literate primitives discuss biographies

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=209x7862

Oh my.

There are some literate primitives; not many, but some.

Wickerman   (1000+ posts)        Wed Sep-16-09 08:11 PM
Original message
 
Reccs for great biographies, please?

Would you be so kind as to tell me what biographies you have found fascinating? It doesn't matter if it's the subject matter or the writer's style that captured you; I'm just curious what bios really got you.

Have you read a bio about someone you didn't think would be interesting and yet the bio turned out to be the story you couldn't put down? Please tell me about them. Maybe you were already a big fan and the story was brilliant beyond expectation - I want to read that, too.

I dunno.

Paul Johnson's biography of Elizabeth I of England.

Lady Antonia Fraser's biography of Charles II of England.

Among tons of others.

The Gloria Swanson primitive, whose knowlege of Medicaid standards seems to be withering away in her ancient age:

Tangerine LaBamba  (1000+ posts)      Wed Sep-16-09 08:15 PM
Response to Original message
 
1. Not a biography, but an autobiography - Katharine Graham's book about her life.

It's wonderful.

It was okay.

BlooInBloo  (1000+ posts)        Wed Sep-16-09 08:17 PM
Response to Original message
 
2. There's a ginormous Eleanor Roosevelt one that I really liked.

There's lots of good biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, but one should avoid the one written by the ungrateful jerk and rectal aperture of a son of hers, the one by Elliott Roosevelt.  She babied him, he was her favorite child, and all she got was malice and slander from him.

TygrBright   (1000+ posts)        Wed Sep-16-09 08:37 PM
Response to Original message

3. McCullough's bio of John Adams was excellent.

Yeah, that one was okay.

WheelWalker  (1000+ posts)        Wed Sep-16-09 08:38 PM
Response to Original message
 
4. Here are two I have reread half a dozen times each, and I own them both:

Darwin - The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist (Adrian Desmond & James R. Moore; Publisher Michael Joseph Ltd (1991) Hardcover; 768 pp.)

Hilter and Stalin: Parallel Lives (Alan Bullock; Publisher Knopf. Year (1992) Hardcover, 1081 pp.)

Good reading to you.

Yeah, those were okay, too.

By the way, one dislikes disillusioning the primitives, but Darwin was no atheist.

DoBotherMe  (849 posts)      Wed Sep-16-09 08:42 PM
Response to Original message
 
5. David Herbert Donald's Lincoln

Hooked me from the title of the first chapter, "Annals of the Poor." He won a Pulitzer.I found out that Abe had sparkling white teeth, he didn't drink coffee, tea or use tobacco. It's a fantastic and HUGE book.

franksolich also thinks Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers was most excellent.

A really big book, but worth its weight.

[JohnnyReb]

Read a couple 46 years ago in high school that I thought were good.....

Chesty Puller and Robert E. Lee.

On second thought, I know the DUmmies won't like those two and further more I wouldn't want them to soil those fine books by putting their hands on them.

[Lord Undies]

I've read so many and remember so little.  Isn't that a damn shame? 

When I was a teen I read a biography of just about every First Lady from Martha to Claudia.  I don't remember finding a bio of Frances Folsom Cleveland Preston, who died a mere seven years before I was born. 

[franksolich]

I've read so many and remember so little.  Isn't that a damn shame? 

When I was a teen I read a biography of just about every First Lady from Martha to Claudia.  I don't remember finding a bio of Frances Folsom Cleveland Preston, who died a mere seven years before I was born. 

Woodrow Wilson's widow survived into the Kennedy presidency.

Calvin Coolidge's widow survived into the late 1950s; in her old age, Grace Goodhue Coolidge was a rabid Boston Red Sox baseball fan.

Grace was a great First Lady, charm and class oozing out of every pore in her.

[Lord Undies]

Woodrow Wilson's widow survived into the Kennedy presidency.

Calvin Coolidge's widow survived into the late 1950s; in her old age, Grace Goodhue Coolidge was a rabid Boston Red Sox baseball fan.

Grace was a great First Lady, charm and class oozing out of every pore in her.

Yes, I know.  Even Bess Truman lived into the early 1980's.  It's a funny thing to realize that some of these folks we think of in terms of antiquity really aren't all that removed from today.   

[franksolich]

Yes, I know.  Even Bess Truman lived into the early 1980's.  It's a funny thing to realize that some of these folks we think of in terms of antiquity really aren't all that removed from today.

Probably one of the weirdest experiences I ever had in real life was when I was in Canterbury, England as a teenager.  Someone took me to meet a very old man, a guy in his 90s.

There was one of those really old photographs of the guy as an infant, taken in 1889, with him sitting on the lap of an ancient, the last then-surviving member of Sir John Moore's army at Corunna.

When I looked into the old guy's eyes, I suddenly felt as being pulled back in time, looking into the eyes of someone who had once looked into the eyes of a contemporary of Wellington, George III, Jefferson, Adams, &c., &c., &c.

It was just really weird.

For whatever that's worth.

[Lord Undies]

Probably one of the weirdest experiences I ever had in real life was when I was in Canterbury, England as a teenager.  Someone took me to meet a very old man, a guy in his 90s.

There was one of those really old photographs of the guy as an infant, taken in 1889, with him sitting on the lap of an ancient, the last then-surviving member of Sir John Moore's army at Corunna.

When I looked into the old guy's eyes, I suddenly felt as being pulled back in time, looking into the eyes of someone who had once looked into the eyes of a contemporary of Wellington, George III, Jefferson, Adams, &c., &c., &c.

It was just really weird.

For whatever that's worth.

I know what you mean.  I think of each individual's time on earth as a path of time.  I am fascinated by how earthly time paths cross.

For example, I have an aunt who died on August 8, 1988.  That was also the day Sarah Ferguson (Sarah, The Duchess of York) gave birth to Princess Beatrice of York.  It took some investigation for me to find out my aunt died about an hour after the birth of Beatrice.  It was short, but their earthly time paths did cross.

[Zathras]

What, DUmmys forgot to mention some of their heroes....I'm surprised that nobody there mentioned Lenin, Che or Castro. Those are more the type of people that the DUmp monkeys would want to read about since those are there heroes.

[JohnnyReb]

What, DUmmys forgot to mention some of their heroes....I'm surprised that nobody there mentioned Lenin, Che or Castro. Those are more the type of people that the DUmp monkeys would want to read about since those are there heroes.

Oh but they don't want their myth destroyed by the truth.

[GOBUCKS]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=209x7862

Oh my.

There are some literate primitives; not many, but some.

I dunno.

Paul Johnson's biography of Elizabeth I of England.

Lady Antonia Fraser's biography of Charles II of England.

There's lots of good biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, but one should avoid the one written by the ungrateful jerk and rectal aperture of a son of hers, the one by Elliott Roosevelt.  She babied him, he was her favorite child, and all she got was malice and slander from him.

By the way, one dislikes disillusioning the primitives, but Darwin was no atheist.

franksolich also thinks Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers was most excellent.

And not one of the DUmmies mentioned Yuri Andropov.

[The Village Idiot]

http://www.quinndavis.com/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=1329&CLSN_1780=124732063517800547bc14102a0f6dff

Not really a biography but a very interesting read about Texas while it was still frontier country. I found it a fascinating view of a 'scientific expedition' into Texas. Written by their staff 'illustrator'.

[franksolich]

And not one of the DUmmies mentioned Yuri Andropov.

That was a great book, although now it's somewhat dated, being from 1982.

The two Soviet dissidents made a great deal of mockery about how western journalists were trying to give the image of Andropov as a nice guy, the good guy as compared with the "evil" Reagan.

Andropov wasn't around long enough, and so the same journalists later did the same thing with Gorbachev.

In 1991, before the coup, Time magazine, incredibly, named Gorbachev "Man of the Decade."

Gawd.

[mamacags]

You guys are misunderestimating the stupidity of DUmmies.  I suggest....

Socks Goes to Washington: The Diary of America's First Cat
http://www.amazon.com/Socks-Goes-Washington-Diary-Americas/dp/1565660420