Contrary to legend, he never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Phineas Taylor Barnum was a businessman, hoaxer, and impresario who provided entertainment to a nation hungry for it. “I am a showman by profession . . . and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me,” Barnum wrote defiantly in his autobiography. […]
Drawing on the unique historical sites, archives, expertise, and the authority of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, bestselling authors Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón created the first authorized and exhaustive graphic biography of Anne Frank. “More than simply poignant, this biography elucidates the complex emotional aspects of living a sequestered adolescence as a brilliant, […]
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the George Washington of today’s Republic of Turkey. After he gained his military reputation by repelling the 1915 Allied invasion of the Dardanelles, he first directed Turkey’s 1920-22 “War of Salvation” and then became Turkey’s first president. He immediately embarked on a fifteen-year campaign to modernize Turkey, which included the empowering […]
Wind, sand, and a dream of flight brought Wilbur and Orville Wright to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina where, after four years of experimentation, they achieved the first successful tests of a heavier than air, engine-powered machine in 1903. The Wright brothers, high school dropouts who were self-taught mechanical and aeronautic engineers, typified the legendary ethic […]
“I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations…. I have built my own factory on my own ground.” […]
Lauren Redniss is a graphic biographer whose writing and drawing have appeared in the New York Times, which nominated her for the Pulitzer Prize. Her idea for a life of the Curies occurred to her because, she told the online magazine, Intelligent Life, “I had been thinking about love stories….What struck me as an interesting […]
Born at the start of the Civil War, Juliette Gordon Low grew up in Georgia, where she struggled to reconcile being a good Southern belle with her desire to run barefoot through the fields. Deafened by an accident, “Daisy” married a dashing British aristocrat and moved to England. But she was ultimately betrayed by her […]
Louisa May Alcott spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library and excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau. When she was 35, she wrote the beloved Little Women in her childhood home, basing the novel on her family during the Civil […]
John A. Farrell’s biography Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (Doubleday, 2011) — “impeccably researched, beautifully written, and timely,” said the San Francisco Chronicle— describes the career of the limelight-stealing, two-fisted attorney who resigned from corporate law to defend union organizers, powerless minorities, and those accused of sensational crimes. Darrow is perhaps best known for […]
On February 14, the same night that it premiers on HBO, the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series will show clips from The Loving Story, with guests attorney Bernard Cohen, who was part of the ACLU team that represented the Lovings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Peggy Fortune, the Lovings’ daughter. ___________________ From director […]
April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the 20th century. World War II had just ended; democracy had triumphed. Now Americans were beginning to press for […]
Columbus, said a New York Times reviewer of Laurence Bergreen’s biography, Columbus: The Four Voyages ($35, Viking, 2011) was a “terribly interesting man — brilliant, audacious, volatile, paranoid, narcissistic, ruthless and (in the end) deeply unhappy.” Part explorer, part entrepreneur, part wannabe-aristocrat, Columbus initiated the most important period in Western history as a result […]
On February 14, the same night that it premiers on HBO, the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series will show clips from The Loving Story, with guests attorney Bernard Cohen, who was part of the ACLU team that represented the Lovings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Peggy Fortune, the Lovings’ daughter. ___________________ From director and […]
The Arab Spring puts us in mind of the early days of our Republic. And just as exiles, ex-patriots, and lovers of liberty have rushed to the North African coast and the Middle East to lend a hand in overthrowing oppressive governments, the American Revolution attracted volunteers from far away. One of the most famous […]
Vice-president of the United States, brilliant attorney, duelist, and renegade leader of Western adventurers— Aaron Burr cut a path through American history that is bold, at times erratic, and highly controversial. In his fast-paced book, American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America (Simon & Schuster, $30) historian and constitutional lawyer David O. Stewart— […]
In 2006, Charles J. Shields reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in a letter, asking for his endorsement for a planned biography. The first response was no (“A most respectful demurring by me for the excellent writer Charles J. Shields, who offered to be my biographer”). Unwilling to take no for an answer, propelled by a […]
Noah Webster was as prickly and hard as a horse chestnut. The 18th-century compiler of the first American spelling book and dictionary was opinionated, quick to anger, self-righteous, and drove himself to exhaustion. Friends and family learned that nothing matter to him except the work: codifying American speech with as much rigor and self-imposed […]