THE art of biography, we say — but at once go on to ask, Is biography an art? The question is foolish perhaps, and ungenerous certainly, considering the keen pleasure that biographers have given us.

Jonathan Eig's "King: A Life," a biography of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was recognized as one of the best books of 2023. Biographies offer a chance to explore the decision-making and ...

When Steve Jobs was 6 years old, his young next door neighbor found out he was adopted. "That means your parents abandoned you and didn't want you," she told him. Jobs ran into his home, where his ...

The first and last image Jonathan Eig says he saw each day in his boyhood bedroom was a poster of Muhammad Ali on the ceiling. In Eig's view then, Ali was a "superhero." The 53-year-old journalist ...

The group biography has been around for centuries: There was Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, written some 1,900 years ago and a staple of classical education ever since; the Bishop ...

Zachary Leader’s book on Richard Ellmann’s landmark work on James Joyce asks whether a biographer can be considered an artist. In 1927—just five years after the publication of Ulysses and five years ...

Catherine Lacey’s new novel follows a polarizing artist through a fractured country. By Dwight Garner When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission ...

Much has been written about the therapeutic effects of reading. Carmen Martin Gaite, for example, expressed her views on the subject in 1989. “Reading provides insight into a secret world that ...