Do authors still write biographies?
Of course they do and we all know it. It’s just that we may not hear so much about them right now. Below are a few I have been seeing in the publications I read:
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is not a new book, and it was published before Musk rose to his current level of fame. Isaacson spent two years with Musk, going with him to meetings, talking to his family and coworkers and even touring his factories. The reader gets to also glimpse Musk’s early years and read about the emotional scars his father inflicted upon him. Like him or not, we should all agree that Elon Musk is an influential figure of our times.
Just say the name ‘Yoko’ and almost everyone in the world knows who you mean, right? But do you really know much about Yoko Ono other than she was married to John Lennon. Of course, she has lived many years of her life without John Lennon. David Shelf decided to find out who Yoko Ono really was, and it took him almost 50 years to do it. He interviewed both Ono and Lennon right before Lennon’s death, and then he continued to follow her life after that. If you read YOKO, you will realize that she was a special person outside and beyond her famous husband. And just maybe you will no longer blame her for the breakup of the greatest rock-and-roll band in history!
Switch gears to a biography written about someone who was born almost 200 years ago. Ron Chernow’s new biography entitled Mark Twain traces the life of one of the most interesting figures in American history. Twain is sometimes considered the father of American literature. We know what his books were, but do we know much about his life? Did you know that Twain was born prematurely and wasn’t expected to live? He didn’t have much formal education, and he briefly served with a Confederate militia. He unfortunately had a number of tragedies in his life losing all but one of his children at an early age.
Twain’s life was certainly interesting, and Chernow has portrayed it in his usual grand manner– He won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of George Washingon. And of course we know about his book Hamilton, the biography that Lin-Manual Miranda used to create his now famous Broadway musical! Chernow puts into his books just enough detail so that the reader learns a lot of history and can fully appreciate the subject. While reading Hamilton, for example, I almost forgot that I was reading non-fiction. The story never got bogged down. I really hope I will make time to read about Mark Twain. Having just read James, the entire scenario is very relevant.
