The James Gang
Brenda Wineapple : Books, Literature, & Ideas
In Henry James and his family, biographers find a fascinating story of dynastic melodrama.
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Green Days
Anson Rabinbach : Foreign Leaders & Political Figures
The biography of Joschka Fischer tells the story of postwar Germany.
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Bella's Way
Nona Willis Aronowitz : Feminism & Women
They just don't make women politicians like Bella Abzug anymore.
2007
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Pointe Work
Nureyev: The Life brings new focus to an iconic figure of modern ballet.
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Play It (Over and Over Again)
Ben Ratliff's not-quite biography of John Coltrane considers the jazz legend's enduring influence.
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The Imperfectionist
Reconsidering the life and legacy of avant-garde artist and poet Francis Picabia.
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Company Man
Martin Duberman's biography of Lincoln Kirstein is a case study of the relationship between art and power.
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Iraq's Founding Mother
A biography of Gertrude Bell investigates the woman who created Iraq out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
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The Wharton School
A new biography describes how Edith Wharton transformed her obsessions into stories of loss, regret and entrapment.
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At a Loss for Words
Michael Anderson : African-Americans
Ralph Ellison was eager to be counted in any political cause--except those surrounding race.
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Ill Will
The most durable piece of Nazi propaganda may yet turn out to be the belief that Leni Riefenstahl is an artistic genius.
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A Free Man
Madison Smartt Bell's new biography of Toussaint Louverture explores the complexities of the man who created modern Haiti.
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Take the Money and Run
New biographies of Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon depict the two primeval capitalists in all their contradictory complexity.
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Made in USA
Perry Anderson : United Nations
Two books about Kofi Annan illuminate the controlling relationship between the US and the United Nations.
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Empire Fall
Christian Parenti : Journalists & Journalism
A biography of Bernard Fall examines the life of the man who laid the foundations for contemporary war reporting.
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The Strains of Inspiration
The Friendship describes how Wordsworth and Coleridge's fiercely uneven relationship affected their lives and work.
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Before the Law
Vivian Gornick : Judaism & Jews
Isaac B. Singer: A Life fails to fully illustrate the complexity of the writer's struggle with his heritage.
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The Thought Experimenter
A new biography of William James portrays a man who made a brilliant career of asking tough questions.
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The Close Reader
Stefan Collini : Public Figures & Intellectuals
William Empson's writing shaped modern criticism. A new biography restores him to his proper eminence.
2006
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A Life of His Own
Victoria Glendinning's biography of Leonard Woolf looks at a remarkable public intellectual whose life and work were eclipsed by his more famous spouse.
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The Collaborator
The Unfree French looks at the German occupation of Vichy; Bad Faith is a grim biography of a French collaborator.
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America, Through a Glass Darkly
An intellectual biography of Richard Hofstadter rides a wave of nostalgia for this artful historian and liberal icon of the 1950s and '60s.
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Modern Love
Two new biographies of Clement Greenberg take the measure of an ambitious art critic who had a knack for predicting success.
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A Burnt-Out Case
A new biography of Timothy Leary reveals the mixed-up sociopath behind the "turn on, tune in, drop out" mantra.
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The Sunkist Utopian
Brenda Wineapple : Social & Economic Rights
One hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair exposed the meatpacking industry. Three new books expose Sinclair as an activist dreamer with a messianic streak.
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Shadows
Darryl Pinckney : African-Americans
George Hutchinson's new biography of the mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance reconsiders both Nella Larsen and a key moment of black cultural history.
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The Passion of Anna
In Elaine Feinstein's new biography, the complicated life of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova is flattened into a fable of suffering and redemption.
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Life Is Sweet
Federico Fellini: His Life And Work effaces nearly everything written about the great Italian director, offering a distinct critical analysis and an absorbing account of his private life.
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Bad Will Hunting
Two new books on Shakespeare examine his shadowy life, his times and the origins of his imagination. A third explores whether the Bard of Avon was, in fact, Edward de Vere.
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Compromising Positions
Richard Schickel's biography of Elia Kazan is a laudatory postscript to a life marked by social turmoil, political strife and artistic intensity.
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In a Lonely Place
Martha Nussbaum : Feminism & Women
Elizabeth Cady Stanton's legacy as both an admirable revolutionary and a profound thinker is brought to life in Vivian Gornick's The Solitude of Self.
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Heidegger Made Kosher
Two new books explore the work of philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Heidegger.
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Music for the End of Time
A new biography examines the life and work of composer and theorist Olivier Messiaen, who moved French music out of the cafes and back to the cathedrals.
2005
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The Tower of Babel
Jerome Charyn's Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel examines the life the revolutionary idealist murdered by Stalin in 1940 and explodes the literary myths that have thus far defined his works.
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Agee's Gospel
Two new volumes in the Library of America series present the life and work of James Agee, whose flashes of greatness as an essayist, screenwriter, novelist and Nation film reviewer have secured his place in the American literary canon.
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The Scrivener and the Whale
Andrew Delbanco's new biography of Herman Melville reveals that the great writer came to realize that what torments men is not the longing to believe that there is meaning in the universe, but that behind the longing lies fear of nothingness.
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I Act, Therefore I Am
Admired from a distance and reviled up close, Laurence Olivier could establish a relation with his audience that was like an infection. His official biography chronicles a personal life of an actor who altered the cultural compass of a nation.
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The True Story of Equiano
Robin Blackburn : African-Americans
Vincent Carretta's Equiano, the African is the complex narrative of a Carolina slave who bought his freedom, married an English woman and published a memoir on his life as a seafarer and gentleman.
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In Search of Sam Cooke
A womanizing gospel king and black-pride pop star, Sam Cooke led a short life filled with contradiction.
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The First Lady of Song
Billie Holiday wasn't just adored by her fans but by her friends and colleagues as well.
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Hail Mary
Vivian Gornick : Feminism & Women
A new biography of one of the Enlightment's most remarkable thinkers.
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Unintended Consequences
The story of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun illustrates the value of a truly independent judiciary.
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The Heritage Foundation
Paul Johnson and Christopher Hitchens's new books on the Founding Fathers.
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Epistemology of the Closet
A biography of Utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick sheds new light on life in the Victorian era.
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The Avenging Angel
Martin Duberman : Slavery in America
For abolitionist John Brown, equality was not a theoretical stance but a daily practice.
2004
2003
2001
2000
1999
This week: A look at the advocacy group MoveOn.org at 10. Plus: Controversy in Africa over the indictment of the Sudanese President; Amy Alexander and Chris Rabb on the challenges facing minority journalists in their transition to the web; and The Nation's new sex column. (13mb mp3)
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