whats a good biography or autobiography?
a good biography is written about a person.
a good autobiography is written by the person it's about.
a good memoir must be pretentious!
also, ^5 on tesla!
DM Thomas' biography on Solzhenitsyn is supposed to be quite remarkable. I don't read biographies or autobiographies. Or, i never have, is what i mean.
Che Guevarra: A Revolutionary Life by John Lee Anderson is a fantastic book. Che's life reads like an action film. Anderson's research is impeccable, and his writing very readable.
I enjoyed Fatal Purity by Ruth Scurr, about Robespierre and the Terror.
Robert K. Massie writes good books about russian rulers. His Peter the Great, for instance.
I need to read more biographies.
running with scissors (augusten burroughs)
www.triplebeard.com
http://darkroomreview.blogspot.com
“...There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.”
-James Baldwin
thanks everyone for the ideas
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If you want one about lopped off heads, look for Possessing Genius: The Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain.
One of the books that inspired Palahniuk to write "Rant" as an oral history.
Ellroys dark places, exploring his fucked up past, while beeing honest till it hurts.
Speak Memory by Nabokov
Fantastic if you're into Jazz at all or anything related. If you're not, maybe not so much.
"Tuffy, you're a Dalek, but only because you're only being kept alive by metal, science and hatred." - ScubaSteve1729
'Hero of the Underground' by Jason Peter and Tony O'Neill
http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Underground-Memoir-Jason-Peter/dp/0312561032/...
http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Underground-Memoir-Jason-Peter/dp/0312561032/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248879179&sr=1-1
I read this and really enjoyed it, until I read up about Jason Peter, he mentions sharing a house with his brother throughout college, his brother sounds like a great guy so maybe thats why he forgot to mention all the times he was accused of rape.
I love biographies but you want to hear the bad things aswell as the good things or else you end up sounding like James Frey.
What is The What?
&
Zeitoun
by Dave Eggers
Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney is excellent. Also,
The Lobotomist by Jack El-Hai
The Immortalists by David M. Friedman
Get the sugar. Get the sugar. Get the sugar.