I read a fair number of biographies and autobiographies.
Not mentioned so far -
[ul][li]Sammy Davis, Jr. - Yes I Can and Why Me?[/li][li]C.S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy and A Grief Observed[/li][li]The Professor and the Madman is largely biographical[/li][li]The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas is very good[/ul][/li]Regards,
Shodan
I’ve read a lot, but I recently reread Beverly Cleary’s A Girl From Yamhill. One of her earliest memories is her mother putting on her sweater and taking her outside where all the church bells were ringing and telling her “Always remember this.”
Later she would ask her mother what it was she should always remember, and her astonished mother replied “It was the end of the first World War.”
Cleary was two years old then, and is still alive today at 100.
John Paul Jones, Catherine the Great, Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx
One of my favorite teachers (History) in high school had a similar memory from when he was three in 1945. Every church bell within earshot was ringing.
Stuff like that makes a great impression on you. The first historical event I remember is the Russians launching a Sputnik when I was three or four.
I think the first adult biography I read was Nicholas & Alexandra, which we had lying around the house. My mother warned me that it ended very badly, so at least it wasn’t a surprise, but I still remember being horrified and sickened.
I’ve also read biographies of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, Barack Obama, the Satmar Rebbe, John Adams, Queen Victoria, Barbara Bush, Lou Gehrig, and George Washington. Also Terry Francona, which was pretty good, and Johnny Damon, which I deeply regretted after learning what a profound jackass he was. Don’t pull back the curtain on favorite athletes, is what I learned from that.
Harpo Speaks!
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynmann! and Gleich’s biography
J.R.R Tolkien (Humphrey Carpenter)
C. S. Lewis: A Biography by Hooper and Green, Surprised by Joy, and A.N. Wilson’s biography
Thomas More (Chambers)
Lewis Carroll: A Biography by Morton Cohen
Oh, yeah! I read HARPO SPEAKS! As a teenager, my first introduction to the coolness of 1920s New York and the Algonquin crowd. Great book, everyone should read it! Harpo was SUCH a tzaddik.
All excellent:
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington
Edmund Morris’s magisterial trilogy, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex and Colonel Roosevelt
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln
David McCullough, Truman and The Wright Brothers
Roy Jenkins, Churchill
Pretty good, but not quite in the same league:
Alice Rains Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, about Civil War hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
Benson Bobrick, Master of War, about Civil War Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, “the Rock of Chickamauga”
Roy Jenkins, Gladstone
Can’t remember the authors, but I also read bios of J.R.R. Tolkien and Gene Roddenberry.
One more:
Stan Freberg, It Only Hurts When I Laugh
My two favorite autos:
Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead): If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor;
Robert Llewellyn (Kryten from Red Dwarf): The Man in the Rubber Mask.
Currently, I’m re-reading the bio of Johnny Carson written by his longtime lawyer-friend-cronie Henry Bushkin.
Got a Dali` one at the St. Pete museum this past weekend, about to start it tonight.