Monday, May 26th, 2008...8:05 am

Favorite Biographies?

A week ago I was chatting with Matt about biographies.  He mentioned reading one on Walt Disney.  Do you have a favorite biography that you would recommend?  Note that I’m not interested in actors, athletes or musicians.  Everyone else is fair game.

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4 Comments

  • Joe Crawford
    May 26th, 2008 at 10:50 am

    Genius about Richard Feynman is a good one. One I’ve heard about over the years consistently is The Power Broker about Robert Moses. If I were forced to pick a “next biography” to read I’d read that one. I’m all about tech books right now.

    I’ve read several about Frank Zappa, though as a musician, he doesn’t count. :-)

  • Aviva
    May 26th, 2008 at 5:57 pm

    Lincoln’s biography, Albert Speer’s biography - the architect of the
    3rd reich, Ava Gardener’s biography (I know, actress, but really
    really good) and Truman by David McCullough are all amazing according
    to Craig.

  • Jenn, aka JeSais
    May 26th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

    Not exactly biographies… in the neighborhood, however, are these memoirs: “This Boys Life” and “In Pharaoh’s Army” by Tobias Wolff.
    The first recounts Wolff’s younger years… the latter his time in Vietnam. The writing is stunning.
    Also a recent favorite, Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.” sparse yet emotionally laden writing about losing her husband while her daughter was critically ill.

  • Matt
    May 28th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    I’m primarily interested in biographies on entrepreneurs and leaders, particularly those who really struggled early on, hence, Disney. I’ve read a few on Benjamin Franklin that were good. Also, American Sphinx about Thomas Jefferson was good. Hamilton’s Blessing about Alexander Hamilton and the origin of our national debt, etc was also very good. Finally, there’s a good one on Schwarzenegger called Fantastic or something like that, I think … I read it about 2 years ago … pretty good …

    Some other subjects I liked: Einstein, Dr. Seuss - can’t remember the titles.

    I’m a big fan of John Lewis, so I found Walking With The Wind to be very good. Then, of course, there’s Last Train to Memphis but you said no actors/musicians (although we all know that Elvis was much more than that - demigod really).

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