biography
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A biography (from the Greek words bios meaning "life", and graphos meaning "write") is an account of a person's life, usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film.
popular biography books (showing 1-50 of 19,642)
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Paperback)
by Anne Frank (shelved 405 times as biography)
avg rating 4.06 — 145,421 ratings — published 1947
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John Adams (Paperback)
by David McCullough (shelved 313 times as biography)
avg rating 4.33 — 12,876 ratings — published 2001
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Into the Wild (Paperback)
by Jon Krakauer (shelved 181 times as biography)
avg rating 3.80 — 82,625 ratings — published 1996
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Angela's Ashes (Paperback)
by Frank McCourt (shelved 168 times as biography)
avg rating 3.96 — 33,819 ratings — published 1996
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley (Mass Market Paperback)
by Malcolm X (shelved 161 times as biography)
avg rating 4.33 — 10,615 ratings — published 200
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Dreams from My Father (Paperback)
by Barack Obama (shelved 151 times as biography)
avg rating 3.93 — 19,742 ratings — published 1995
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Night
by Elie Wiesel (shelved 147 times as biography)
avg rating 4.27 — 57,927 ratings — published 1958
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Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time (Paperback)
by Greg Mortenson (shelved 118 times as biography)
avg rating 3.99 — 61,055 ratings — published 2006
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Einstein: His Life and Universe (Hardcover)
by Walter Isaacson (shelved 116 times as biography)
avg rating 4.00 — 3,638 ratings — published 2007
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Truman (Paperback)
by David McCullough (shelved 113 times as biography)
avg rating 4.30 — 3,397 ratings — published 1992
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The Hiding Place (Mass Market Paperback)
by Corrie Ten Boom (shelved 111 times as biography)
avg rating 4.51 — 13,715 ratings — published 1971
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The Glass Castle: A Memoir (Paperback)
by Jeannette Walls (shelved 105 times as biography)
avg rating 4.13 — 75,988 ratings — published 2005
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Running with Scissors: A Memoir (Paperback)
by Augusten Burroughs (shelved 105 times as biography)
avg rating 3.48 — 50,119 ratings — published 2002
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Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Paperback)
by Elizabeth Gilbert (shelved 104 times as biography)
avg rating 3.62 — 147,465 ratings — published 2006
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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Paperback)
by Walter Isaacson (shelved 102 times as biography)
avg rating 3.93 — 2,432 ratings — published 2003
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Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson (Paperback)
by Mitch Albom (shelved 102 times as biography)
avg rating 3.90 — 50,408 ratings — published 1997
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Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (Hardcover)
by Steve Martin (shelved 101 times as biography)
avg rating 3.78 — 7,386 ratings — published 2007
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His Excellency: George Washington (Paperback)
by Joseph J. Ellis (shelved 98 times as biography)
avg rating 3.85 — 2,441 ratings — published 2004
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Paperback)
by Benjamin Franklin (shelved 95 times as biography)
avg rating 3.64 — 2,710 ratings — published 1791
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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Paperback)
by Doris Kearns Goodwin (shelved 94 times as biography)
avg rating 4.43 — 9,397 ratings — published 2005
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The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Hardcover)
by Barack Obama (shelved 94 times as biography)
avg rating 3.82 — 22,064 ratings — published 2006
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character (Paperback)
by Richard P. Feynman (shelved 91 times as biography)
avg rating 4.25 — 4,576 ratings — published 1985
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A Beautiful Mind (Paperback)
by Sylvia Nasar (shelved 91 times as biography)
avg rating 3.74 — 2,297 ratings — published 1998
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The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (Paperback)
by Simon Winchester (shelved 91 times as biography)
avg rating 3.74 — 9,690 ratings — published 1998
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A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive (Paperback)
by Dave Pelzer (shelved 89 times as biography)
avg rating 3.97 — 20,631 ratings — published 1992
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Mass Market Paperback)
by Maya Angelou (shelved 87 times as biography)
avg rating 3.97 — 19,408 ratings — published 1970
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Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (updated edition)
by Anthony Bourdain (shelved 85 times as biography)
avg rating 3.95 — 15,350 ratings — published 2000
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Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Paperback)
by Tracy Kidder (shelved 79 times as biography)
avg rating 4.25 — 11,033 ratings — published 2001
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Marie Antoinette: The Journey (Paperback)
by Antonia Fraser (shelved 79 times as biography)
avg rating 3.81 — 2,670 ratings — published 2001
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Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood (Paperback)
by Marjane Satrapi (shelved 78 times as biography)
avg rating 4.28 — 16,497 ratings — published 2000
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Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Paperback)
by Nancy Milford (shelved 78 times as biography)
avg rating 4.03 — 1,735 ratings — published 2001
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Me Talk Pretty One Day (Paperback)
by David Sedaris (shelved 77 times as biography)
avg rating 3.97 — 133,718 ratings — published 2000
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Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire (Modern Library Paperbacks)
by Amanda Foreman (shelved 76 times as biography)
avg rating 3.54 — 2,165 ratings — published 1999
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The Last Lecture (Hardcover)
by Randy Pausch (shelved 72 times as biography)
avg rating 4.11 — 32,377 ratings — published 2008
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Theodore Rex (Modern Library Paperbacks)
by Edmund Morris (shelved 71 times as biography)
avg rating 4.11 — 1,638 ratings — published 2001
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No One Here Gets Out Alive (Paperback)
by Daniel Sugerman (shelved 69 times as biography)
avg rating 3.66 — 1,994 ratings — published 1980
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Alexander Hamilton (Paperback)
by Ron Chernow (shelved 69 times as biography)
avg rating 4.26 — 1,452 ratings — published 2004
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Infidel (Hardcover)
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (shelved 68 times as biography)
avg rating 4.26 — 9,007 ratings — published 2006
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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Paperback)
by Azar Nafisi (Goodreads author) (shelved 67 times as biography)
avg rating 3.40 — 27,026 ratings — published 2003
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Shakespeare: The World As Stage (Eminent Lives)
by Bill Bryson (shelved 66 times as biography)
avg rating 3.69 — 2,796 ratings — published 2007
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The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Paperback)
by Edmund Morris (shelved 65 times as biography)
avg rating 4.48 — 1,726 ratings — published 1979
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Paperback)
by Frederick Douglass (shelved 65 times as biography)
avg rating 3.81 — 3,064 ratings — published 1845
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Surprised By Joy (Paperback)
by C.S. Lewis (shelved 64 times as biography)
avg rating 3.97 — 3,333 ratings — published 1955
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Go Forward With Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley (Hardcover)
by Sheri L. Dew (shelved 64 times as biography)
avg rating 4.69 — 2,485 ratings — published 1996
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My Life in France (Hardcover)
by Julia Child (shelved 62 times as biography)
avg rating 4.11 — 7,661 ratings — published 2006
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Seabiscuit (Mass Market Paperback)
by Laura Hillenbrand (shelved 62 times as biography)
avg rating 3.97 — 7,737 ratings — published 2001
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Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World's Worst Dog (Hardcover)
by John Grogan (shelved 62 times as biography)
avg rating 4.11 — 35,542 ratings — published 2005
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Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Paperback)
by Jung Chang (shelved 62 times as biography)
avg rating 4.22 — 7,419 ratings — published 1991
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Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Hardcover)
by Art Spiegelman (shelved 62 times as biography)
avg rating 4.43 — 10,355 ratings — published 1986
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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (Hardcover)
by Bill Bryson (shelved 62 times as biography)
avg rating 3.85 — 6,953 ratings — published 2006
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More quotes...
"If the mystery can be reduced to one solution, it lies in a simple coincidence: Rimbaud's interest in his own work had survived the realization that the world would not be changed by verbal innovation. It did not survive the failure of all his adult relationships. He had always treated poems as a form of private communication. He gave his songs to chansonniers, his satires to satirists. Without a constant companion, he was writing in a void."
— Graham Robb (Rimbaud: A Biography)
— Graham Robb (Rimbaud: A Biography)
"After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication." "
— William L. Stull
— William L. Stull
