Entertaining biographies
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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 • 50 You’re probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo, the 1844 revenge novel by Alexandre Dumas. But did you know it was based on the life of Dumas’s father, the mixed-race General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave? Thanks to Reiss’s masterful pacing and plotting, this rip-roaring biography of Thomas-Alexandre reads more like an adventure novel than a work of nonfiction. The Black Count won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2013, and it’s only a matter of time before a filmmaker turns it into a big-screen blockbuster. 4 • The celebrity memoir boom is here to stay: From Britney Spears to Prince Harry, Ina Garten to Cher, it seems like just about everyone is spilling their secrets via book deal. At their best, celebrity memoirs provide unusually candid portraits of the “real person” behind the public persona—and they don’t skimp on the dirty details. (At worst, they can be ghostwritten fluff.) A recent crop has erred on the side of revelatory: In the last year, Al Pacino let us in on his life from childhood in the South Bronx to his big break in ’70s Hollywood, while the long-gestating memoirs of Lisa Marie Presley came through as a posthumous release, written with daughter Riley Keough. Whether offering vibrant vignettes of iconic periods in time or shining a light on grief, explosive relationships, and the sinister underbelly of showbusiness, these books (and others) have given fans plenty to talk about—to say nothing of making rather good gifts. Ahead, Vogue rounds up the best of the genre for y
The 50 Best Biographies of All Time
Crown The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, bygd Tom Reiss