Biography

The Buzz About Ralph Lauren -- America's Style Icon

Chloe Spencer | Posted 01.07.2012 | Style

Read More: Clothing, Furniture, Lincoln Center, Entrepreneurs, Passion, Billionaires, Clothes, Celebrity Style, Biography, Success, Oprah Winfrey, Polo Ralph Lauren, Style, Inspiration, Fashion, Entrepreneurship, Ralph Lauren, Style News

There has been a lot of buzz about Ralph Lauren lately, as some may know--The Lincoln Center in New York presented An Evening With Ralph Lauren, hoste...

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Occup(ied) America: A Literary History

Joe Woodward | Posted 12.26.2011 | Books

Read More: History, Occupy Wall Street Movement, 1930s, John Dos Passos, Literary History, Biography, Great Depression, Occupy Wall Street, Books News

As I've watched and listened to the nascent movement "Occupy Wall Street," I've been driven to reread a favorite book of mine about America -- The American 1930s: A Literary History.

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Do You Know Simone Weil?

George Mitrovich | Posted 10.13.2011 | Books

Read More: Simone Weil, Biography, Books News

We know much of Simone Weil's life and thought, as she left a remarkable collection of articles, essays, and letters. But her death at so young an age was one more manifestation of history's cruel cycle

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Hunting Down The Real Karl Marx

Mary Gabriel | Posted 12.11.2011 | Books

Read More: Karl Marx Biography, Karl Marx in Love, Marxism, Economics, Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx, Myth of Karl Marx, Biography, Books News

Ask anyone on the street if they have heard of Karl Marx and the answer more often than not would be yes. Ask those same people what they know about Marx and the responses will be wildly different - and usually wrong.

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National Book Festival 2011 (Photo Gallery)

Jeff Malet | Posted 11.30.2011 | Books

Read More: Authors, Illustrators, Poets. Poetry, Reading, Libraries, Biography, Slidepollajax, Washington DC, Books News

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Rothko's 'Volcanic' Character Explored In Play 'Red'

Times | Posted 11.22.2011 | Arts

Read More: Rothko Play, Rothko Life, Michael Grandage, Alfred Molina, Theater, Mark Rothko, Plays, Rothko, Red, New York, Biography, Performance, Arts News

The most astonishing sequence in "Red," John Logan's 2011 Tony Award-winning play about a tumultuous moment in the career of Mark Rothko, the master A...

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Where Art & Politics Collide

Joe Woodward | Posted 11.06.2011 | Books

Read More: George Grosz, Art, Literary Fiction, 1930s, Moma, Nathanael West, Biography, Moma Grosz, George Grosz Moma, Books News

In America today, to mix art and politics in any literal sense is considered either passé or taboo, but in the 1930s it was a vein of practice mined by many writers and artists.

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Stage Door: Joan Copeland's Show

Fern Siegel | Posted 10.14.2011 | Arts

Read More: Joan Copeland, Theater, Biography, Off-Broadway, Entertainment, Arthur Miller, Memoir, Arts News

Theater fans have admired her work for decades; now they can get the inside story. Actress Joan Copeland, whose worked has spanned theater, film and television, is starring in the autobiographical Joan's Show for two nights.

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Unauthorized Tiger Woods Biography To Be Released

AP | Posted 09.12.2011 | Books

Read More: Comic Books, Tiger Woods Comic Book, C.W. Cooke, Tiger Woods Bio, Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods Biography, Bluewater Productions Inc., Biography, Books News

PHILADELPHIA — Golfer Tiger Woods is the latest celebrity and athlete to get his own unauthorized biography in a comic book. Publisher Bluewate...

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Do You Still Read Fiction?

Lev Raphael | Posted 08.31.2011 | Books

Read More: Short Stories, Authors, Book Publishing, Books, Fiction, Novels, Biographies, Historical Fiction, Philip Roth, Booker Prize, The Gilded Age, Biography, Book Reviews, Reviewing, Roth on Fiction, Phillip Roth Fiction, Books News

Philip Roth has written two dozen novels, yet fiction has lost its appeal for him personally. When asked why, he said he didn't know, and only offered a smart-aleck response: "I wised up."

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Mr. Beverly Hills, Fred Hayman, Honored... and His Biography Is Published

Jay Weston | Posted 08.01.2011 | Los Angeles

Read More: Rodeo Drive, Rose Apodaca, Fred Hayman, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Glamor, Giorgio Boutique, Perfume, Hollywood Style, Biography, La-Style, Los Angeles News

Under the yellow-and-white colors of his store, Giorgio Beverly Hills, and his namesake follow-up, Fred Hayman really did radically change the way the world considers Los Angeles style.

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The Writer and the Fallowed Field

Joe Woodward | Posted 07.07.2011 | Books

Read More: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Writing, Literary Biography, Fiction, Three Tales, Nathanael West, Biography, Books News

Gustave Flaubert wrestles with the ravages of old age, religion, the joy and heartbreak of love, children, and more. Though each of these stories is just some 40 pages long, they loom larger in the imagination.

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Writing Chinese History Through Biography: A Quick Q & A With Joseph Esherick

Jeffrey Wasserstrom | Posted 05.29.2011 | Books

Read More: History, Biography, China, Books News

I recently caught up with Joseph Esherick, author of the new book Ancestral Leaves, and asked him about telling the story of recent Chinese history through the eyes of one family.

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Is Biography Proper History?

blog.oup.com | Jonathan Steinberg | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: Bismarck: A Life, Jonathan Steinberg, Biography as History, Biography, Books News

Big biographies of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Churchill, Lyndon Johnson and many others pour from the pens of the most distinguished academic historia...

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The Kennedys

Nigel Hamilton | Posted 05.25.2011 | Media

If you admire JFK's idealism and the spirit of civility and hope that he inspired in our nation, you will be appalled by Stephen Kronish's endlessly salacious entertainment at JFK's posthumous expense.

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Hagiography -- Writing the Lives of the Saints

Joe Woodward | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: The Millions, The Beats, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Literary Biography, Biography, Carl Colomon, Bill Morris, Peter Orlovsky, Tobias Wolff, New York Times Book Review, Books News

Writing biography is a scandalous enterprise; its penciled craftsman is perennially suspect for being neither art-maker, nor historian, nor critic -- but some simple version of all three.

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Unlisted -- But OK

Nigel Hamilton | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Just because you got some wonderful TV coverage doesn't get you on the list of "Reviewers' favorites from 2010."

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How to Write Better, in the Words of Mock Amy Sedaris

Joe Woodward | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: Amy Sedaris, Joe Woodward, Humor, Biographies, Mexico, O/R Books, Nathanael West, How to Write, Humor and Satire, Canada, Biography, Books News

Writing is hard. But it's easy, too, like talking and baking. Baking isn't hard. It's the easiest thing to do in the kitchen, besides the microwave...

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Bush At War

Nigel Hamilton | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: Congress, Richard Clarke, Ronald Reagan, Memoirs, Decision Points, Ron Susskind, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Media, Dick Cheney, Hubris, Condoleezza Rice, Fdr, Self-Portraiture, Blood Money, American Caesars, Philip Roth, The Constitution, Karl Rove, Afghanistan, The Plot Against America, Robert Byrd, Bart Gellman, Al Qaeda, Biography, Lee Atwater, Dwight Eisenhower, Book Royalties, Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, Iraq, Jfk, Casualties, The Vulcans, Harrytruman, Books News

What happens when a great nation -- and this is a great nation -- elects a ruler who is not up to the task of being president? The answer is to be found in George W. Bush's memoirs, Decision Points.

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Best Film Books for 2010

Thomas Gladysz | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: Book News, Film Books, Rudolph Valentino, David Thomson, Charlie Chaplin, Hedy Lamarr, Scott Eyman, Biography, Kevin Brownlow, Film History, Slidepollajax, Books News

I love watching films, and I also love reading about them. Here are 12 recommend books -- what I think are the most interesting film books of 2010, listed alphabetically by title.

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George W. Bush -- and Selective Memory

Nigel Hamilton | Posted 05.25.2011 | Politics

At the heart of former President George W. Bush's jokey new memoirs is the serious matter of war -- in fact two wars, waged on two fronts. Why the pre...

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Madame Bovary: The Exquisite Corpse

Joe Woodward | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: Madame Bovary, Literary Biography, Literature in Translation, Novels, Gustave-Flaubert-Madame-Bovary, Commericialism, Lydia Davis, Biography, Books News

As I've been reading this new Davis translation of Madame Bovary, familiar feelings have come rushing back to me. I always hope things will turn out differently, and this translation is no exception.

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Bush's Decision Points -- Goodwill Hunting

Nigel Hamilton | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: History, Bill Clinton, Memoirs, Decision Points, President Barack Obama, George W. Bush, American Caesars, Dick Cheney, Biography, Books News

I'm up to page 107, so almost a quarter of the way through former President Bush's new memoirs, Decision Points. I had two weeks of acute toothache, b...

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Bush and Memoirs

Nigel Hamilton | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: History, How to Do Biography, Martin Luther, Memoirs, Decision Points, Xenophon, Autobiography, George W. Bush, Presidential Memoir, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson, American Caesars, Biography, Books News

Former President Bush has written his recollections and there have been conflicting accounts of what, exactly, they are. Let me try and clarify the distinctions between the various genres of autobiography.

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On Biography

Nigel Hamilton | Posted 05.25.2011 | Books

Read More: Siddharta Mukherjee, International Biographers Organization (BIO), Biographers Groups, Education, Emperor of All Maladies, National Press Club, Biography, Books News

In the Arts section of the New York Times, Charles McGrath tells of the oncology doctor with the looks of a Bollywood star, Sid Mukherjee. His new boo...

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