Biography Editor
Picks of '99
Editor Jordana Moskowitz's favorite biographies of 1999.
| 1. |  |
Vera
(Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff |
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Random House Hardcover - 608 pages (April 1999) |
$19.57 $8.38 Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com She was wearing a black satin mask when they first met in 1923, and in a sense she wore a mask--that of the dutiful wife and helpmeet--throughout their 52-year marriage. Especially after the American publication of Lolita made her husband notorious in 1958, Véra Nabokov's presence at her... Read more
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| 2. |  |
Walker
Evans by James R. Mellow |
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Basic Books Hardcover - 600 pages (May 1999) |
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| Amazon.com Before his death in 1997, James Mellow left one last gracefully written, sensitively nuanced biography to add to a shelf containing National Book Award winner Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times and a remarkable trilogy on seminal figures of the Lost Generation. Mellow's biography of photographer... Read more
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| 3. |  |
Eleanor
Roosevelt: Volume 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook |
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Viking Pr Hardcover - 686 pages Vol 2 (June 1999) |
$24.47 $10.48 Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com With its gripping tale of a privileged ugly duckling turned socially conscious swan with the help of strong female friends--many of whom were lesbians and one of whom was probably her lover--the first volume of Blanche Wiesen Cook's biography of Eleanor Roosevelt won awards and made headlines. That... Read more
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| 4. |  |
Secrets
of the Flesh : A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman |
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Knopf Hardcover - 592 pages (October 1999) |
Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com The same keen yet affectionate gaze Judith Thurman trained on Isak Dinesen in her 1983 National Book Award winner, The Life of a Storyteller, distinguishes her robust portrait of the great French writer Colette. In Secrets of the Flesh, Thurman shrewdly disentangles fact from legend during the... Read more
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| 5. |  |
The
Trust : The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times by Susan E. Tifft, Alex S. Jones |
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Little Brown & Company Hardcover - 870 pages 1 Ed edition (September 1999) |
Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com This mammoth history of the dynasty that created and controls The New York Times is as epic in its scope as is the role of the newspaper in America. Like any good epic, this story is filled with its fair share of personal ambition, disappointment, competing heirs to the throne, fierce loyalties, and... Read more
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| 6. |  See picture |
Balthus
: A Biography by Nicholas Fox Weber |
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Knopf Hardcover - 656 pages (October 1999) |
Click here for more info |
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Customer Review: |
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| Amazon.com Balthus is as multifaceted and spellbinding as its subject, the 20th-century painter whose canvasses have been likened both to those of the ethereal Piero della Francesca and sadomasochistic erotica. Biographer Nicholas Fox Weber quotes Oscar Wilde when discussing Balthus's most notorious painting,... Read more
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| 7. | See picture |
Rembrandt's
Eyes by Simon Schama |
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Knopf Hardcover - 640 pages (November 1999) |
Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com The great 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn left us so many arresting self-portraits, painted at every stage in his eventful life, that his distinctive face and bearing are a familiar part of the 20th-century cultural landscape, a recognizable presence in galleries across Europe and North... Read more
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| 8. | See picture |
Mozart
: A Cultural Biography by Robert W. Gutman |
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Harcourt Brace Hardcover - 992 pages (November 1999) |
Click here for more info |
No
customer rating available (Be the first to review
it) |
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| Amazon.com Readers who think of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) as the shrieking vulgarian depicted in Peter Shaffer's hit play (and movie) Amadeus will be astonished by the man they meet in this biography by music historian Robert Gutman: "affectionate and generous ... an austere moralist of vital force,... Read more
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| 9. | See picture |
Teresa
of Avila : The Progress of a Soul by Cathleen Medwick |
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Knopf Hardcover - 304 pages (December 1999) |
Click here for more info |
No
customer rating available (Be the first to review
it) |
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| Amazon.com Saint Teresa (1515-1582) is widely considered one of the greatest mystics and woman reformers of the Renaissance. Author Cathleen Medwick (a former editor at Vanity Fair and Mirabella) clearly invested an enormous amount of research into this impressive biography of a brazen and complicated woman.... Read more
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| 10. | See picture |
Mao
Zedong (Penguin Lives) by Jonathan D. Spence |
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Viking Pr Hardcover - 160 pages (November 1999) |
Click here for more info |
No
customer rating available (Be the first to review
it) |
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| Amazon.com From humble beginnings in rural Hunan, Mao Zedong became the "Great Helmsman" of Communist China. By the time he died in 1976, he had profoundly changed the course of history. His increasingly erratic whims and graspings at a wild utopia destabilized his immense achievements, and he was ultimately... Read more
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