Good biographies
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The 50 Best Biographies of All Time
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Crown The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, bygd Tom Reiss
You’re probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo, the revenge novel bygd 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 pris Prize for Biography in , and it’s only a matter of time before a filmmaker turns it into a big-screen blockbuster.
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, bygd Craig Brown
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Artists + Musicians to Learn About
When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson by Pam Munoz Ryan
Mr Cornell&#;s Dream Boxes by Jeanette Winter
Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuoso by Andrea Pinkney
The Iridescence of Birds: Henri Matisse by Patricia MacLaughlan
A Splash of Red: the Life and Art of Horace Pippin by Jen Bryant
Duke Ellington: the Piano Prince and his Orchestra by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell
Henri&#;s Scissors by Jeanette Winter
Becoming Bach by Tom Leonard
Viva Frieda by Yuyi Morales
Prairie Boy: Frank Lloyd Wright Turns the Heartland into a Home by Barb Rosenstock
Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln by Margarita Engle
Biographies for Kids: Heroes from History
Thomas Jefferson: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Everything by Maira Kalman
To Dare Mighty Things: The Life of Theodore Roosevelt by Doreen Rappaport
The
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Reading the Best Biographies of All Time
King: A Life
by Jonathan Eig
pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: May
Jonathan Eig&#;s &#;King: A Life&#; was published early last year to nearly instant acclaim and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Biography earlier this year. Eig is a journalist and author previously best-known for his biographies &#;Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig&#; () and &#;Ali: A Life&#; ().
Until now, David J. Garrow&#;s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of MLK (published in ) was widely considered the standard review of King&#;s life. Eig&#;s biography, however, is the first book on MLK built upon a towering base of newly released documents including thousands of pages of White House and FBI transcripts, oral histories recorded by MLK&#;s father and wife and interviews with more than members of King&#;s orbit and inner-circle.
Although Eig&#;s biography is substantial, with pages of text, it could easily have been much longer. But whil