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The 30 Best Biographies of All Time
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Blog – Posted on Monday, Jan 21
Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”
At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction.
All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels, if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great biographies out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized biography recommendation 😉
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1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar
This biography of esteemed mathematician John Nash was both a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and the basis for the award-winning film of the same name. Nasar thoroughly explores Nash’s prestigious career, from his beginnings at MIT to his work at the RAND Corporation — as well the internal battle he waged against schizophrenia, a disorder that nearly derailed his life.
2. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition by Andrew Hodges
Hodges’ 1983 biography of Alan Turing sheds light on the inner workings of this brilliant mathematician, cryptologist, and computer pioneer. Indeed, despite the title (a nod to his work dur There are myriad ways to tell the story of a life, as shown by this year’s best biographies. Craig Brown’s doorstopper A Voyage Around the Queen (4th Estate), about the reign of Elizabeth II, dispenses with linear storytelling in favour of a patchwork of diary entries, letters, vignettes, second-hand anecdotes and even dreams (the writer Paul Theroux once dreamed of being nestled in Her Majesty’s bosom). The result is an unorthodox and wonderfully irreverent book which, alert to the absurdities of the monarchy, reveals as much about how others saw the Queen as the woman herself. Sonia Purnell’s Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman (Virago) is a rich and riveting portrait of another seemingly unknowable aristocrat. The daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill, Harriman was, says Purnell, a canny diplomat who exerted remarkable influence on mid-20th-century politics through her three marriages and numerous affairs with powerful men (her lovers included a prince, a shipping magnate and a celebrated US broadcaster). Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz(Atlantic Books) is a luminous joint biography of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, inspired by newly unearthed correspondence between the two writers that reads like “a lovers’ quarrel”. Anolik traces both women’s lives and their fraught friendship in the late 60s and early 70s, which fell apart after Didion was hired to edit Babitz’s first book. Reader, she fired her. Ekow Eshun’sThe Strangers (Hamish Hamilton) is a group biography, written in the second person, that artfully delves into the minds and motivations of five pioneering Black men: actor and playwright Ira Aldridge; explorer Matthew Henson; activist Malcolm X; footballer Justin Fashanu; and psychiatrist and thinker Frantz Fanon. Each is linked, writes Eshun, by being “an exile: a figure in motion through a world that regarded him as an alien”. Fanon is also the subject of The Rebel’s Clinic (Apollo), an enthralling n 50 You’re probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo, the 1844 revenge novel by Alexandre Dumas. But did you know it was based on the life of Dumas’s father, the mixed-race General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave? Thanks to Reiss’s masterful pacing and plotting, this rip-roaring biography of Thomas-Alexandre reads more like an adventure novel than a work of nonfiction. The Black Count won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2013, and it’s only a matter of time before a filmmaker turns it into a big-screen blockbuster. 49 Now 30% Off Few biographies are as genuinely fun to read as this barnburner from the irreverent English critic Craig Brown. Princess Margaret may have been everyone’s favorite character from Netflix’s The Crown, but Brown’s eye for ostentatious details and revelatory insights will help you see why everyone in the 1950s—from Pablo Picasso and Gore Vidal to Peter Sellers and Andy Warhol—was obsessed with her. When book critic Parul Sehgal says that she “ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice,” you know you’re in for a treat. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below 48 Spinoza: Life and Legacy is a new biography of the 17th-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, by historian Jonathan Israel. Israel is a leading historian of early modern Europe, and an expert on the Dutch Republic, the tolerant—by 17th-century standards—world in which Spinoza grew up. His parents had fled Portugal because of the Inquisition and, as Israel points out, that "dark Iberian context was a crucial factor in Spinoza's background, early life, and formation and likewise an essential dimension for understanding his thought generally." The book builds on Steven Nadler's biography of Spinoza, and at more than 1,200 pages is absolutely not for beginners. Rather, it's for those seeking to think deeply—and disagree with Israel at times, no doubt—about Spinoza and his life and thought. (If you're looking for a more introductory approach to Spinoza, our interview about him is with Steven Nadler) Read expert recommendationsThe best biographies and memoirs of 2024
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Crown The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss
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