Skip to main content

7 Biography Everyone Should Read

A Moveable Feast


Author: Ernest Hemingway

It’s an auto biography or memoir by American author Ernest Hemingway. The book is about his years as a young, struggling, non-native journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. A Moveable Feast was first published in 1964, three years after Hemingway died; and it narrates Hemingway’s apprenticeship as a young writer and his marriage with his first wife, Hadley Richardson.


Key details: Hemingway provides specific addresses of apartments, bars, cafe, and hotels; and many of these can still be found in Paris today. Along with Hemingway, other notable persons also featured in the book like Sylvia Beach, Hilaire Belloc, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and many more.



Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times


Author: Thomas Hauser

Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times is an award-winning biography of the boxer Muhammad Ali. In the ring Ali was indisputably The Greatest and so does his biography. His combination of speed and grace was unprecedented to the world of boxing.


Key details: The powerful account of the Thrilla In Manila; that you can almost hear the punches and can see Joe Frazier’s gumshield flying out of the ring.



Jackson Pollock: An American Saga


Author: Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith

It’s a biography of an expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. The book was considered ‘well-researched‘ by the Publishers Weekly and Library Journal and won Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1991. The authors have done remarkable study of the troubled life and ideologies of Jackson Pollock.


Key details:  The complex relationship between Pollock and art critic Clement Greenberg.



The Moon’s A Balloon


Author: David Niven

It’s a best-selling autobiography of British actor David Niven published in 1971. The book is a funny yet tragic account of actor’s early life. It narrates everything from the loss of his father to his natural knowledge of leading a good life. Niven wrote its sequel Bring on the Empty Horses in 1975.


Key details: The tales of Soho girl named Nessie, and Niven’s hell-raising days with Errol Flynn.



Darwin: The Life Of A Tortured Evolutionist


Author: Adrian Desmond and James Moore

It’s an account of controversial life of Darwin whose theories of evolution and natural selection went from belief to accepted wisdom in one generation. The book portrays Victorian society, Darwin’s research journey and discoveries that almost killed him through overwork.


Key details: Darwin’s gambling and gluttony at Cambridge. And how he used his work to fight against slavery.



Churchill: A Life


Author: Martin Gilbert

Sir Winston Churchill was one of the greatest Britons. He was Army officer, Nobel Prize winning writer, artist and the Prime Minister. As an official biographer and Oxford history scholar, Martin Gilbert wrote an eight book long epic; then boiled it down to this single volume version.


Key details: How Churchill handled literal enemies in wartime, powered by only Whisky, Cigars and absolute force of personality; and the way how he drove-off the depression.



Somebody: The Reckless Life And Remarkable Career Of Marlon Brando


Author: Stefan Kanfer

Marlon Brando’s life was series of ups and downs. Brando inspired a generation of actors during his golden period. He went in the wilderness due to bad role selection, weight gain and his refusal to learn new lines. He made amazing comeback with The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris in 1972. Then again continued his eccentric decay in career.


Key details: The depiction of young Brando with Russell, a pet raccoon, roaming nocturnal in New York.






Read about the authors here:

Read book reviews here:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GEORGE ORWELL

English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. Born: 25 June 1903 Motihari, Bengal Presidency, British India. Died: 21 January 1950, University College Hospital, London, England. Birth Name: Eric Arthur Blair Pen Name: George Orwell Early Life Born on June 25, 1903, Eric Arthur Blair who later decided on George Orwell as his pen name was the second child of British parents Richard Walmesly Blair and Ida Mabel Limonzin who then resided in Indian Bengal where Richard was an employee of the British Civil Services. George Orwell created some of the sharpest satirical fiction of the 20th century with such works as Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was a man of strong opinions who addressed some of the major political movements of his times, including imperialism, fascism and communism. The son of a British civil servant, George Orwell spent his initial days in India, where his father was stationed. His mother brought him and his older sister, Marjorie, to England about a year aft...
Post a Comment
Read more

11 Short Classic Book That You Can Read In A Single Sitting

To some people reading classic literature is a big challenge – an investment of time and mental energy. Usually classics are a big fat books full of wisdom and philosophies. However, here are few examples of short classic book that you can read in a day or in a single sitting; yet they are equally meaningful, emotionally challenging and beautifully written. The Outsider Author: Albert Camus This novel by French author, published in 1942, is often cited as Camus’ example of philosophy of the absurd and existentialism. The title character is Meursault, a French-Algerian man, who attends his mother’s funeral. He killed an Arab man in French Algiers after a few days of funeral. The Arab man was involved in a conflict with a friend. Meursault is sentenced to death after trial. The story of the book is divided in two parts. One part illustrates Meursault’s views before the murder and another after the murder. This short classic book ends as a meditation on the meaninglessness of existence. T...
2 comments
Read more

You will never lose interest in these books with unreliable narrator

Unreliable Narrator When the narrator is unreliable and can’t be trusted, we, the reader have to think for ourselves to figure out the story. We’ll evaluate the situations and characters critically in the book to figure out what’s going on. Sometime we’ll draw our own conclusions and judge the characters as the author didn’t do it for us. There are so many reasons behind narrator’s reliability. Sometimes they are consciously and intentionally lying, sometimes they misunderstood the situations, and perhaps they’re drunk, or amnesiac, or suffer from some other conditions that keep us doubting their version of story. (We’re all unreliable narrators, because our version of any events or occurrence or incidents is just one of many. But that’s not what we are looking here.) Some stories are too ambiguous that they don’t resolve their plots. Readers reach to the final page without the knowledge of what’s actually happening or happened. It’s on readers how they fill the blanks. For few of us t...
5 comments
Read more