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Old 01-03-2010, 10:25 PM
 
Location: Texas
15,893 posts, read 18,234,485 times
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The best one I have ever read is an autobiography.

Katharine Graham's "Personal History" won the Pulitzer in 1998.

Graham was the publisher of The Washington Post and she wrote an extremely interesting autobiography. She was a woman of letters and her writing style was graceful but also packed a punch with a lot of the info she relayed. "Personal History" is one of my favorite books of all time.

One more I might mention is "Miss America, 1945, Bess Myerson's Own Story" by Susan Dworkin. Very interesting. After winning the crown she was scheduled to perform on the the piano (she was a concert level pianist) at a country club on Long Island. When she arrived they would not allow her to enter because she was Jewish. The book is chock full of interesting episodes and some very disgusting ones, too, like the L.I. country club fiasco.
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Old 01-03-2010, 10:35 PM
 
Location: Blankity-blank!
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"The Banquet Years" by Richard Shattuck. Short biographies of Henri Rousseau (painter); Erik Satie (composer); Guillaume Appolinaire (poet); Alfred Jarry (author). About the impact they had on the Belle Epoque, Paris during the 1890s. For me it was a book that changed my head. I researched each of the individuals and their works. Also, I wished to have been there at that time.
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Old 01-04-2010, 09:21 AM
 
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I really liked Truman by David McCullough; the LBJ trilogy by Robert Caro (I think he's working on a 4th volume) and Nelson Mandela's autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom, I think it's called.
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Old 01-04-2010, 01:05 PM
 
Location: Piedmont NC
4,596 posts, read 11,421,173 times
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I'm always looking for good nonfiction -- biography, autobiography, accounts of periods in history, etc. Sometimes, I'll get on some kick because of a movie -- I caught Johnny Depp in The Libertine one night on tv, late, and it made me wonder if there had been such a fellow. There was. I found the biography, which made for interesting reading, and then because the time period was during the reign of Charles II and The Restoration, I read about the British monarch and the time period. That led to reading about the theater, and some of the actors and actresses of the time, and so on and so on. . .

Anything I've read by McCullough, I've enjoyed. Graham's autobiography would appeal to me, as would Bess Myerson's work, and the others mentioned here.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Alison Weir's biographies are also good, if you've not tried one. I enjoyed her account of both Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Elizabeth I.

Another fun read is Margaret George's 'autobiography' of Henry VIII, with comments by Henry's fool, Will Somers.
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Old 01-04-2010, 01:11 PM
 
Location: Texas
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Another good one is J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun.

It is a pseudo-autobiography. You've probably seen the movie. It follows the book fairly well but there are some major differences.

It's an excellent book.

Ballard was an interesting character and a prolific writer.
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Old 01-04-2010, 04:56 PM
 
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If you want a decent one for a kid (or you don't mind a quick read) I loved The Endless Steppe. by Esther Hautzig.

She was a Jew from Poland sent to Siberia to live out the war in poverty with her family...very intriguing..I loved it as a kid. Re-read it recently...

The Endless Steppe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Old 01-05-2010, 05:59 AM
 
Location: Oxford, England
13,032 posts, read 24,564,888 times
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"Timebends" by Arthur Miller , my favourite playwright with Chekov and a literary God of mine
"The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind " by William Kamkwamba
"Zola - a life" by Frederick Brown

I also second J.G. Ballard's "Empire of the Sun"
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Old 01-08-2010, 01:23 PM
 
Location: Victoria TX
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"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter, is not properly a biography, but is based on the works and thought processes of the three great thinkers, and is a very important classic.
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Old 01-16-2010, 01:59 PM
 
Location: Marion County, FL
1,288 posts, read 2,883,531 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
To parallel the other thread, what biographies did you enjoy reading that were about non-entertainmentn figures?
Since I'm a huge horse racing fan and baseball fan, I enjoyed books about famous racehorses, and well as books about former Yankee players.

Then there's Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, which I read way back when I was 15. I inherited my father's copy when he passed away.
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Old 01-16-2010, 02:01 PM
 
Location: Marion County, FL
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueWillowPlate View Post
I loved Tracy Kidder's House. Basically it is the biography of the birth of a new home, and all of the hopes, thoughts, plans and physical construction that go into it.
Fantastic book. I read it when it was first published in mass-market, and recently purchased a used copy just to read it again.
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