Anyone have any good biography or autobiography recommendations?
Anyone have any good biography or autobiography recommendations? Preferably of people in history rather than a random memoir. Also preferably not giant books. I’d like to get through several and my reading time is limited. Thank you in advance!
Letter to Jimmy by Alain Mabanckou is a lovely biography of/tribute to James Baldwin
“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” by Richard Feynman. He. Is. Hilarious.
Also “Kitchen Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain.
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
“Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France” by Leonie Frieda
Absolutely fascinating biography of a woman who was wife to one king and mother to three more, and how fought to keep Franci in one piece for decades.
She was one hell of a powerful woman.
Hunger by Roxanne Gay is on all the best books of 2017 lists: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22813605-hunger?from_search=true
The Butchering Art is fascinating. The bio of Joseph Lister and his campaign to transform surgery. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33931044-the-butchering-art?from_search=true
I loved A Disappearance In Damascus. The story of an American journalist who risks her life to find and save the translator who was helping her write a story on Iraqi refugees. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23834574-a-disappearance-in-damascus?from_search=true
A Personal Story. Autobiography of Katharine Graham. About her life and the Washington Post release if the Pentagon Papers ( movie The Post based on it)
On Writing by Stephen King
I’ve read half a dozen or so from this series and enjoyed each one
http://americanpresidentsseries.com/booklist.asp
Autobiography of Yogi
These are both great books and small enough to read quickly! Both about people imprisoned during the Holocaust.
This is excellent.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3789698-the-woman-behind-the-new-deal Frances Perkins, The Woman Behind the New Deal
April 7, 1944 — Alarm sirens announce the escape of two Slovak prisoners from a heavily-guarded camp in Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, succeed and flee more than one hundred miles to give the first graphic and exact descriptions of the operations at Auschwitz, which up to that point had only been heard about as unverifiable rumours. Their report, first punished in Swiss and then in the western press, made the reality of Nazi annihilation camps explicit and unequivocal to Pope Pius XII, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
I read his “I Escaped from Auschwitz”, which I think maybe an expanded or rewritten version of this book. It was amazing—heartbreaking and uplifting all at once. One of the few books that was passed around our family until my parents, grandparents, husband, and sister had all read it. So glad I saw a short PBS special about their escape, which sparked my interest and led me to the book.
I read it as i escaped Auschwitz too
I liked Claire Harman’s biography of Charlotte Brontë, and Julia Baird’s biography of Queen Victoria.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16073198-rav-kook?ac=1&from_search=true