Can anyone give me some suggestions on good autobiographies?
and give me a brief description of each book aswell please.
thanks.
(p.s Ghost Written ones are okay aswell.)
If you are into Georgia O’Keefe, the biography written by Laurie Lisle Portrait Of An Artist is very good.
It talks more than just her life in New Mexico and goes into her life outside there and her romance with her husband.
I love her sensual work so for me it was a book I read very quickly. Since I haven’t read in in several years, I really can’t give you a good summary. I plan on reading it again after I am done with Into Thin Air again.
I’m obsessed with aviation at the moment, and I just finished reading Bob Hoover’s autobiography, Forever Flying.
Hoover was a contemporary of Chuck Yeager’s, but seemed to have a lot more fun and be a much nicer person. Yeager says Hoover is the best stick & rudder pilot in the world, which says something. He flew combat, was a test pilot, and was arguably the best airshow performer of all time.
He performed incredible aerobatics in P-51 Mustangs, Sabre Jets, and the Shrike Commander (which wasn’t designed for aerobatics). His signature maneuver was to land the Mustang on one wheel, pull up, flip it over, and land it on the other wheel. Sounds like it would take a little practice to me.
Hoover describes getting out of many in-flight emergencies. Although he lived through them all, I can’t say I would want to fly with him very much. Seems like every damn plane he ever got into developed some problem that required heroics…
Very entertaining book, and I learned some good stuff about flying that I hope never to have to use!
Ulysess S. Grant, 18th U.S. President and General of the Union Army wrote what is considered one of the best ever memoirs. I have not read it.
Are you into science? Well, even if you’re not, either of the Richard Feynman autobiographies is excellent:
I really enjoyed Radical Son by David Horowitz. He grew up the son of active members of the American Communist party and he has a lot of first-hand accounts and insights into the communist presence in the U.S. in the middle part of the last century.
He also describes his membership in the Black Panthers, his campus activism at Berkeley (which led him to found one of the flagship publications of the New Left, Ramparts magazine.)
Of course, what makes the book fascinating are the forces and circumstances that influenced Horowitz into having “Second Thoughts” (his description) regarding his political philosophy.
I always find it interesting to learn about the reasons someone can undergo such a radical change, not just in political philosophy, but in their whole being. Like Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming one of the seminal voices of Christian thought. Or, C.S. Lewis, avowed athiest, becoming one of the leading Christian minds of the last 100 years.
If such things interest you, I heartily recommend Radical Son.
Soon to be a major motion picture, autobiography of Abbie Hoffman. It’s an interesting look into the “counterculture” of the 60s…also very entertainingly written. It’s a pretty quick read, and an eye-opener into a time of sweeping change in America.
If you expand the defintion to include memoirs, covering a certain period or chain of events in someone’s life, then:
Samurai! by Japan’s highest scoring surviving ace, Saburo Sakai. in the same vein, “Japanese Destroyer Captain”, by Japan’s greatest surviving destroyer captain, was a good read. Hara was his name.
Ditto on Feynmann, lot’s of fun.
William Manchester’s memoirs of being a marine infantryman in the Pacific.
I’m not sure I’ve ever read a full blown autobiography. I’m not sure if Feynmann’s counts.
Lots of good biographies… I’ll throw out some titles if you ask.
Charlie Chaplin’s My Autobiography seems to be out of print but you can find it second hand or in the library. I fond it one of the best. He tells how he started out as a kid from a poor family in England, his mother was insane, in an asylum. How he became famous and what Hollywood was like at the time. His marriages and the McCarthy witch-hunt which drove him out of the US. I found it extremely interesting.
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King.
This is one of my favorite memoirs. As well as the story of an interesting and intelligent woman, it’s a glimpse into the fifties that I found fascinating. At her college orientation in 1954, the college president actually tells the women in the crowd about the four to one male-female ratio, so that they can get their Mrs. degree right there! It made me want to gag, but also to a greater appreciation of women’s progress.
Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs by John Lydon. The autobiography of Johnny Rotten, lead singer of the Sex Pistols.
Angela’s Ashes and 'Tis by Frank McCourt
A Monk Swimming and Singing My Him Song by Malachy McCourt
I enjoyed all four of these books immensely. Both brothers lead interesting lives and I enjoyed seeing how their accounts of similar times and events differed.
Maya Angelou’s autobiographies, starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, are superb. She’s a MUCH better prose writer than she is poet, IMHO, so even if you hate her poetry (like me) you’ll like her autobiographies.
I DEFINITELY agree with Soon to be a Major Motion Picture. Abbie Hoffmann was a fascinating, fascinating man. This book in particular is great for its first-person telling of the infamous Chicago Seven trial. Read his other books too if you like this one; all of them have autobiographical facets to them.
Peter O’Toole wrote two books of memoirs: Loitering With Intent is the main title, followed by “The Child” for the first one, and “The Apprentice” for the second.
The first takes him through childhood, which covers WWII, his father’s relationship with gangsters (he would tell stories about playing games with guys with scars on their faces and nicknames like “Spike,” also one story about swimming with some friends and realizing that the long thin bits of rubber hanging from the tree above them were, well, rubbers).
“The Apprentice” covered just his first year at the RADA {Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts}, after he learned that the British government was willing to pay him (due to his military service) to learn how to act. In one of his classes, he and a pre-“Tom Jones” Albert Finney had to flounce around pretending they were bees and flowers. He also talks about meeting Richard Burton in a pub and how charismatic he was, even when he was trying to chat up your date.
O’Toole is a great storyteller, although you have to get used to the odd way he has of speaking. You also have to wonder just how accurate his stories are (complete with dialog) after so many years and so many many pints.
I’ve seen “The Apprentice” on sale on the discount tables. If you’re at all interested in the man, or in the theater, it’s worth the price. It’s like sharing a drink in a pub with a garrolous old man who tells quite good stories.
Other memoirs: Spike Milligan wrote about his World War II service in Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall and Rommel: Gunner Who? Great, funny stories.
(I see from a check at abebooks.com that he also has “Mussolini: My Part in his Downfall” and “Montgomery: My Part in his Victory,” which I assume are continuations of his memoirs.)
Pazner General by Heinz Guderin, a German WWII tank general who was instrumental in devising Bliztkrieg tactics.
Autobiography - by the English novelist GK Chesterton, author of the Ft. Brown books
One of my favourite autobiographies is Michael Crichton’s Travels. It’s unusually episodic, skipping big chunks of his life, but going into great detail about experiences that have influenced his life. It is a really interesting read even for someone like me who doesn’t particularly like Crichton’s fiction.
“Boy” and “Going Solo” are Roald Dahl’s autobiography. As usual with Dahl, very well written, real page turners. You can see where a lot of his stories come from , he writes movingly about how lost he felt as a small boy at a harsh boarding school, and going solo is his account of his adventures flying fighter planes in WWII.
“Mr Nice” by Howard Marks is a good laugh. Marks is an Oxford educated welshman who spent most of his life smuggling huge amounts of hash around the world before eventually getting caught and doing rather a lot of time in the US. He is an excellent raconteur.
That’s all i can think of now that i’d recommend.
Bring on the empty horses and The moons a balloon by David Niven.
If you thought D.Niven was just a stuffy old time actor think again. The man had a very interesting life. The stories about himself and Errol Flynn are worth it alone.
I also recommend Mr Nice. A very entertaining read.
I’m probably going to buy Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker’s War 1941-1945 by Leo Marks. Marks is a man who interests me greatly. The first 20 pages of this book are available to read at amazon here
If you like to laugh, I guarantee you’ll enjoy Mark Salzman’s Lost in Place : Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia. It’s the story of an adolescent rebeling against suburban conformity by attempting to become a zen monk.
The late Katherine Graham (publisher of the Washington Post) wrote a terrific memoir. Born the daughter of a wealthy industrialist and businessman, she grows in both stature and ability after her husband (who essentially ignored her or belittled her, depending on his mood) kills himself and leaves her with The Washington Post Company to run. The book is well written, informative, and is full of references to events that shaped the country (as you might expect, the Post’s involvement with covering the Watergate affair gets a fair amount of attention).
Ms. Graham was gracious enought to write back when I wrote to her telling her how much I enjoyed the book. She was, by all accounts, a class act.
One of my favorite books of all-time isn’t exactly an autobiography, in that it isn’t a recollection of James Watson’s life, however Double Helix is an awesome book about the personalities of Watson & Crick and their efforts going in to the discovery of the makeup of DNA. If you have never read it, I highly suggest giving it a go, you will benefit from the experience.
Secondly, anything by George Plimpton that you can get your hands on serves the same function as an autobiography, the telling of an interesting person’s experiences.
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski. Pretty amazing stuff, and certainly the story of one messed up upbringing. Almost everything by Bukowski is autobiographical although in novel form featuring Hank Chinoski. Ditto with one of Chuck’s favorite authors, which is John Fante. Wait Until Spring Bandini, if you want to check it out.
Malcolm X, is a pretty good read too.