Percy Harrison Fawcett was utterly convinced that there was evidence hidden in the Amazon jungle of an ancient civilization. He had found shards of pottery and rock paintings, he had spoken to Indians who had oral histories of their ancestors, and he himself had been farther into that ”green hell” than any other European man, and had survived. [...]
Archive for the ‘Biography’ Category
The Lost City of Z
Posted in Biography, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration on June 24, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
Posted in Biography, Nonfiction on April 27, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Above all, Beatrix Potter is known for her perfect, tiny books for children. There is Peter Rabbit, of course, and Benjamin Bunny, but her talent went beyond rabbits: Jemima Puddle-Duck and Two Bad Mice and Jeremy Fisher and Tom Kitten and dozens of others sprang from her imagination and her pen over the years. The stories strike [...]
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu
Posted in Biography, History, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration on February 28, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Marco Polo, a history of that well-traveled Venetian gentleman by Laurence Bergreen, is simultaneously one of the most interesting and one of the most irritating books I’ve read in a long time. During the whole course of reading it, I couldn’t decide whether I most wanted to find out what happened next, or throw the [...]
Everybody Was So Young
Posted in Biography, History, Nonfiction on December 12, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Imagine that you’re at a party. It’s the best sort of party: plentiful food, lots of delicious drinks, and all of your best friends being particularly clever and witty, making music, dancing, drawing on napkins to explain their points. Lights twinkle in the garden, and the breeze is warm in the trees; the children are [...]
Born Standing Up (Audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Biography, Nonfiction on October 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »
I have a weird sort of weakness for show-biz memoirs and biographies. I don’t read many of them, but I find myself wanting to read them all. I have no idea why because almost every book of this type disappoints me—the writing isn’t good, the information isn’t new, there’s too much gossip and not enough insight, [...]
The Sisters
Posted in Biography, Nonfiction on April 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Sisters, by Mary S. Lovell, is a biography that proves what I’ve suspected for a long time: the living get more influence than the dead. Lovell writes about the Mitford sisters (and, tangentially, their brother): six girls from an aristocratic British family who fought and flaunted and danced and went to prison and knew [...]
