biography
about
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 20,028)
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Paperback)
by Anne Frank (shelved 422 times as biography)
avg rating 4.06 — 153,127 ratings — published 1947
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John Adams (Paperback)
by David McCullough (shelved 318 times as biography)
avg rating 4.33 — 13,144 ratings — published 2001
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Into the Wild (Paperback)
by Jon Krakauer (shelved 187 times as biography)
avg rating 3.80 — 86,304 ratings — published 1996
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Angela's Ashes (Paperback)
by Frank McCourt (shelved 172 times as biography)
avg rating 3.96 — 34,849 ratings — published 1996
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley (Mass Market Paperback)
by Malcolm X (shelved 170 times as biography)
avg rating 4.32 — 10,850 ratings — published 1965
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Night
by Elie Wiesel (shelved 155 times as biography)
avg rating 4.27 — 59,483 ratings — published 1958
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Dreams from My Father (Paperback)
by Barack Obama (shelved 152 times as biography)
avg rating 3.93 — 20,035 ratings — published 1995
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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 122 times as biography)
avg rating 3.98 — 62,494 ratings — published 2006
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Einstein: His Life and Universe (Hardcover)
by Walter Isaacson (shelved 119 times as biography)
avg rating 3.99 — 3,713 ratings — published 2007
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Truman (Paperback)
by David McCullough (shelved 115 times as biography)
avg rating 4.30 — 3,468 ratings — published 1992
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The Hiding Place (Mass Market Paperback)
by Corrie Ten Boom (shelved 113 times as biography)
avg rating 4.51 — 14,044 ratings — published 1971
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Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Paperback)
by Elizabeth Gilbert (shelved 110 times as biography)
avg rating 3.61 — 151,671 ratings — published 2006
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The Glass Castle: A Memoir (Paperback)
by Jeannette Walls (shelved 109 times as biography)
avg rating 4.13 — 77,435 ratings — published 2005
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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Paperback)
by Walter Isaacson (shelved 107 times as biography)
avg rating 3.92 — 2,498 ratings — published 2003
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Running with Scissors: A Memoir (Paperback)
by Augusten Burroughs (shelved 106 times as biography)
avg rating 3.47 — 50,951 ratings — published 2002
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Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson (Paperback)
by Mitch Albom (shelved 104 times as biography)
avg rating 3.90 — 51,546 ratings — published 1997
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Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (Hardcover)
by Steve Martin (shelved 103 times as biography)
avg rating 3.78 — 7,485 ratings — published 2007
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His Excellency: George Washington (Paperback)
by Joseph J. Ellis (shelved 101 times as biography)
avg rating 3.86 — 2,507 ratings — published 2004
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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Paperback)
by Doris Kearns Goodwin (shelved 96 times as biography)
avg rating 4.43 — 9,577 ratings — published 2005
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The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Hardcover)
by Barack Obama (shelved 96 times as biography)
avg rating 3.82 — 22,310 ratings — published 2006
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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 94 times as biography)
avg rating 3.74 — 9,880 ratings — published 1998
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A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive (Paperback)
by Dave Pelzer (shelved 93 times as biography)
avg rating 3.97 — 21,215 ratings — published 1992
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character (Paperback)
by Richard P. Feynman (shelved 93 times as biography)
avg rating 4.25 — 4,674 ratings — published 1985
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A Beautiful Mind (Paperback)
by Sylvia Nasar (shelved 91 times as biography)
avg rating 3.74 — 2,363 ratings — published 1998
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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 — 19,868 ratings — published 1970
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Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (updated edition)
by Anthony Bourdain (shelved 86 times as biography)
avg rating 3.95 — 15,632 ratings — published 2000
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Marie Antoinette: The Journey (Paperback)
by Antonia Fraser (shelved 83 times as biography)
avg rating 3.81 — 2,706 ratings — published 2001
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Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood (Paperback)
by Marjane Satrapi (shelved 82 times as biography)
avg rating 4.28 — 16,821 ratings — published 2000
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Paperback)
by Benjamin Franklin (shelved 82 times as biography)
avg rating 3.64 — 2,775 ratings — published 197
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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 80 times as biography)
avg rating 4.25 — 11,234 ratings — published 2001
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Me Talk Pretty One Day (Paperback)
by David Sedaris (shelved 79 times as biography)
avg rating 3.97 — 137,807 ratings — published 2000
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Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Paperback)
by Nancy Milford (shelved 79 times as biography)
avg rating 4.04 — 1,762 ratings — published 2001
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Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire (Modern Library Paperbacks)
by Amanda Foreman (shelved 77 times as biography)
avg rating 3.53 — 2,207 ratings — published 1998
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Theodore Rex (Modern Library Paperbacks)
by Edmund Morris (shelved 74 times as biography)
avg rating 4.10 — 1,678 ratings — published 2001
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Alexander Hamilton (Paperback)
by Ron Chernow (shelved 72 times as biography)
avg rating 4.25 — 1,492 ratings — published 2004
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The Last Lecture (Hardcover)
by Randy Pausch (shelved 72 times as biography)
avg rating 4.11 — 33,051 ratings — published 2008
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No One Here Gets Out Alive (Paperback)
by Daniel Sugerman (shelved 70 times as biography)
avg rating 3.66 — 2,045 ratings — published 1980
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Paperback)
by Frederick Douglass (shelved 70 times as biography)
avg rating 3.81 — 3,172 ratings — published 1845
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Infidel (Hardcover)
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (shelved 70 times as biography)
avg rating 4.26 — 9,221 ratings — published 2006
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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Paperback)
by Azar Nafisi (Goodreads author) (shelved 69 times as biography)
avg rating 3.40 — 27,492 ratings — published 2003
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Shakespeare: The World As Stage (Eminent Lives)
by Bill Bryson (shelved 68 times as biography)
avg rating 3.68 — 2,857 ratings — published 2007
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My Life in France (Hardcover)
by Julia Child (shelved 67 times as biography)
avg rating 4.11 — 8,104 ratings — published 2006
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The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Paperback)
by Edmund Morris (shelved 67 times as biography)
avg rating 4.47 — 1,775 ratings — published 1979
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Surprised By Joy (Paperback)
by C.S. Lewis (shelved 64 times as biography)
avg rating 3.96 — 3,415 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 4.68 — 2,508 ratings — published 1996
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Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Hardcover)
by Art Spiegelman (shelved 64 times as biography)
avg rating 4.43 — 10,597 ratings — published 1986
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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (Hardcover)
by Bill Bryson (shelved 64 times as biography)
avg rating 3.84 — 7,097 ratings — published 2006
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Seabiscuit (Mass Market Paperback)
by Laura Hillenbrand (shelved 63 times as biography)
avg rating 3.96 — 7,910 ratings — published 2001
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Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World's Worst Dog (Hardcover)
by John Grogan (shelved 63 times as biography)
avg rating 4.11 — 36,077 ratings — published 2005
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Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Paperback)
by Jung Chang (shelved 63 times as biography)
avg rating 4.22 — 7,619 ratings — published 1991
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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
