Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, Camille Laurens’ intense and personal narrative study of Edgar Degas’s famous sculpture of a young ballet dancer. When I finished reading
A Marriage Out West The Romance of Anthropology. Subtitled “Theresa and Frank Russell’s Explorations in Arizona, 1900-1903,” A Marriage Out West analyzes the Russell’s 1900
DEMAGOGUE, THE LIFE AND LONG SHADOW OF SENATOR JOE MCCARTHY One of my first memories of TV occurred during the summer of 1954 when I
REBEL CINDERELLA Adam Hochschild renews my faith in biographers and the art of biography. Rebel Cinderella models the very best of this sort of intellectual
GERTRUDE STEIN HAS ARRIVED In 1933-34, just after Gertrude Stein published The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas to great acclaim, the writer and her faithful
SWEET PROMISED LAND AND ROBERT LAXALT, THE STORY OF A STORYTELLER Aside from Mark Twain’s Roughing It, Robert Laxalt’s, Sweet Promised Land (1957, 2007) is
THE BONANZA KING: JOHN MACKAY AND THE BATTLE OVER THE GREATEST RICHES IN THE AMERICAN WEST Gregory Couch’s The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the
LOVING ELEANOR AND WHITE HOUSES Blanche Wiesen Cook’s three-volume definitive biography of Eleanor Roosevelt inspired both Susan Wittig Albert and Amy Bloom to write novels
GRANT After reading Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, I had some trepidation about opening his newest book, Grant. I didn’t think he could surpass Hamilton (see
PRAIRIE FIRES: THE AMERICAN DREAMS OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER When I saw a publication notice for Fraser’s Prairie Fires, I was immediately intrigued. Put simply,
WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? Alan Light’s biography of Nina Simone rhetorically asks, What Happened, Miss Simone? The answer turns out to be a complicated one.
HIDDEN FIGURES: THE STORY OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN WHO HELPED WIN THE SPACE RACE I have always argued that equal education for all should be
VINCENT AND THEO: THE VAN GOGH BROTHERS Deborah Heiligman has written an extraordinarily creative biography. Not only does Vincent and Theo portray the van Gogh
VICTORIA THE QUEEN: AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY OF THE WOMAN WHO RULED AN EMPIRE The inevitable question I am asked: is the TV series recently aired
THE BLUE TATTOO: THE STORY OF OLIVE OATMAN Margot Mifflin‘s The Blue Tattoo follows a long history of tales of Indian captivity. A True History
The Invention of Nature – Alexander von Humboldt’s New World Territorial Nevadans in the 19th century considered naming their new state-to-be Humboldt. Instead, the famous
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