827

Jane Austen 1775 – 1817

Hans Christian Andersen 1805-1875

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish playwright, travel writer, poet, novelist and story writer. His fairy tales place him as one of the world’s greatest writers ever. Written basically for children they transcend age barriers because of their universal nature: they reach the deepest levels of the human condition, each story demonstrating something profound about what it means to be a human being… Read more on Hans Christian Anderson >>

Charles Dickens 1812-1870

Herman Melville 1819-1891

Gustave Flaubert 1821-1880

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky 1821-1881

Jules Verne 1828-1905

Leo Tolstoy (Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy) 1828-1910

Emily Dickinson 1830-1886

Unknown as a poet during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now regarded by many as one of the most powerful voices of American culture. Her poetry has inspired many other writers, including the Brontes. In 1994 the critic, Harold Bloom, listed her among the twenty-six central writers of Western civilization.  After she died her sister found the almost two thousand poems the poet had written… Read Emily Dickinson quotes . Read more on Emily Dickinson >>

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1832-1898

James Joyce 1882-1941

Franz Kafka 1883-1924

T.S. Eliot 1888-1965

F scott fitzgerald 1896-1940.

Jorge Luis Borges 1899-1986

George Orwell 1903-1950

Gabriel Garcia Marques 1927-2014

Like our list of the thirty greatest writers of all time? Any we’re missing? Check out our list of famous English writers , and most famous American authors .

Fiction writers do not write to transmit an idea or report on research they have done. They use language to make us think that their inventions are real, that the places they create actually exist and that their characters are real people, like us, who love and hate and suffer and strive. They invite us to enter into the world of their text and although they usually write only to entertain, there is a sense in that they point to truths just as real as those reached by Darwin and Einstein. If they do that at the highest level, in creating a world that we both recognise and can be inspired by, they reveal themselves as great writers and influence the world in that way. Like Shakespeare.

So who are these writers who can be placed in the same category as Shakespeare for doing that? Shakespeare is, of course, foremost among the great writers. Apart from writing plays that can be held up like mirrors in which we can see ourselves as human beings clearly, and come to an understanding of many of the things that make us human, Shakespeare’s poetry has had a profound effect on the English language: the way we use it today has been shaped by his words and phrases. It can be difficult at times to utter a sentence in English without using a construction first used by Shakespeare. And whenever we need to find a phrase that will sum something we want to say up perfectly and beautifully, we will find a phrase somewhere in Shakespeare’s works .

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The #2, #3 and #4 writers of all time seem to be missing from this list: #1 Shakespeare #2 Faust as translated by the great poet Walter Arndt–Part II Act V = to anything in Mr. S. and maybe exceeds. #3 Daniel Deronda by G. Eliot #4 Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon #5 Middlemarch

To include neither Proust nor Faulkner is preposterous. No reasonable critic places Orwell, Carrol, Verne or Christian-Anderson above them.

Mr Daly, Your post, at best, is an organized mess. To define in an absolute term that a “reasonable critic” should side with you, is a crash landing of opinion. Your suggestions of authors Faulkner and Proust, is purely for dramatic effect. Salinger and King are above them all.

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16 of the Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read in 2023

By emily malkowski | may 15, 2024, 9:55 pm edt.

It’s no secret that as a society, we’re obsessed with the idea of celebrity , which is perhaps why this memoir genre has become so widely popular over time. When we read highly intimate stories written by our favorite actors, musicians, and public figures, the curtain is temporarily pulled back, giving us an up-close and personal look at the people behind the fame. It’s like reading a private diary or, even better, catching up with an old friend.

And while it’s true that we may never actually be able to sit down and chat with our favorite stars, reading essays where they recount their inspiring journeys (and all of the juicy drama along the way) is arguably the next best thing. If you’re looking for the best celebrity memoirs to read this year, you can start by checking out these 16 standout titles below.

1. Spare // Prince Harry

The most recent release on this list is Spare , an emotional tell-all by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex . Divided into three sections, the book lets readers in on the intimate details of his life, including his mother Princess Diana ’s death, his service in the military, falling in love with Meghan Markle , and making the difficult decision to leave the royal family .

Wondering where the title Spare comes into play? It comes from the colloquial idea that royal families should have at least two children: “An heir and a spare.” The spare , or the second-born child, would serve as a guarantee that, should anything happen to the first child, there would always be a continuation of the royal family lineage . This added context sets the tone for a memoir that doesn’t pull any punches as Prince Harry fearlessly critiques both the British royal family and the impact of living an incredibly public life under the media’s gaze.

2. I’m Glad My Mom Died // Jennette McCurdy

Penned by former Nickelodeon star Jennette McCurdy, I’m Glad My Mom Died took the world by storm in 2022 and, as of this writing, has spent 23 consecutive weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. The book chronicles McCurdy’s early beginnings as a child actor and recounts her tumultuous struggles with eating disorders, addiction, and an abusive relationship with her mother, who died of breast cancer in 2013. I’m Glad My Mom Died was originally a darkly comedic one-woman show that McCurdy performed for audiences in Los Angeles and New York City before adapting the material into a memoir. 

3. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood // Trevor Noah

The title of Trevor Noah’s bestselling memoir is unfortunately not a play on words: It was literally a crime to be born a mixed-race baby in South Africa during the apartheid era, when interracial relationships were banned and racial classification was the foundation of all societal laws. Published in 2016, Born a Crime chronicles the hardships Noah faced while growing up in the twilight of apartheid and poignantly reflects on the years leading up to his rise to fame as an award-winning writer, comedian, producer, actor, and former longtime host of The Daily Show . In 2018, Noah won the Audie Award for Best Male Narrator for his narration of the Audible-exclusive audiobook version of the book.

4. We Were Dreamers // Simu Liu

Mirroring the storyline of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, this bestselling memoir is its own immigrant superhero origin story of sorts. In the first half of We Were Dreamers , Marvel star Simu Liu traces his parents’ unique and hard-fought experience immigrating to Canada against all odds.

It isn’t until the second half of the book that Liu begins to unravel his own journey toward stardom, from becoming a breakout TV star on Kim’s Convenience to eventually landing the role of a lifetime in Marvel’s first Asian superhero film. Prior to finding success in the entertainment industry, he was laid off from the consulting firm Deloitte, where he worked as an accountant for nine months after graduating from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario. 

5. Finding Me // Viola Davis

Best known for her starring performance as Annalise Keating on ABC’s hit drama How to Get Away With Murder , actress Viola Davis wrote this much-celebrated memoir “for anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades.” Finding Me channels this very honesty as Davis bravely writes about her rise to fame despite the trauma and adversity she has experienced throughout her lifetime. Davis attended and graduated from the Juilliard School in 1993 and is the first Black woman to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony for acting—earning her the coveted title of Triple Crown winner.

6. Behind the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard // Tom Felton

Prepare to meet a real-life “wizard” as you crack open the pages of Behind the Wand , a recent memoir by Harry Potter star Tom Felton. In it, the actor shares fun-filled, behind-the-scenes anecdotes of life on-set as Draco Malfoy , reflects on his mischievous childhood as the youngest of four brothers, and gets vulnerable about his struggles with mental health and addiction after wrapping the films. Not only that, but Felton reveals many fascinating, long-kept secrets throughout the book, including the fact that he’s “always had a secret love” for costar Emma Watson and knew next to nothing about the famous fantasy book series during the audition process.

7. Taste: My Life Through Food // Stanley Tucci

Whether you know actor Stanley Tucci from his scene-stealing roles in films like The Devil Wears Prada or The Hunger Games series, or from his food-centric travel show Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy (or even through his two popular Italian-style cookbooks), his memoir Taste: My Life Through Food is an absolute delight. In it, he shares mouthwatering recipes and evocative, yet lighthearted, stories about growing up in Westchester, New York, as the grandson of Italian immigrants. Additionally, he traces how food has shaped his life, loves, and ultra-successful career. The self-proclaimed foodie knows his stuff, and in the early days of the pandemic, his high-end, DIY Negroni tutorial even went viral online. 

8. Making a Scene // Constance Wu

As an actress and activist, Constance Wu rose to fame thanks to her roles in the ABC comedy Fresh Off The Boat and the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians , both of which boasted predominantly Asian-led casts and further championed Asian-American representation in media. In this debut collection of personal essays, Wu shares memories of her early childhood and reveals her harrowing experience of rape, abuse, and sexual assault. The star also muses on finding solace in acting, a career where embracing big emotions isn’t just accepted—but encouraged. Wu’s critically acclaimed performances have earned her multiple award nominations, including at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards, plus a spot on the Time 100 Most Influential People of 2017 list .

9. Becoming // Michelle Obama

Becoming is a moving memoir penned by Michelle Obama, former First Lady of the United States and the first Black woman to ever serve in that role. The book begins by recounting Obama’s formative years growing up on the South Side of Chicago and traces the entirety of her incredible life and career, through her influential time in the White House and beyond. In each chapter, she reflects on topics ranging from her massive public health campaign to her experiences as a mother, as well as her historic impact on the world as a whole.

Becoming was initially released in 24 different languages and with more than 17 million copies sold worldwide, it is now regarded as one of the bestselling books of all time. A documentary of the same name, which followed Obama’s book tour in promotion of the memoir, was released by Netflix in 2020. In 2022, she also released a follow-up, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times.

10. The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music // Dave Grohl

As a twice-inducted Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member, Dave Grohl has lent his musical talents to multiple legendary rock and grunge bands over the years, including Scream, Nirvana , and Foo Fighters. In The Storyteller , he shares stories about his early childhood in Virginia, his reckless days as a dirt-broke touring musician, and his life-changing experience of becoming a father. The audiobook version also features a bonus chapter that’s not included in the physical book, plus five snippets of never-before-heard original demos produced and performed by Grohl himself.

11. My Body // Emily Ratajkowski

This debut collection of memoir-style, feminist essays from actress, model, and activist Emily Ratajkowski gives readers an up-close and personal look at her work in the modeling and entertainment industries. Told in a non-linear format, Ratajkowski’s stories reveal the relentless challenges she faced with abuse and harassment while building the foundation of her successful career, including her involvement in the music video for the controversial 2013 song “Blurred Lines,” as well as her experiences with sexual assault. Her essay titled Buying Myself Back , which appears in the collection, was first published in The Cut in 2020. 

12. Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing // Matthew Perry

The title says it all: Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is actor and comedian Matthew Perry’s bestselling tell-all in which he writes candidly about his experience on Friends , one of the most popular sitcoms of all time. In true Chandler Bing fashion, the work blends earnestness with Perry’s own signature sarcasm and dry humor, as he also recounts his various romantic relationships over the years and delves into his decades-long struggle with drug and alcohol addiction.

Perry originally began writing the book in the Notes app on his iPhone , tapping out his life story during a long-term stay in a Los Angeles hospital where he suffered from pneumonia, an exploded colon, and experienced a brief stint on life support, followed by two weeks in a coma and multiple stomach surgeries.

13. She Memes Well // Quinta Brunson

Quinta Brunson is best known as the creator and star of the hit ABC comedy Abbott Elementary . But before she found fame on the show, she wrote and starred in countless viral video sketches at Buzzfeed, and gained a big following on social media for her self-produced Instagram video series Girl Who Has Never Been On a Nice Date.

In her 2021 debut essay collection, She Memes Well, the award-winning writer, actress, and comedian writes with humor and heart about growing up in West Philadelphia, becoming “Internet famous,” and the importance of staying true to yourself at all costs. In 2022, Brunson became the first Black woman to be nominated three times in the same year for the comedy category at the Emmy Awards (she won for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series).

14. If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t) // Betty White

The late Betty White ’s trailblazing career in the entertainment industry spanned more than seven decades. Whether you know her from her iconic roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show or The Golden Girls (or from her later performances in modern rom-coms like The Proposal) , her 2011 collection of memoir-style essays reflects just what a national treasure she was.

In the book, White shares hilarious stories and heartfelt commentary on her extensive work in show business as a pioneer of early television and the first woman to ever produce a sitcom. She earned plenty of awards and accolades along the way, and even made the Guinness World Records in 2013 for Longest TV Career for an Entertainer (Female), in recognition of her 70-odd years in front of (and behind) the camera.

15. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) // Mindy Kaling

Watch almost any episode of the NBC sitcom The Office and it’s easy to see why Mindy Kaling’s sharp wit and signature sense of humor had a major hand in bringing one of the most celebrated comedies of all time to life on screen. But did you know that before she made her way to television, Kaling’s comedy first took center stage in Matt & Ben , a satirical , “bromantic” play about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s friendship? In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me , the award-winning actress, writer, director, and producer shares this little-known origin story and more in essays that radiate cool, big-sister-giving-you-life-advice energy in the best way. The Mindy Project star followed this book up with a second collection, titled Why Not Me?, in 2015.

16. Me // Elton John

With more than 300 million records sold worldwide and a career in music spanning over six decades, Elton John is easily one of the most prolific artists of all time. His official autobiography, aptly titled Me , aims to capture as much of the British singer, pianist, and composer’s fascinating life as possible, from his childhood music lessons and early days of fame to his extremely public struggle with a drug addiction. The star also delves into his experiences as a father, and his continued success as a musician and producer today. The majority of the audiobook version is narrated by Taron Egerton, who played John in the hit 2019 biopic Rocketman .