by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, 1939 This is an autobiography of the author of The Little Prince. He was a French pilot in the 1930’s and 1940’s, flying the mail from France to Africa and then in South America over the Andes. He writes about the dangers of flying – mountains, storms, sand, sometimes the planes […]
Category: Biography
Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day’s Radical Vision and Its Challenge for Our Times
by D.L. Mayfield, 2022 I learned about this book from the library’s monthly biographies email. It’s a short, very well-written, and easy to read biography of Dorothy Day, the woman who started the Catholic Worker newspaper and Hospitality Houses for the poor. I had never heard of her, but Pope Francis in 2015 said to […]
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, 2005 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Mesmerizing, enthralling book. I read it because the movie, Oppenheimer, was based on this book. The book is 591 pages long. It took me almost 6 weeks to read it. The movie follows the book closely, but the book is so much […]
Abroad in Japan
by Chris Broad, 2023 I LOVED this book! It’s funny and informative! Written by a young British man who went to Japan in 2012 at the age of 22 to teach English through the JET program. He ended up spending 10 years there (and maybe is still there), becoming a YouTube sensation, and loving Japan. […]
Waiting for Snow in Havana
by Carlos Eire, 2003 What a beautiful, amazing, wonderful, educational, painful, delightful book! I LOVED THIS BOOK! Thank you, Jan, for telling me about it. I never knew anything about Cuba and Castro. This biography, by a man who was born in Cuba in 1950 and had to leave in 1962, brings to life the […]
life is so good
by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman, 2000, 2013 Excellent book. George Dawson, born in 1898, died at age 102, learned to read at age 98. Grew up on a farm in Marshall, Texas. Helped pick cotton at age 4. Oldest of children born to poor black farming couple in east Texas. He never got to […]
Red Notice
by Bill Browder, 2015 Eye-opening book about Russia. It details Bill Browder’s experience as a hedge fund manager starting soon after communism fell through his battle for justice for his lawyer, Sergie Magnitsky, who was tortured to death in a Russian prison. Bill fought and fought and fought to keep the truth in the forefront, […]
Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them
by Maeve Higgins, 2022 I learned a lot from this book. For example, Ireland has been blowing up monuments (to British men) for centuries. If our Black Americans blew up the monuments to slavery, the outcry would never end. Maeve was welcomed to America from Ireland because she is white and young and European. The […]
The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer
by Christopher Clarey, 2021 A full-on immersive trip into the world and life of Roger Federer. There have been about 12 biographies on Roger Federer. This is probably the definitive one. It takes you in-depth from before Roger was born (which was on 8/8/1981) to shortly after his devastating loss to Djokovic in the Wimbledon […]
Willie Nelson’s Letters to America
by Willie Nelson with Turk Pipkin, 2021 Heartwarming letters from Willie Nelson to all sorts of folks, and even a scathing letter to the COVID-19 virus. He wrote this while at home under lock-down in Texas, and you can tell, he doesn’t like having to stay home, not being able to tour. He’s 88 years […]
Crossing the Line
by Kareem Rosser, 2021 Excellent book! Learned about it from the Library’s monthly Biographies email. As I was reading their description of the book, about a young black man who learned to play polo in inner-city Philadelphia, and came to CSU for college, I realized I had read his scholarship application! I made sure he […]
She Come By It Natural
Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh, 2020 Short biography of Dolly Parton written by a young feminist who grew up poor in Kansas and likened her grandmother, Betty, to be the real Dolly Parton. In the acknowledgements, she writes: “Thanks especially to the real Dolly Parton, my grandmother Betty.” […]
Akiane, her life, her art, her poetry
by Akiane and Foreli Kramarik, 2006 Short biography of Akiane, the girl who painted the picture of Jesus that the little boy from Heaven Is for Real identified as the Jesus he saw in heaven. This book tells the story of her life up to age 10 and includes her poetry and her paintings. I […]
My Family and Other Animals
by Gerald Durrell, 1956 How I adored this book! He tells of his time on the Greek isle of Corfu in the 1930s. His family moved there from England when oldest brother, Larry, finds out from a friend how warm and sunny it is there. It is laugh-out-loud funny and wonderfully written. It takes you […]
Paul Simon, the life
by Robert Hilburn, 2018 Scanned this book quickly after getting through the first 100 pages but then getting bogged down. Learned enough: Born in 1941, grandparents immigrated from Lithuania and Ukraine, long before the Holocaust, which would have killed them since they were Jewish. His father was a musician, stand-up bass. He was born in […]
The Flame Trees of Thika
by Elspeth Huxley, 1959 Beautifully written autobiography about Elspeth’s childhood years in Kenya in the early 1900’s before World War I. Her Mom and Dad, whom she calls Tilly and Robin, are determined to make it as coffee farmers in Kenya, despite no one having done so before and them not having the skills or […]
Old Jules
by Mari Sandoz, 1935 Biography by the daughter of a pioneer in Nebraska. I didn’t finish this book because Old Jules was the meanest, cruelest, ugliest man, and when he started being cruel to his 2-year old daughter, I couldn’t read anymore.