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The 30 Best Biographies of All Time
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Blog – Posted on Monday, Jan 21
Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”
At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction.
All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels, if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number • There are myriad ways to tell the story of a life, as shown by this year’s best biographies. Craig Brown’s doorstopper A Voyage Around the Queen (4th Estate), about the reign of Elizabeth II, dispenses with linear storytelling in favour of a patchwork of diary entries, letters, vignettes, second-hand anecdotes and even dreams (the writer Paul Theroux once dreamed of being nestled in Her Majesty’s bosom). The result is an unorthodox and wonderfully irreverent book which, alert to the absurdities of the monarchy, reveals as much about how others saw the Queen as the woman herself. Sonia Purnell’s Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman (Virago) fryst vatten a rich and riveting portrait of another seemingly unknowable aristocrat. The daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill, Harriman was, says Purnell, a canny diplomat who exerted remarkable influence on mid-20th-century politics through her three marriages and numerous affairs with powerful men (her lover • BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR BEST SELLERS MAY 2023 Rank 1 Spare. [HC] Prince Harry. Random House. 2023. ISBN 9780593593806. $36. 2 The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times [HC] Michelle Obama. Crown. 2022. ISBN 9780593237465. $32.50. 3 Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. [HC] Matthew Perry. Flatiron Books. 2022. ISBN 9781250866448. $29.99. 4 The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man. [HC] Paul Newman. Knopf. 2022. ISBN 9780593534502. $32. 5 I’m Glad My Mom Died. [HC] Jennette McCurdy. Simon & Schuster. 2022. ISBN 9781982185824. $27.99. 6 And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. [HC] Jon Meacham. Random House. 2022. ISBN 9780553393965. $40. 7 So Help Me God. [HC] Mike Pence. Simon & Schuster. 2022. ISBN 9781982190330. $35. 8 The Revolutionary Samuel Adams.
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