Rediscover the biography genre, one of the oldest, most significant and popular genres in literature.
Read about famous and eminent people, learn more about them, and sometimes be surprised. The subjects of other biographies in the display are people whose names you may never have heard of. There are individual biographies and collective biographies, such as family biographies.
Books presented in this display are the newest biographies in our digital collection, highly recommended in the press.
The following are a few titles that stand out, even among the other critically acclaimed books.
The subjects of the new biography from Adam Hochschild are political activist Rose Stokes and her idealistic upper-class reformer husband Graham Stokes, their magical love story, and marriage.
At the start of the 20th century the couple was among the Rich & Famous, often the subject of newspaper headlines, and their circle included the most notable and interesting people of their time.
Adam Hochschild is a journalist and nonfiction writer, known for his books on the social justice movement, such as King Leopold’s Ghost and Spain in Our Hearts.
This biography is a delight for baseball buffs, with the legendary baseball player Yogi Berra as its subject.
The sportswriter Jon Pessah gives a wide-ranging account of Berra’s career and his evolution into one of the greatest players, as well as his post-player careers as a team manager and a coach.
It is also a story of a human being, with all his triumphs and heartbreaks, overcoming obstacles.
The book is peppered with fun anecdotes of the golden era.
Fun fact: he coined some aphorisms, and eight of those Yogi-isms are in the famous book of Bartlett’s Quotations.
If you’ve seen the TV series The Crown, you will definitely recognize the main character of this book, Lady Glenconner, the maid of honor at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and the lady-in-waiting for Princess Margaret.
Sharing stories with the visiting actors preparing for their roles in The Crown inspired the book. You will read about the private lives of the royal family and society elite through the eyes of Lady Glenconner. You will learn about her private life and her family. Her sense of humor, which shines through her writing, gained much praise.
The book was selected as the Times (UK) Memoir of the Year.
This Oprah’s Book Club Pick is a biography of a family with 12 children, six of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the role the family played in helping scientists understand the illness.
It is also an authoritative look at the disease itself, and a record of evolution of thoughts on its biology and nature.
The book is based on very thorough research and multiple interviews with family members and close family friends.
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