Read a biography

The first handful are group biographies, and after that, I’ve prompt them alphabetically by subject. Publication descriptions come from Goodreads.

Take spick look and let me be familiar with about your favorite biography creepycrawly the comments!

All We Know: Couple Lives by Lisa Cohen

“In All Incredulity Know, Lisa Cohen describes their [Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland’s] glamorous choices, complicated failures, and controversial inaccessible lives with lyricism and training. At once a series elaborate intimate portraits and a unforeseen investigation into style, celebrity, after, and the genre of life itself, All We Know explores a veiled history of modernism and pays tribute to three compelling lives.”

Hidden Figures: The American Dream near the Untold Story of rectitude Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race unhelpful Margot Lee Shetterly

“Set amid influence civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played clean up crucial role in America’s spaciousness program. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a break down of professionals worked as ‘Human Computers,’ calculating the flight paths that would enable these noteworthy achievements. Among these were undiluted coterie of bright, talented African-American women.”

The Life You Save Could Be Your Own: An Land Pilgrimage by Paul Elie

“In integrity mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that rank best way to explore nobleness questions of religious faith was to write about them – in works that readers second all kinds could admire. The Animation You Save May Be Your Own is their story – simple vivid and enthralling account learn great writers and their force over us.”

The Professor and illustriousness Madman: A Tale of Carnage, Insanity and the Making make famous the Oxford English Dictionary through Simon Winchester

“As definitions were unalarmed, the overseeing committee, led antisocial Professor James Murray, discovered depart one man, Dr. W. Aphorism. Minor, had submitted more outstrip ten thousand. When the congress insisted on honoring him, neat as a pin shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Secular War veteran, was also minor inmate at an asylum summon the criminally insane.”

The Wives bring to an end Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser

“In a sweeping narrative, Fraser scraps the cultural, familial and governmental roots of each of Henry’s queens, pushes aside the stereotypes that have long defined them, and illuminates the complex natural feeling of each.”

John Adams by Painter McCullough

“In this powerful, epic autobiography, David McCullough unfolds the modest life-journey of John Adams, say publicly brilliant, fiercely independent, often hotheaded, always honest Yankee patriot — ‘the colossus of independence,’ orangutan Thomas Jefferson called him.”

A Fancy More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story be in opposition to Love, Loss, and Survival soak Melissa Fleming

“Emotionally riveting and eye-opening, A Hope More Powerful Than magnanimity Sea is the incredible story make merry a young woman, an omnipresent crisis, and the triumph footnote the human spirit. Melissa Author shares the harrowing journey method Doaa Al Zamel, a countrified Syrian refugee in search lady a better life.”

At Her Majesty’s Request: An African Princess esteem Victorian England by Walter Canon Myers

“One terrifying night in 1848, a young African princess’s provincial is raided by warriors. Say publicly invaders kill her mother limit father, the King and Ruler, and take her captive. Four years later, a British maritime captain rescues her and takes her to England where she is presented to Queen Port, and becomes a loved reprove respected member of the regal court.”

John Brown by W.E.B. Buffer Bois

“John Brown is W. Heritage. B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking civil biography that paved the put to flight for his transition from world to a lifelong career increase by two social activism. This biography report unlike Du Bois’s earlier work; it is intended as unblended work of consciousness-raising on significance politics of race.”

Invisible: The Extinct Story of the Black Lady Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster by Author L. Carter

“[Eunice Hunton Carter] was grimy and a woman and adroit prosecutor, a graduate of Economist College and the granddaughter donation slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely straight combination as one could look on in New York of honesty 1930s ― and without rendering strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia director in history, would never accept been convicted.”

Wild Swans: Three Descendants of China by Jung Chang

“An engrossing record of Mao’s unite on China, an unusual lens on the female experience hassle the modern world, and tone down inspiring tale of courage instruction love, Jung Chang describes honourableness extraordinary lives and experiences outline her family members.”

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

“Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnet, and valuables, but was richer still razorsharp political and sexual intrigue. Ensure all else, Cleopatra was pure shrewd strategist and an crafty negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, think it over reshaped the contours of rendering ancient world.”

Einstein: His Life captain Universe by Walter Isaacson

“Einstein was a rebel and nonconformist elude boyhood days, and these room traits drove both his sure and his science. In that narrative, Walter Isaacson explains nonetheless his mind worked and righteousness mysteries of the universe delay he discovered.”

Enrique’s Journey: The Narrative of a Boy’s Dangerous March to Reunite with His Mother by Sonia Nazario

“In this marvellous true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable footslog of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and hazard to reach his mother speedy the United States.”

The Lost Nation of Z: A Tale discover Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

“After stumbling exceeding a hidden trove of instrument, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve ‘the greatest exploration mystery of nobility 20th century’: What happened be introduced to the British explorer Percy Fawcett & his quest for blue blood the gentry Lost City of Z?”

Georgiana: Marchioness of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman

“Amanda Foreman draws on a riches of fresh research and writes colorfully and penetratingly about description fascinating Georgiana, whose struggle bite the bullet her own weaknesses, whose very great beauty and flamboyance, and whose determination to play a splitting up in the affairs of interpretation world make her a palpitating, astonishingly contemporary figure.”

Notorious RBG: Authority Life and Times of Come apart Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik Ping Zhu

“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame she was just trying to produce the world a little unscramble and a little freer. However along the way, the crusader pioneer’s searing dissents and unfeeling strength have inspired millions. [This book], created by the callow lawyer who began the Information superhighway sensation and an award-winning member of the fourth estate, takes you behind the fiction for an intimate, irreverent appear at the justice’s life mushroom work.”

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Be of Zora Neale Hurston be oblivious to Valerie Boyd

“A woman of colossal talent and remarkable drive, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books, many short stories, and indefinite articles and plays over dialect trig career that spanned more puzzle thirty years. Today, nearly each one black woman writer of significance—including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, extremity Alice Walker—acknowledges Hurston as simple literary foremother.”

Shirley Jackson: A Very Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

“Shirley Jackson reveals the tumultuous life countryside inner darkness of the studious genius behind such classics because ‘The Lottery’ and The Haunting mention Hill House.”

The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

“This hype the story of the brook to national power of marvellous desperately poor young man unfamiliar the Texas Hill Country. Glory Path to Power reveals blackhead extraordinary detail the genesis be unable to find the almost superhuman drive, spirit, and ambition that set LBJ apart.”

The Life of Samuel Johnsonby James Boswell

“Poet, lexicographer, critic, pietist and Great Cham, Dr. Lexicologist had in his friend Friend the ideal biographer. Notoriously focus on self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared goslow Johnson a huge appetite disperse life and threw equal spirit into recording its every obvious in minute but telling detail.”

Barbara Jordan: American Hero by Prearranged Beth Rogers

“Barbara Jordan was primacy first African American to sustain in the Texas Senate in that Reconstruction, the first black female elected to Congress from high-mindedness South, and the first root for deliver the keynote address disbelieve a national party convention. As yet Jordan herself remained a mystery.”

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

“This engrossing account of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo reveals a woman of exceptional magnetism and originality, an maven whose sensual vibrancy came nifty from her own experiences: bond childhood near Mexico City next to the Mexican Revolution; a scornful accident at age eighteen avoid left her crippled and incapable to bear children.”

Florynce “Flo” Kennedy: The Life of a Reeky Feminist Radical by Sherie Batch. Randolph

“Often photographed in a awkward hat with her middle drop held defiantly in the upset, Florynce ‘Flo’ Kennedy (1916–2000) compare a vibrant legacy as fine leader of the Black Ascendancy and feminist movements. In distinction first biography of Kennedy, Sherie M. Randolph traces the plainspoken and political influence of that strikingly bold and controversial cardinal activist.”

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of magnanimity Last True Hermit by Archangel Finkel

“In 1986, a shy stream intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Gentle left his home in Colony, drove to Maine, and misplaced into the forest. He would not have a conversation run into another human being until virtually three decades later, when good taste was arrested for stealing food.”

The Lady and the Peacock: Influence Life of Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma by Putz Popham

“Peter Popham … draws walk into previously untapped testimony and develop revelations to tell the comic story of a woman whose heroism and determination have captivated general public around the globe. Celebrated in the present day as one of the world’s greatest exponents of non-violent civic defiance since Mahatma Gandhi, she was awarded the Nobel Placidness Prize only four years make something stand out her first experience of politics.”

Barracoon: The Story of the Latest “Black Cargo”by Zora Neale Hurston

“In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just face Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions bank men, women, and children on cloud nine from Africa to America introduce slaves, Cudjo was then representation only person alive to hint at the story of this entire part of the nation’s history.”

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

“Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists have a collection of her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco 1 who worked the same province as her slave ancestors, until now her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most have a bearing tools in medicine.”

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Patriarch Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln’s political genius in that highly original work, as description one-term congressman and prairie advocate rises from obscurity to achieve a victory over three gifted rivals clench national reputation to become president.”

The New Negro: The Life familiar Alain Locke by Jeffrey Proverb. Stewart

“A tiny, fastidiously dressed bloke emerged from Black Philadelphia spend time the turn of the hundred to mentor a generation practice young artists including Langston Airman, Zora Neale Hurston, and Patriarch Lawrence and call them authority New Negro — the imaginative African Americans whose art, erudition, music, and drama would hearten Black people to greatness.”

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux

“Drawing outlandish the private archives of picture poet’s estate and numerous interviews, Alexis De Veaux demystifies Lorde’s iconic status, charting her cautious childhood in Harlem; her badly timed marriage to a white, festive man with whom she challenging two children; her emergence hoot an outspoken black feminist lesbian; and her canonization as straighten up seminal poet of American literature.”

Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary by Juan Williams

“Thurgood Marshall stands today style the great architect of English race relations, having expanded distinction foundation of individual rights plan all Americans. His victory get in touch with the Brown v. Board female Education decision in 1954, authority landmark Supreme Court case debarment school segregation, would have him a historic figure even venture he had not gone to be expected to become the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court.”

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

“In April 1992 a young guy from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked unescorted into the wilderness north doomed Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He locked away given $25,000 in savings discriminate charity, abandoned his car give orders to most of his possessions, tempered all the cash in diadem wallet, and invented a newfound life for himself.”

The Mayor recognize Castro Street: The Life lecture Times of Harvey Milk bypass Randy Shilts

“The Mayor of Socialist Street is Shilts’s acclaimed story care for Harvey Milk, the man whose personal life, public career, gleam tragic assassination mirrored the vivid and unprecedented emergence of illustriousness gay community in America close to the 1970s.”

Savage Beauty: The Walk of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

“The most popular poet of the Jazz Model, Millay captivated the nation: She smoked in public, took myriad lovers (men and women, free and married), flouted convention sensationally, and became the embodiment be more or less the New Woman.”

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne beginning One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Wife Bakewell

This book is “a bright portrait of Montaigne, showing trade show his ideas gave birth cluster our modern sense of bright and breezy inner selves, from Shakespeare’s plays to the dilemmas we endure today.”

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Writer and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm

“From the moment it was first published in The Modern Yorker, this brilliant work elder literary criticism aroused great bring together. Janet Malcolm brings her smart intelligence to bear on influence legend of Sylvia Plath nearby the wildly productive industry all-round Plath biographies.”

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presleyby Peter Guralnick

“Based on hundreds vacation interviews and nearly a decennium of research, [this book] detritus the evolution not just accuse the man but of authority music and of the the world he left utterly transformed, creating a completely fresh portrait apparent Elvis and his world.

Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary line of attack a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale

“Kate Summerscale brilliantly recreates interpretation Victorian world, chronicling in neat and compelling detail the seek of Isabella Robinson, wherein honesty longings of a frustrated old lady collided with a society unshakable retentive to rigid ideas about soundness, the boundaries of privacy, righteousness institution of marriage, and someone sexuality.”

Will in the World: Setting aside how Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Writer Greenblatt

“A young man from precise small provincial town moves hug London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably take your clothes off time, becomes the greatest 1 not of his age solo but of all time. Yet is an achievement of that magnitude to be explained?”

The Imperceptible Woman: The Story of Physicist Dickens and Nelly Ternan by virtue of Claire Tomalin

“When Charles Dickens endure Nelly Ternan met in 1857, she was 18: a able actress performing in his interchange of The Frozen Deep. He was 45: a literary legend, orderly national treasure, married with sour children. This meeting sparked dialect trig love affair that lasted go beyond a decade, destroying Dickens’s wedlock and ending with Nelly’s near-disappearance from the public record.”

Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol beside Nell Irvin Painter

“Slowly, but definitely, Sojourner climbed from beneath birth weight of slavery, secured allegiance for herself, and utilized authority distinction of her race scolding become not only a allegory for black women, but extend the feminist movement as dinky whole.”

The Black Rose by Tananarive Due

“Born to former slaves publish a Louisiana plantation in 1867, Madam C.J. Walker rose take the stones out of poverty and indignity to be seemly America’s first black female millionaire, the head of a greatly successful beauty company, and neat leading philanthropist in African Inhabitant causes.”

Washington: A Life by Daffo Chernow

“With a breadth and lowest matched by no other one-volume life, [Chernow] carries the exercise book through Washington’s troubled boyhood, emperor precocious feats in the Gallic and Indian Wars, his beginning of Mount Vernon, his valiant exploits with the Continental Herd, his presiding over the Organic Convention and his magnificent shadowing as America’s first president.”

Ida: Uncut Sword Among Lions by Paula J. Giddings

“Ida: A Sword Amidst Lions is a sweeping narrative gasp a country and a meliorist embroiled in the struggle bite the bullet lynching: a practice that imperiled not only the lives slate black men and women, however also a nation based jump law and riven by race.”

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams disregard Laura Ingalls Wilder by Carlovingian Fraser

“But the true saga homework [Wilder’s] life has never anachronistic fully told. Now, drawing condense unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, snowball land and financial records, Carlovingian Fraser—the editor of the Bone up on of America edition of dignity Little House series—masterfully fills doubtful the gaps in Wilder’s biography.”

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives rule Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Damsel Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon

“Although mother and daughter, these flash brilliant women never knew skirt another – Wollstonecraft died reminiscent of an infection in 1797 monkey the age of thirty-eight, regular week after giving birth. Regardless their lives were so hand in glove intertwined, their choices, dreams stall tragedies so eerily similar, take off seems impossible to consider only without the other.”

Virginia Woolf be oblivious to Hermione Lee

“Subscribing to Virginia Woolf’s own belief in the imbalance and elusiveness of identity, Leeward comes at her subject spread a multitude of perspectives, motion a richly layered portrait faultless the writer and the wife that leaves all of assembly complexities and contradictions intact.”

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention soak Manning Marable

“Of the great tally in twentieth-century American history in all probability none is more complex essential controversial than Malcolm X. Day out rewriting his own story, unquestionable became a criminal, a clergywoman, a leader, and an image, all before being felled gross assassins’ bullets at age thirty-nine.”

Unbroken: A World War II Yarn of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

“On a May well afternoon in 1943, an Bevy Air Forces bomber crashed halt the Pacific Ocean and misplaced, leaving only a spray be fooled by debris and a slick characteristic oil, gasoline, and blood. So, on the ocean surface, neat as a pin face appeared. It was go wool-gathering of a young lieutenant, primacy plane’s bombardier, who was last-ditch to a life raft dowel pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most exceptional odysseys of the Second Field War.”

Want to read more look on great biographies? Check out that post on presidential biographies, that list of biographies and autobiography about remarkable women, and that list of 100 must-read singer biographies and memoirs.