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Favorite Biography?

post #1 of 13
1/16/07 at 10:45pm
Thread Starter 
I never much cared for this type of book. I don't know why. But I am something of a student of the American Civil War, and have enjoyed several about some of the generals. I find the personalities of the aristocracy of that era, the tail end of the romantic era in art and literature and music, fascinatingly larger than life. All these books are packed away in my attic (I don't have room to keep many books I've already read on shelves), so I can't recall the authors, but my favorites would have to be "That Devil Forrest", the life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, "Jubal", the life and times of general Jubal Early, and "The Marble Man", about the cult of Robert E. Lee's invincibility.

What are some of your favorite biographies?

As an aside, I want to read a good, comprehensive biography of Lincoln, but there are more written about him than any other figure in American history. I don't even know where to begin. Can anyone recommend one they liked, and say why they liked it?
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post #2 of 13
1/16/07 at 10:51pm
I have a bunch on my shelf which I should read, but I haven't gotten around to. The Pulitzer Prize winning 'American Prometheus,' about Robert Oppenheimer, is one.

My favorite, though, is an obvious one, and that's Merle Secrest's "Stephen Sondheim: A Life."
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post #3 of 13
1/17/07 at 11:28am
The easy answer for me would be Cash: The Autobiography by Johnny Cash.

I also thoroughly enjoyed The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. It is the biography of Eustace Conway, an extreme naturalist that resides in the North Carolina mountains.
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post #4 of 13
1/17/07 at 12:37pm
Perhaps an obvious response, but I'll throw out "John Adams" by David McCullough. It's an excellent character study and depiction of the era, but it's at its finest when it discusses the complex relationship between Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

I'd also recommend "The Rasputin Files" by Edvard Radzinsky.
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post #5 of 13
1/17/07 at 12:40pm
On a lighter note, really enjoyed Namath by Mark Kriegel.
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post #6 of 13
1/17/07 at 12:46pm
I thoroughly enjoyed Jackie Chan's autobiography.

I'm now reading the updated version of Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation by Phillip Norman and it's quite good.
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post #7 of 13
1/17/07 at 2:39pm
Hammett: A Life at the Edge by William F. Nolan. Best biography of a writer I've ever read.

Big Bosoms and Squars Jaws: Russ Meyer King of the Sex Films by Jimmy McDonough. Of all the Meyer books to come along so far this one is by far the most entertaining and insightful.
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post #8 of 13
1/17/07 at 2:44pm
Yeager
I love that book. I have to admit I have read it a few times.
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post #9 of 13
1/17/07 at 6:25pm
Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie
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post #10 of 13
1/17/07 at 7:40pm
Peter Guralnick's Elvis bios are fantastic.
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post #11 of 13
1/17/07 at 8:41pm
Dylan's Chronicles is pretty cool.
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post #12 of 13
1/17/07 at 10:02pm
It took me a while but both books on TR by Edmumd Morris.
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post #13 of 13
1/18/07 at 1:53am
I adore Patrick Mulligan's "Robert Altman: Jumping Off a Cliff". The author extracts elements worth admiring but often ignored from all of the Master's films that were covered, and delves deeper into the subjects of unmade projects and working methods better than any other biography of a filmmaker that I can think of. Pity that it hasn't been updated since it was published in 1989, but at nearly 600 pages, it will placate one well until Mulligan revisits it.


I've been dying to read Jonathan Coe's biography of B.S. Johnson, "Like a Fiery Elephant" and that Oppenheimer book that won a Pulitzer.
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