Over Thirty Brilliant Biographies for All Tastes
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- In which I cover over thirty notable biographies in response to the "This or That" Book Tag created by Ros @scallydandlingaboutthebook2711 and Elisabeth @bouquinsbooks.
I was tagged directly by @davidnovakreadspoetry.
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To Support the Channel (Thank You): ko-fi.com/toreadersitmayconcern
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Chapters:
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00:00:00 Intro
00:03:54 Q1 Big or Slim Bios?
00:24:23 Q2 Celebrity or Average Joe Bios?
00:39:59 Q3 Complete Correspondence or Selected Letters?
00:49:25 Q4 Fresh Memoirs or with Hindsight?
01:00:37 Q5 Gossipy or Scholarly Bios?
01:04:46 Q6 Diaries of Ordinary or Extraordinary Events?
01:07:52 Q7 Arty or Sporting Memoirs?
01:12:21 Q8 Gritty or Inspirational Bios?
01:26:10 Q9 Historical or Contemporary Bios?
01:30:32 Q10 Happy or Tragic Days?
01:35:01 Q11 Tag Others
01:35:31 Outro
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Books Featured (With Amazon Links):
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The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher: amzn.to/3xTUA3e
Stalin by Stephen Kotkin: amzn.to/4aTzCA8
The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore: amzn.to/4dgDPQ8
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore: amzn.to/4dgJjKm
Hitler by Ian Kershaw: amzn.to/4dca2b7
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years & The War Years by Carl Sandburg: amzn.to/4dgtLXi
Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg: amzn.to/3UimdKH
Time of the Magicians by Wolfram Eilenberger: amzn.to/4dhHAF0
Wittgenstein’s Poker by David Edmonds & John Eidinow: amzn.to/49SrT48
At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell: amzn.to/3JzAZI7
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman: amzn.to/4bdcIDG
Stillwell and the American Experience in China by Barbara Tuchman: amzn.to/3UAMsOa
The Last Empress by Hannah Pakula: amzn.to/3JzDpX9
The Norton Critical Edition of Keats’ Poetry and Prose: amzn.to/4bbw77R
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters: amzn.to/44gpzm8
A Writer’s Diary: amzn.to/3UcIyJT
A Moment’s Liberty: amzn.to/4bcIFM6
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens: amzn.to/4b9Bsg0
Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie: amzn.to/3UjoHZo
Knife by Salman Rushdie: amzn.to/4aPNUl7
Late Admissions by Glenn Loury: amzn.to/3JCkMls
Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore: amzn.to/3Qk15Te
The Unabridged Journals of Silvia Plath: amzn.to/3Qj8YbE
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov: amzn.to/3Qm2j0t
The Confessions of Anthony Burgess 1: amzn.to/3Qk1rJy
The Confessions of Anthony Burgess 2: amzn.to/3w8h4gu
Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez: amzn.to/3WbT6vm
It Calls You Back by Luis J. Rodriguez: amzn.to/3vYh1nu
Freud: The Making of an Illusion by Frederick Crews: amzn.to/3UgEs3t
Freud: A Life for Our Time by Peter Gay: amzn.to/3UhIA33
Night Falls Fast by Kay Redfield Jamison: amzn.to/4aSHfGZ
An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison: amzn.to/4dg58K5
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
I can create these links for any books I choose, so this does not affect my choice of what books to cover for this channel.
The part about your father was beautiful and in the spirit of the lived honesty you appreciate in the biographies you discuss here. I hope you leave it in. It is the kind of thing people with little imagination or empathy could stand to hear.
Thank you so much. You and a couple of others have encouraged me to keep that section in, and so I just might.
@@ToReadersItMayConcernI believe you should. I plan to aquire his books, read them, annotate them, and share with my sister and her husband, who are engaged in a similar journey, and I believe these may encourage them.
I never heard of you until today and now I find out that your father wrote a memoir and it is available on audible, narrated by your father. Thank you.
I have no idea how I stumbled across this video but somehow the algorithm showed it to me and I must say that I like your thinking. I enjoy biographies with a lot of detail because I want to understand how people thought in the past and what all of the cultural influences were, the type of novels that were popular, etc. Right now I am listening to the audiobook version of the biography of Ian Fleming by Nicholas Shakespeare. The style is great with lots of details about the times in which he lived.
I have recently read two great Biographies Titan- The Life of John D Rockefeller Sr by Ron Chernow and Einstein- His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson both are great. What I love about the biographical genre is that it helps you to answer questions you didn't know you had. What I realized after reading these two back to back was that I wanted to know what price did they pay for their unique talents, what was the cost to them and their families for being leaders in their field. It seems to me that when you have a degree of mastery in a given area you tend to suffer elsewhere, you always pay a price one way or another. I thought that to be a fascinating insight. Thanks for not editing out your story about your family, it was the most compelling part of an already excellent video. I grew up in a small town with little opportunity and was put into a special needs class in my early schooling, people thought I was deficient in some way and it was a deeply painful experience, I always felt ashamed of that time. I have always worked meanial jobs to survive but my one true love has always been reading. Sometimes my lack of formal education shows and I am very self conscious about it but it never dampens my curiosity for the world,the people in it and what it means to be a human in 2024. I think it's important not to overlook the fact that I'm not just here because of the content, I'm here because of my interest in you as a person, so stories about who you are, the stories behind what makes you want to read what you read are perhaps the real story.Thanks.
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. I lashed out a great deal when young-far from the calm demeanor I display now-and so there were many assessments of me that sound similar to yours: I was actively pushed to be medicated, and the prospects of my capacity as a student were deemed dismal. However, my parents knew me for who I was and knew precisely what I was responding to. My dad's choice to write a book-one that initially couldn't get published and so he created his own independent publishing house to get it out there and spent every day traveling to bookstores throughout the U.S. to market it-became a wild gamble that changed all of our lives (I remember the piles of books on his desk and the late hours he spent typing, and yet he would always talk to me when I needed him, one of the few people who spoke to me without judgment at that time, with curiosity and wonder at my pains, and I remember he would take me on his trips to bookstores, and I got to see a different world and the possibilities therein, suddenly hopes amidst those variously-hued piles). Literature can be a calling, an escape, and redemption. And though as my life shifted so too did my demeanor, I also have yet to lose that slight alienation from the formalized criteria of higher education and some of the abstracted discussions of class that persist today (I hear so many bold statements about those in poverty, and it feels so often removed from the complexity of the experience; the pleasures and pains were intertwined in some unclean ways).
Robert Caro’s Power Broker and Lyndon Johnson series are worth mentioning here for their meticulous research and cultural impact
I really appreciated the thoughts you shared while talking about your own father's work. Thanks for sharing that!
Thank you for appreciating it. 🙏
Another exemplary video! Thank you so much for shouting out my Woolf piece. Her diaries are edited by her Nephew’s wife, Anne Olivier Bell. Bell spent nearly a decade working closely with Quentin Bell (and Leonard Woolf too I think) deciphering V. Woolf’s handwriting and contextualising the events and people and books she writes about.
It is a monumental collection, the sparkling messy underside of Woolf’s famous body of work!
I do also love a big collection of letters! You see so many facets of a person: spontaneous humour, fastidiousness, cattiness, generosity, acrimony, regret and the loyalty of life-long connections. I find the endings of such collections often devastating as a life withers away or implodes.
I really liked the way you synthesised so many different types of biographies and spoke to the varieties of pleasure and insight gleaned from such a rich cornucopia of texts!
I am immensely excited to get to it! Thank you for bringing it to my attention and for your eloquent musings on the value of such collections.
Absolutely wonderful video! I have a whole page of thoughts and questions that came to mind as I listened. Also, I really appreciate the precision with which you use language. I hope you leave in the parts about your Dad. It's important to understand a variety of motivations. For example, most of us in North America never think about what we might do for our kids if we saw them starving to death- like try to move to where food is available. I can't wait to read your dad's books (on order NOW). Thank you so much!
You're so kind. Thank you so much!
I may keep the section about my father's works in the vid for at least a little while, so long as people remain considerate and open about it. And that's so wonderful of you to order his books. He's very raw about his flaws and his failings and the many struggles along the road to redeeming himself. There are points in his books that are explicit, painful, and shocking. Yet they speak to the harsh truths of a harsh life. I hope they resonate with you in a meaningful way (and I guess you'll understand bits of who I am a little better, too).
@@ToReadersItMayConcern I listened to your Dad on You Tube for about 2 minutes before falling in love with him. You must be proud, and vis versa.
The greatest gift has been the thousands of hours of conversation I've had with him over my lifetime. I am immensely fortunate to have had such a charitable and compassionate person in my life.
Another great video!
Thanks again! Your support means a lot: not sure if I mentioned this, but your channel is one of the ones that inspired me to make my own, so it's great having you pop-up with such positivity from time to time.
Trotsky authored a biography of Stalin in two volumes himself actually. Also, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, left a book called Twenty Letters to a Friend, which I think is a valuable source as well. Both Trotsky and Alliluyeva knew Stalin closely which makes their books unique.
Solid recommendations. Thank you!
Great video. I also appreciate biographies rather than the plain history book, because they humanize the historical period for the reader, and show you that these people, often, are just like you, with flaws and feelings.
Talking about biographies, I'd recommend another dual biography: 'Friends Divided' by Gordon S. Wood. It beautifully juxtaposes Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, which turns out to be a great lens through which to view the American Revolution and the early Republic. It is relatively concise and focuses on the personality, ideas, and relationship between, these two people.
A strong video once again. The highlight was your take on Keats and his letters; very moving.
Thank you so much for watching!
Incredible video. Thank you for being brave and sharing your story. It’s empowering.
Thank you for your open heart and mind. 🙏
I’m a history student and I love big biographies, so this was the perfect video for me! Thank you for all the informations and commitment you put into it. I’m currently reading “Pasolini Requiem” by B. D. Schwartz and it’s great.
Oh, that biography looks excellent! Thanks for bringing it to my attention! And I'm glad my video helps fuel your curiosity and interest.
Hello, fellow history student!
Frick, one book in and it is a definite must aquire and read. Well, here goes nothing. It is not like I already spend roughly 90% of my income on books or anything. More shelves needed, more books, and eventually I gotta slow down on work so I can have some time to really read. But that can wait another while.
I'm glad to be here enabling your addiction. Books are better than work. Enjoy!
What a wonderful version of this tag! Thank you. I’ve added both Existentialist Cafe and the Steinbeck letters on my list!
Fantastic! I love knowing my recommendations resonate with others (that is so much of what makes watching BookTube so great as a viewer: the unexpected and exciting recommendations).
Thank you for doing thisbtag and for giving such thoughtful answers to each question! You make so many book sound very interesting. Among others, The Court of the Red Tsar sounds particularly up my alley.
Thank you so much for creating such a wonderful tag! I really enjoyed thinking my way through it!
This was a wonderful video. I feel like I will constantly coming back to it for recommendations, as it turns out I've read much less life writing than I'd thought.
There are soooo many biographies out there. Took me a while to pick just these to discuss.
I agree with what you said about gossip vs scholarly. I think so often it's the small details that can make a person's story interesting or relevant. Not necessarily because of the salaciousness of gossip, but because all the small details are what make a person.
Thank you for sharing about your father's books. It is hard to share vulnerably, but I know that so many people will be able to hear and learn and grow from his story. I am sorry for your experience with your teachers. So often people can only see a certain thing they have already made up their minds to see. And it takes work to be able to try to see things differently.
Bonnie, thank you. I am so relieved that thus far people have been responding with positivity and kindness regarding my father's works and what I said about my background. I think a part of me assumed people would be largely judgmental-so much online can feel judgmental-and yet you and a couple others have shown nothing but pure understanding. I greatly appreciate that. We are all brimming with complexity-a cascade of small details, as you point out-and its vital to share that complexity from time to time, if only to connect in the honest constraints of being.
@@ToReadersItMayConcern I can definitely understand that. The internet can be cruel. I am so glad that people have met your openness with kindness!
Such a comprehensive and considered response to our tag. Thank you! I need to give some thought to your recommendations. A Distant Mirror is the only one I have read and that was a long time ago.
Thank you for stopping by! Your tag turned out to be an excellent jumping off point for discussing a wide range of biographical works. Not sure I would have thought so extensively on the subject without it. I hope at least some of these recommendations give you hours upon hours of reading joy!
I have volumes 1-3 of Carl Sandburgs biography of Lincoln, but I haven't read them yet
Its hard to covey some feelings to in a manner that isn't articulate or dense or literal , yet sometimes people can manage to say a lot , whether its those intense gaps in between of speech , or the sheer vulnerability on display. your confessional reminds me how poignant, how bitter or heartbreaking yet inspiring & radical... books can be. Literal magic harnessed by the essence of life.
Another great video. I would like to hear you talk about your process. How do you choose to read what you read? What are your goals? How do you synthesize? How do you find the time to ingest these large volumes?
I wrote all these down as possible topics to cover in future videos, including the topic of determinism that you mention in another comment (there's a book I could review that connects directly to this subject).
Briefly, though, here are a couple comments regarding the first and last of your questions that I had left for someone else recently:
It seems to me I discover books by (1) reference, as in a writer I respect refers to the work or authorship of another and that spurs a scramble on my part to discover that work's worth in being mentioned or in having served as inspiration; (2) experimentation, meaning I seek authors who vie for newness (if even for its own sake), a hint of pretentious over-stepping that I adore; (3) beauty, merely a line even, that illustrates an author's potential and I pursue that potential perpetually from that point on; (4) BookTube or some other online equivalent, wherein enthusiasm and curiosity excite to the point of a purchase; and (5) probably like you, serendipity, grabbing a book off the shelf and craving more.
If my time is especially constrained then I tend to jump between multiple books, reading bits at a time when I can rather than single extensive sittings; but when I have full control over my time, I like to sit at length and read a single work for as much as I can, sinking deep within the text. This devoted time, while initially slow-going, becomes a means of dedicating myself into a work and not getting bogged down by distraction (so much lost time is distraction, and once you take note of and control distraction you'll surprise yourself with how much you can accomplish). In line with this, I've turned off all phone notifications and almost never use my phone, which helps greatly.
Hey, I'm releasing a video tomorrow all about my reading habits in the form of advice about reading. I hope you check it out!
I really appreciate you sharing your personal experiences. I would also like to hear a video on your views on determinism!
It's nice to listen to someone who loves non fiction as much as I do. I'm currently reading an excellent biography called Melville: his world and work by Andrew Delbanco in prep for a reread of Moby Dick
I saw this post two days ago and purposely waited until I had time to sit down and watch it in its entirety! What a great list! I am looking forward to reading some of your recommendations. A few I would recommend include, "The Only Plane in the Sky: the Oral History of 9/11" and "The Habit of Being", which is a collection of letters written by Flannery O'Connor. She wasn't always likable, but she was brilliant and fascinating. Also, I'm happy I caught the early version of this video. It can be hard to share something so personal about yourself and your family, but I'm glad you did. I hope you decide to leave that part in. And, thank you for including the books by Kay Redfield Jamison. My partner suffers from severe depression and I struggle to understand it. I'm always looking for anything that can help me, so thank you for that.
Thank you so much, Bridget, for the kind words and for the two recommendations. I love discovering new books, and I was literally reading some Flannery O'Connor short stories yesterday in anticipation of the recently released film, Wildcat, about her early writing career, so what a pristine coincidence!
It can be frightening to share one's personal life with strangers; I am relieved at the response I've received so far and may keep that section in. And thank you for sharing regarding your own personal struggle with your partner's depression. Both my younger and older brother suffered a period of about six years each wavering ever downward into depression, and it felt like something they would never arise from. In both cases, they have since begun to find their stability-after countless therapists and psychiatrists and false-starts. For both, the relief has arisen gradually; seemingly, just the continuous effort to strive for more. The patience (so difficult to be patient, genuinely, I know) facilitated each to discover aspects of life to cherish. Still, my younger brother is not quite who he was before, but he is nearer, and though his disposition can at times feel anhedonic, he also now seeks his calming spaces and thinks less often in such ravishingly negative frames. I wish I could tell you some panacea. Genuinely, I thought it would last forever. In my older brother's case, he found new friendships, and that helped him; for my younger brother, it seemed a combination of medication-after trying many that failed-and finding a job that gave him confidence amidst a sense of responsibility. Getting them each to try the above took years, though; my older brother in particular was so close to giving up. I sometimes think of myself as helpful and wise and calm-the experience of attempting to help them was truly humbling in that regard. Sometimes it feels there's nothing that can be said or done. It is so difficult. I hope you're okay. I know how you feel and I hope you're okay. Please remember yourself in this.
Excellent list! "Wittgenstein’s Poker" touches on one of my personal faves, Karl Popper (there's a biography of the first part of his life that's on my shelf now, to be read), and "The Last Empress" has my eye now.
Karl Popper is top-tier. I loved his The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Biographies can be a great read. Best wishes.
I'm interested in your father's books...thanks for sharing them and your family story. I've used your Amazon Associate links to buy your Dad's books. Great video!
Wow, thank you! It's relieving that that portion of the video has been received well so far. Those books are particularly raw and revealing; so much of his life and his choices were harmful, and yet he expresses the truths of those harms to illustrate the necessity of emergence out of a confined view of oneself. It is not pretty, but I am grateful that you're open to understanding the hardships and mindset of such a life. Thankfully, in his case, he found art and connection and pulled his way out of that stark sickness that consumed him. He is now so very much a different person than he was, and yet who he was has been the foundation for growth and empathy and understanding of the pains of others, something I hold to and cherish-we can't escape our past, but we can do something with it. Again, thank you for your open curiosity.
Good day, i mentioned previously that i was in the middle of " A People's Tragedy." Well, i finally finished it a few weeks ago. Took me quite some time (about 2 months), and i am still digesting it. Much like yourself, i have a great fascination with early 20th century history, Russian history, and the world wars. Have you read any Robert K Massey? He does great biographies on the Romanovs and especially Peter. His books on the lead up to World War 1 are also very entertaining. I am currently dabbling in the french revolution and also reading "KL: A history of the Nazi concentration camps". Too many books to read and not enough time 😂
Yes, Robert K. Massie is a champ in the biography realm from what I understand. He's an author I expect to become obsessed with someday soon, but I want to read "lighter" Russian bios first, since I still feel like a newbie (The Romanovs turned out to be a great entryway into the subject of Russian royalty, a narrative primer for a denser follow-up later on).
I own KL, too, and can't wait to get to it! You may want to check out I You We Them by Dan Gretton, it's all about the "desktop killers" who lead to masses of deaths from afar, including in the case of the holocaust.
Reading The Habit of Being: Selected Letters of Flannery O'Connor made me understand her fiction in a clearer way than meeting her on the page of her work for the first time. I heard you mention your father is a novelist. Did a detailed bio expose your life to unwelcome scrutiny?
This is a long video. I'll need to view its' entirety at a later time. I like your channel. Thanks.
As far as I can tell, the biography of my dad has only been a benefit. There are some people who get offended at some of the subject matter, but those people fade away fairly quickly and positivity and praise win out. I can't think of any time that I've felt strain from my dad's work. Whenever someone speaks to me directly about my father it is with kindness and curiosity. I've been lucky.
Thank you for the kind words and for your patience with my long-windedness. 😃
Loving the content and recommendations! I'm curious, with these large books, do you tend to work through them while also reading other books, or just one at a time? Do you usually stick to one subject (multiple Russian history books at the same time, for example), or do you tend to have a variety of topics going at once?
Thank you! And great questions! Whether I focus on a single book or not often depends on how busy I am: if my time is especially constrained then I tend to jump between multiple books, reading bits at a time when I can rather than single extensive sittings; but when I have full control over my time, I like to sit at length and read a single work for as much as I can, sinking deep within the text. And I do generally stick to a single subject or author for a while, like a kind of mood that takes over that I want to fulfill.
Great discussion of Sandburg. And of Wittgenstein/Popper. And of Keats. These were highlights for me, but why pare it down. I loved the sweep of your engagement with this topic, and feel there’s a lot to learn from your synthesis _in toto_ so I would urge you not to edit out.
I had the same experience with Hitchens and felt his final work redeemed him as a literary figure. (I haven’t gotten to _Joseph Anton_ yet but it awaits on my shelf.)
Please don’t remove the part about your dad. He’s an important part in the cultural history of Chicago during my lifetime - and Tia Chucha’s removal felt like a city-wide devastation at the time - but I can see (not having read his memoirs but only his poems) that he had his own trajectory exceeding our low provincialism here in the Midwest.
Thanks for doing this.
Thank you, David. I'm glad you tagged me. It at first felt like an assignment I wasn't fit to respond to; initially I thought, What could I possibly say? And then, of course, in my doubts of what to say I discovered how much unsaid had been brimming. So thank you for that, and thank you for your words about my father. It brings me relief that that section of the video is being received so well.
I might be wrong, but I think the "Average Joe" biographies/memoirs would include books such as Mary Karr's LIAR'S CLUB, Tara Westover's EDUCATED (highly recommended!), J.D. Vance's HILLBILLY ELEGY, and Aaron Fricke's CONFESSIONS OF A ROCK LOBSTER. Average people and their individual struggles. And I'll have to check if my store has the Sandburg Lincoln - I doubt anyone has read any of the volumes since they first were published ;-)
Awesome! I greatly appreciate the list of recommendations! Good luck in finding the Lincoln bio; should be a rare find (and hopefully worth the struggle of discovery).
Burgess is Best
existentialists cooked
Yes, indeed!