John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life, by Paul C. Nagel
Let me just start by saying that this was not one of the biographies that I was really excited about. After reading John Adams, I kind of thought that I had a pretty basic idea of JQA’s life and thought this would be [...]
The Book: Autobiography of a Face, by Lucy Grealy
The Story: When she was really young (9 or 10 I think) Lucy was diagnosed with a pretty horrible form of cancer. No one ever really told her flat out what was going on, but what she knew was that she had to go to the hospital [...]
The Book: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth, by Paul Hoffman
The Story: Paul Erdos is a math legend. He contributed more papers, solved more problems and made more mathematical discoveries than just about anyone in history.
As you may imagine, he was a pretty quirky [...]
The Book: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider, by Ishmael Beah
The Story: Ishmael was just a boy when war swept through his country. While he escaped the attack on his village, the rest of his family did not. He joined with a group of boys who was also on the run from [...]
The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, by Harlow Giles Unger
Alright, there are a lot of little things that I want to talk about that have absolutely no relation to one another so bulleted list it is!
Harlow Giles Unger is maybe the best historian name I’ve ever heard of. And [...]
April 27, 2011 – 12:05 pm
James Madison (The American Presidents Series), by Garry Wills
I know that this sounds kind of lame, but when I chose a biography to read about James Madison, I chose by length. There were only a few that were even out there. There were two that had pretty good reviews: this one (at about 200 pages) [...]
The Book: Two Kisses for Maddy, by Matt Logelin
The Story: Two Kisses for Maddy is a memoir about how a 30 year old guy went from being a husband to being a father to being a widow all in just a few days.
Liz had a semi-complicated pregnancy and ended up on bed rest in the [...]
American Sphinx, by Joseph Ellis
Something that I’m already noticing about these presidential biographies as I make my way through them is just how much overlap there is. Reading John Adams, I learned almost as much about Thomas Jefferson as I did about John Adams. For most of their political lives they were on a pretty [...]
The Book: To Own a Dragon: Reflections on Growing Up Without a Father, by Donald Miller
The Story: When Donald Miller was pretty young, his Dad just walked out on his family. He was raised mainly by his mom, but had several male influences (including neighbors and his youth pastor) come in and out of his [...]
The Book: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, by John Irving
The Story: This is a collection of short works by John Irving. The first few are autobiographical and tell about his life growing up. There are stories from his life growing up on a farm, but mostly the “memoir” section is about his life as a [...]