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Best Biographies of 2021

OCT. 12, 2021

by Mary Beard

A lively treatise on Roman art and power, deliciously opinionated and beautifully illustrated. Full review >

AUG. 3, 2021

by Peter Bergen

Essential for anyone concerned with geopolitics, national security, and the containment of further terrorist actions. Full review >

OCT. 5, 2021

by Daniel de Visé

The thrill is here, as B.B. King finally gets his due in this first meticulous account of his historic life. Full review >

NOV. 2, 2021

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

by James Horn

Swift-moving prose along a twisting storyline lends this brilliant book the feel of a mystery. Full review >

SEPT. 1, 2021

by Kate Clifford Larson

A social justice pioneer gets her due in this inspiring story of toil and spirit. A must-stock for libraries. Full review >

FEB. 23, 2021

by Hermione Lee

Authoritative and exhaustive—another jewel in Lee’s literary crown. Full review >

by Claire Tomalin

A vivid portrait of the early years of an author of astounding vision, who predicted many of the horrors of the 20th century. Full review >

JULY 13, 2021

by Richard Zenith

Impressive research and evident enthusiasm inform a definitive biography. Full review >

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Best Book Lists, Award Aggregation, & Book Data

The Best Biography And Memoir Books of 2021 (A Year-End List Aggregation)

“What are the best Biography and Memoir books released in 2021?” We looked at 187 of the top Biography and Memoir books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

The top 39 books, all appearing on 2 or more “Best Biography and Memoir” book lists, are ranked below by how many times they appear. The remaining 125+ titles, as well as the sources we used, are in alphabetical order on the bottom of the page.

Our other Best Of 2021 Articles:

• The Best Art, Photography, And Coffee Table Books
• The Best AudioBooks
• The Best Biography And Memoir Books
• The Best Graphic Novels And Comics
• The Best Cookbooks
• The Best Fiction Books
• The Best Books (All Catergories)
• The Best History Books
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• The Best Mystery, Horror, and Thriller Books
• The Best Nonfiction Books
• The Best Poetry Books
• The Best Science And Nature Books
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Previous Years: 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2017 , 2016 , 2015

Happy Scrolling!

Top 39 Best Biography and Memoir Books From 2021

39.) a ghost in the throat written by doireann ni ghriofa.

Lists It Appears On:

An Post Irish Book Awards Nonfiction Book of the Year – A Guardian Best Book of 2020 – Shortlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize – Longlisted for…

38.) Aftershocks written by Nadia Owusu

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, this “gorgeous” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice) and deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award winner Nadia Owu…

37.) Allegorizings written by Jan Morris

• Waterstones

Not so long ago, feeling intimations of mortality, Jan Morris embarked on a wholly novel literary enterprise. What began as a series of high-minded le…

36.) Broken Horses: A Memoir written by Brandi Carlile

The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter, producer, and six-time Grammy winner opens up about faith, sexuality, parenthood, and a life shaped by mus…

35.) Burning Man written by Frances Wilson

• The Guardian

An electrifying, revelatory new biography of D. H. Lawrence, with a focus on his difficult middle years “Never trust the teller,” wrote D. H. Lawrence…

34.) Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South written by Winfred Rembert and Erin I. Kelly

• Barnes & Noble

“A compelling and important history that this nation desperately needs to hear.” -Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy and…

33.) House of Sticks: A Memoir written by Ly Tran

This beautifully written “masterclass in memoir” (Elle) recounts a young girl’s journey from war-torn Vietnam to Queens, New York, “showcas[ing] the t…

32.) Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City written by Andrea Elliott

“Destined to become one of the classics of the genre” (Newsweek), the riveting, unforgettable story of a girl whose indomitable spirit is tested by ho…

31.) Just as I Am: A Memoir written by Cicely Tyson

“In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely Tyson has not only succeeded as an actor, she has shaped the course of history.” -President Barack Obama…

30.) Maybe I Don’t Belong Here written by David Harewood, David Olusoga

29.) Mike Nichols: A Life written by Mark Harris

An ! A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous pl…

28.) My Mess Is a Bit of a Life written by Georgia Pritchett

“Georgia Pritchett is a singularly hilarious person. Her book is a delightful and perfect reflection of her. Its tenderness sneaks up on you and reall…

27.) Names for Light: A Family History written by Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint

Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a lyrical meditation on family, place, and inheritance Names for Light traverses time and memory to wei…

26.) On Juneteenth written by Annette Gordon-Reed

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian…

25.) Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks written by Patricia Highsmith

Relegated to the genre of mystery during her lifetime, Patricia Highsmith is now recognized as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). B…

24.) Pessoa written by Richard Zenith

Nearly a century after his wrenching death, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) remains one of our most enigmatic writers. Believing he co…

23.) Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness written by Kristen Radtke

From the acclaimed author of Imagine Wanting Only This–a timely and moving meditation on isolation and longing, both as individuals and as a society …

22.) The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race written by Walter Isaacson

The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a “compelling” (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennife…

21.) The Copenhagen Trilogy written by Tove Ditlevsen

Called a masterpiece by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing To…

20.) The Madness of Grief written by Reverend Richard Coles

19.) The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music written by Dave Grohl

The #1 So, I’ve written a book.Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities (It’s a piece of cake! Just do…

18.) The Young H.G. Wells written by Claire Tomalin

Tomalin’s The Young H.G. Wells is hard to beat, being friendly, astute and a pleasure to read.” –Michael Dirda, Washington Post “Claire Tomalin’s sho…

17.) Three Girls From Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood written by Dawn Turner

• Library Journal

A “beautiful, tragic, and inspiring” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) memoir about three Black girls from the storied Bronzeville section of Chicag…

16.) Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement written by Tarana Burke

Searing. Powerful. Needed. –Oprah “Sometimes a single story can change the world. Unbound is one of those stories. Tarana’s words are a testimony to…

15.) Will written by Will Smith

“The best memoir I’ve ever read.” -Oprah Winfrey One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about…

14.) Yearbook written by Seth Rogen

#2 * – “Rogen’s candid collection of sidesplitting essays . . . thrives at both explaining and encapsulating a generational comedic voice.”–The Washi…

13.) 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows written by Ai Weiwei

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE – In Ai Weiwei’s widely anticipated memoir, “one of the most important artists working in the world today” (Financial T…

12.) Orwell’s Roses written by Rebecca Solnit

“An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.” –Margaret Atwood “A captivating account of Orwel…

11.) Poet Warrior written by Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her…

10.) Real Estate written by Deborah Levy

An NPR Best Book of the Year A Washington Post Best Book of the Year A Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2021 A USA Today Book Not to Miss Real Estate…

9.) The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym written by Paula Byrne

8.) The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation written by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Tubbs’ connection to these women is palpable on the page — as both a mother and a scholar of the impact Black motherhood has had on America. Through …

7.) Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted written by Suleika Jaouad

A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” li…

6.) Punch Me Up to the Gods written by Brian Broome

WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR – A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ PICK – A TODAY SUMMER READING LIST PICK – AN ENTERTAI…

5.) Taste: My Life Through Food written by Stanley Tucci

From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen. Stanley Tucci grew…

4.) Seeing Ghosts written by Kat Chow

NAMED ONE OF BARNES AND NOBLE’S BEST BOOKS OF 2021 For readers of Helen Macdonald and Elizabeth Alexander, an intimate and haunting portrait of grief …

3.) Somebody’s Daughter written by Ashley C. Ford

“This is a book people will be talking about forever.” –Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed “Ford’s wrenchingly brilliant…

2.) Beautiful Country written by Qian Julie Wang

A TODAY SHOW #READWITHJENNA BOOK CLUB PICK! – The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world–an inca…

1.) Crying in H Mart written by Michelle Zauner

A Best Book of 2021: Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal, and more From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and…

The 125+ Additional Best Biography and Memoir Books Released In 2021

14 best biography and memoir book sources/lists.

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The Best Books of 2021

The best biographies: the 2021 nbcc shortlist, recommended by elizabeth taylor.

Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley

Elizabeth Taylor , the author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics' Circle biography committee, discusses their 2021 shortlist for the title of the best biography—including a revelatory new book about the life of Malcolm X, a group biography of artists in the 1960s, and a book built from a cache of letters written in Japan's shogun era.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne & Tamara Payne

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s by Maggie Doherty

1 Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley

2 the price of peace: money, democracy, and the life of john maynard keynes by zachary d. carter, 3 the dead are arising: the life of malcolm x by les payne & tamara payne, 4 red comet: the short life and blazing art of sylvia plath by heather clark, 5 the equivalents: a story of art, female friendship, and liberation in the 1960s by maggie doherty.

W elcome back to Five Books! This is the third year in a row that we’ve come together to discuss the National Book Critics Circle finalists for biography. Before we look at the 2021 shortlist, could you reflect on the qualities that unite the best biographies?

Biographies have a special antenna for what’s happening in the world. This year, three excellent biographies about living men dealt directly with politics that provided a bit of a refuge from current personalities but, at the same time, elucidated the present day: His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life by Jonathan Alter, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser and Man of Tomorrow: The Restless Life of Jerry Brown by James Newton.

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The best biographies adapt form to subject—they come from an angle, tell the story of a group, focus on a moment. They can do this because they inhabit the people and times about which they are writing. Most of all, readers respond to a special alchemy of subject and biographer, and while I think Janet Malcolm is brilliant, I don’t quite endorse her idea that the biographer at work “is like the professional burglar.”

Biographies often have to contend with or respond to how their subject or subjects have been defined by previous works of biography. Of the books we’re looking at here, that’s certainly true of the Plath and Malcolm X biographies. Keynes too.

To some extent, with the exception of Amy Stanley, each biography finalist wrestles with the interpretations of previous biographies. Heather Clark responds more deliberately in Red Comet because she is contending not only with Plath, but the myth of Plath. Les Payne challenges interpretations of biographies about Malcolm X, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by Manning Marable. As an investigative reporter, Payne not only challenges interpretations but also corrects the historic record and Malcom X’s own autobiography. Biographers live with their subjects, and the shadows of their subjects.

Shall we start off by discussing the first of your 2021 finalists for the title of best biography? This is Amy Stanley’s Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World. It’s very much a life-and-times book, as it uses the story of a single woman to offer a sweep of 19th-century Japanese society.

You have that just right: Amy Stanley tells the story of how Edo became Tokyo through the life of Tsuneno, daughter of a Buddhist priest in a rural province at a moment that Japan ’s transformation is taking root.

Just to be clear for those who don’t know: the city we call Tokyo was known as ‘Edo’ until 1869. 

Tsuneno attends school, learns to sew and dreams of the big city. At age 12, she is married off and dispatched to an even more remote province. Three failed marriages later, she literally walks for weeks on a horrific journey to reach Edo where, impoverished and degraded, she proves to be a skilful survivor, finding a form of independence to which she clings, even after she marries a louche of a samurai . She dies in 1853, just before Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan.

She was remarkably resilient and tenacious, but Tsuneno was also rebellious, troublesome and not entirely likeable. And her death brought me to tears. Stanley renders Tsuneno’s messy life, unique struggles and the quotidian particulars of her world so richly that this Japanese woman from another era becomes achingly human and resonant. Tsuneno emerges as a sort of everywoman who transcends time and is more than a vessel to represent Edo’s transformation into Tokyo and Japan’s path to power.

“It’s a biography of a woman, but also a portrait of what would become a great world city”

Stanley, an historian of early and modern Japan, happened to find a letter from Tsuneno hidden in an archive online which led her to Japan and the discovery of a rich archive of letters written by Tsuneno which had been saved by her family, along with a trove of documents. Stanley is quite understated about this dedication and accomplishment. As she explains in the book, she reads and speaks Japanese, but the brushstrokes of 200 years ago posed quite a challenge. Stanley photographed everything from the archive, and painstakingly translated it all to create a narrative of Tsuneno’s life through her very detailed and personal letters.

Stanley has recovered a lost world. Drawing on her knowledge of the history, Stanley contextualizes the letters, which enhances their power. So, it’s a biography of a woman, but also a portrait of what would become a great world city and its evolving culture.

I’m really interested in the decision Stanley has made to focus on a subject who is herself not famous or historically significant. I guess by its nature the book gives us insight into what it was like to be a ‘normal’ person during that period, in that society.

This biography is such a sharp reminder of the importance of archives. I fear that we will soon face a future in which we will have to rely on redacted government documents. The victors will dominate the narrative, and the stories of the powerless will vanish unless we work to preserve them. With email replacing letters and so much news disappearing online, we need a coordinated effort to create new archives, especially for those who may not have reached a moment of fame, or infamy.

Do you think this would have been a difficult book to find a publisher for, because of Stanley’s low-key choice of subject?

I try not to look at the publishing history of books as they come up for awards and, instead, focus on the book itself. So I don’t know the particulars here, but kudos to Scribner on this one. My sense, though, is that there’s increasing enthusiasm to recover forgotten, overlooked figures and histories and that Stanley’s book could find a wide audience.

Finding that universality in specificity. Well, let’s move on to Zachary Carter’s The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes . This is much closer to the ‘great man’ style of biography that you alluded to earlier. How one person impacts the world, rather than how the world impacts upon the person. The Guardian called this “a solid, sombre intellectual biography”—does that sound right to you? Why is it one of the best biographies of 2021?

I’m not sure that the ‘Bloomsberries,’ as Virginia Woolf named them, were sombre in Carter’s vivid depictions! The Price of Peace is a biography of an eminent, visionary economist, the story of how John Maynard Keynes came to his revolutionary ideas, refined and advanced them through his life and how they came to dominate economic thought.

Carter makes a bold move as a biographer: Keynes dies in 1946 on page 390, but Carter gallops on for a good 250 more pages, tracing the battles over Keynesianism as they evolved through the New Deal, McCarthyism and the 2008 financial crisis. Carter captures the ideological warfare between luminary intellectuals like James K. Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger and even extends to the monumental 2015 National Book Critics Circle finalist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century .

We spoke to Thomas Piketty quite recently.

Carter begins his book with Keynes in midlife, as he’s falling in love with the Russian ballerina who became his wife, a critical turning point that informed his philosophy—and illustrates Keynes as a tangle of paradox. He was a pacifist who advocated for war. He was married to a woman but had serious amorous relationships with men. He’s so interesting, and was, at that time, quite radical. People are still debating his ideas, he was really ahead of his time.

Clearly Keynes is comfortable with contradiction and his ideas are often counterintuitive—the notion, as Paul Krugman put it: “Your income is my expense and my income is your expense.” Spending more to get out of a financial depression continues to be debated. Back to your question about intellectual biography, Carter’s book illustrates that ideas originate in lived experience, and he illuminates Keynes’s experience and shows how it took root.

One may think of Keynes as an economist, but Keynesianism is much more than that—he has views on war, art, culture and a vision of fairness. Keynes had a dream of a fairer and more fulfilling life for all. Carter’s writing about economic theory is so lucid, so colourful, and such a pleasant surprise for me.

The afterlife of Keynesian thinking is interesting, how it continues to thread through contemporary economics .

Indeed, that is right. We can see the drama playing out today in America with the intense battles over President Joe Biden’s Covid stimulus and relief bill. Carter seems to suggest that Keynes would have been frustrated by growing inequality and that his radical vision withered, leaving us with the question of whether good ideas can triumph on their own. The question Carter poses was: did Keynes believe that good ideas would triumph on their own? One comes away from this book thinking that Keynesianism is not a school of thought as much as a spirit of radical optimism.

And how about the Bloomsbury Group? I’m sorry, I’ll always be interested in this. Does it goes into salacious detail?

Perhaps not salacious but absolutely interesting to read about. At Cambridge Lytton Strachey was impressed by Keynes’s “active brain” and recruited him to the group although he was just a freshman. Keynes and Strachey were lovers but it was a rivalrous friendship, and Keynes made a habit of poaching Strachey’s lovers. He wasn’t an artist, as others were in Bloomsbury; Keynes expressed feelings of inferiority and Strachey and Clive Bell sneered at his aesthetic judgement.

Keynes’s time with the Bloomsbury set, Carter argues, was a formative experience in which Keynes became skeptical of rules of conduct and edicts from the ruling elite and developed political sympathies and keen interest in the Liberal Party. His relations with the Bloomsbury crowd seemed to provide him with a keen understanding of the post- World War One world.

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Let’s talk about the Payne book next. This is The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, which is third on our shortlist for the 2021 title of best biography. It’s the result of three decades of research by Les Payne and his daughter Tamara, who completed it after his death. It’s won the National Book Award, and was one of the New York Times’s ‘notable books’ of last year. So a landmark piece of work.

Landmark indeed, and brave. It follows Malcolm Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2012 and The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm which was published in 1965 to great acclaim.

The Payne biography is a rebuke to those who insist that if a subject has won the attention of one biographer, it is off the market to others. New evidence can be unearthed, existing evidence can be challenged or lead to other inquiries. Perspective, structure, and expression matter. Payne has elevated oral history and narrative to an art form and excavates Malcolm X’s origin story, from his birth as Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska to his assassination in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City’s Washington Heights. Payne captures the winding arc of Malcom’s life through the death of his father—which Malcolm believed to be nefarious, and Payne disproves—and the confinement of his mother in a psychiatric hospital. As a troubled adolescent, he landed in prison while his brothers, who Payne interviewed, found their way to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm joined them, and transformed into an evangelist for Black self-respect and a fierce critic of white America.

“The Paynes did not simply visit archives, they created the archive”

It is remarkable that the Paynes did not simply visit archives, they created the archive through thousands of eyewitness reports and personal documents. They went way beyond the declassified FBI files and secondhand stories of the legend of Malcolm’s transformation. Payne may have drawn on his journalistic skills to build this biography on firsthand accounts and oral history, but he also worked as a historian to contextualize these contradicting accounts and synthesize them into an extraordinary narrative.

Payne writes the 20th-century American history of the Nation of Islam and situates Malcom in these ideological battles— through his parents, who adhered to Marcus Garvey’s philosophy of self-reliance, Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism; through activist intellectuals like W E B Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. Payne explains Malcolm X’s route to Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, including his break from them which led to his assassination. Payne shows his experience as an investigative reporter, especially regarding the recovery of details involving the plot to kill Malcolm.

This book is often discussed as a counterpoint to that explosive biography by Marable, but it offers its own revelations. The current leader of the Nation of Islam admits in an interview that he might have been complicit in the murder, for one.

Indeed. Payne confirms that the assassination order came directly from Muhammad’s headquarters in Chicago to the gunmen. We also learn that Malcolm, on the direction of Elijah Muhammad, met with Ku Klux Klan leaders in 1961 about a land deal. It turned out that the Klansmen were really set on the assassination of Martin Luther King, which led to Malcolm’s break with the Nation of Islam.

And this must be one of the benefits of working on something for so long. Let’s turn to the next book on our 2021 shortlist of the best biographies. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark. I’m excited about this book, but I suppose that’s because I know a lot about Sylvia Plath already. Her life is relatively well-trodden ground, not only thanks to previous biographies but the writing of Plath herself. Is there room for a new Plath biography? What can this book add?

Personally, I share your enthusiasm about all matters Plath. As a critic, let me say that Clark not only unearths new evidence about Plath’s life but also brings a fresh, subtle and nuanced critical perspective to her work. Plath is mythologised and pathologised; she has come to be seen as an icon or a victim, a “high priestess of poetry, obsessed with death,” as Clark writes. What Clark does here is recover Sylvia Plath as an aesthetically accomplished, important poet.

Clark discovered letters Plath sent to her psychiatrist, delved into the Plath family history (including her father’s FBI file and grandmother’s institutionalization), found a portion of Plath’s last novel, and used her unpublished diaries and creative work as well as police, hospital and court records. She also drew from an archive that opened in 2020 which contained scores of interviews with Plath’s contemporaries in the 1970s for an uncompleted biography.

From the start, Clark is clear in her intention to reposition Plath as one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. I was skeptical initially, because the biography weighs in at 1118 pages. Well, 937 pages without notes.

But after the prologue, I was hooked. Clark nestles details so deftly in flowing narrative prose and successfully positions Plath in the era. It’s literally a heavy book, but Clark writes with a light touch, evoking Plath’s psychological and poetic landscape as well as her social milieu. Well known now as the wife of Ted Hughes, Plath emerges so clearly in her other relationships. Clark vivifies Plath not only as a mother, but also a daughter who was just eight years old when her father died, leaving her to be raised by her single mother.

Plath grew up at a harrowing and difficult time for German immigrants in America, during and before the Second World War . Plath’s father Otto was repeatedly investigated and eventually detained by the FBI but, as Clark shows, he renounced his German citizenship in 1926 and watched Hitler’s rise with trepidation.

It seems unfair that he’s likened to a Nazi soldier in her famous poem ‘Daddy’, then?

‘Daddy’ runs through the biography and Clark tracks interpretations and it’s almost as if those reveal more about the perceiver than the poem. For some, ‘Daddy’ is a rallying cry for feminists, others believe it reflects Plath’s youth and others damn it for appropriating the Holocaust . Clark makes clear that Plath’s father was a committed pacifist. In addition to his German heritage, Clark suggests that as a professor and scientist, he embodied patriarchal authority and a kind of imperial aggression just as resentment of her husband was boiling. There’s also an argument that the poem is based on an entirely different person, her friend’s father who abandoned his family to join the fascist Blackshirts.

Clark reveals Plath wrestling with ‘Daddy’ in successive drafts, with one reading like an elegy, and others more resilient and forgiving. The poem’s placement in Ariel , published posthumously and out of her control, possibly shifted its meaning.

I could talk about ‘Daddy’ all day but would much rather read about it in Clark’s biography! Clark argues that Plath’s aesthetic impulse was more surrealist than confessional and that ‘Daddy’ illustrated that Plath had her finger on the pulse of contemporary poetry.

The thing I find most interesting about Plath is the way she embodies that pressure-cooker atmosphere of girlhood and early womanhood—the twin pressures to be feminine, and yet to strive intellectually. They are not quite opposites, but one interferes with the action of the other. I think that’s why Plath became a cultural phenomenon, a figurehead for troubled young women.

As a reader, I could hear Plath’s mother preaching: “excel, but conform.” While Sylvia Plath is known for her death, Clark shows how hard she worked, how many poems she sent out before she found success. Clark reads Plath’s juvenile short stories and poetry really seriously, and asks questions: how did she get to be who she was? Clark recognizes Plath’s incredible ambition and dedication to her work.

So does Clark succeed in her stated aim of repositioning Plath as one of the most important writers of the 20th century?

Some of the social pressures that Plath was contending with will be common to those faced by some of the women in the final book on our list of the best biographies of 2021. This is The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s , by Maggie Doherty. It’s a group biography, and there’s an excerpt available on the New York Times website for those who want to try before they buy.

First, that sly, smart title. Radcliffe College President Mary Bunting had the brilliant idea to support “intellectually displaced women.” By that, she meant women whose ambitions as artists and intellectuals had been thwarted by gender expectations and the demands of domesticity, marriage and motherhood. The College’s Institute for Independent Study would provide hefty stipends, private offices and its resources to a group of women who had “either a doctorate or its equivalent” in creative achievement. Bunting described it as her “messy experiment.”

In The Equivalents , Maggie Doherty captures that glorious mess. She focuses on five women artists: poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, sculptor Marianna Pineda, painter Barbara Swann from the East Coast and fiction writer Tillie Olsen, mother of four from San Francisco who had been a community organizer and aspired to write the great proletarian novel. None of them had PhDs; they nicknamed themselves ‘the Equivalents’.

The Equivalents is magnificent social history, a collective snapshot of an overlooked moment in American feminism; we meet these women crossing the bridge between first and second wave feminism. The institute provided them with the rooms of their own to which Virginia Woolf had aspired, but it turned out they needed more of E M Forster’s edict to “only connect.”

With insight and subtlety, Doherty explains the alchemy of solitude and community as “ideal conditions for artistic growth.” They read one another’s work and collaborated on projects. The deep creative bond between the charismatic poets—Sexton and Kumin—provides a narrative backbone. Their friendships revealed the importance of the collective, and how they really did give and draw strength from one another. The idea of five women artists being freed—receiving money and office space and affiliation from Radcliffe was really radical and groundbreaking.

Olsen was, in many ways, the outlier of the group. In a crowd of upper-class Boston and New England women, Olsen was from the West Coast, not at all part of the eastern intelligentsia. While others used stipends to pay for nannies and domestic help, Olsen often had to borrow money. She was sort of a Marxist and emphasized that women—and all people—could be creative and fulfil their promise.

How refreshing. It’s tiring to constantly see histories or biographies in which women apparently have no inner lives—or develop only in relation to, or thanks to, men. A group biography which examines not only the intellectual concerns of women, but their interaction with one another, feels an important corrective.

A very important corrective.

I wonder if we should institute some form of the Bechdel test for books. Do you know that term? To pass the test, a film simply has to contain a scene in which women talk to each other about something, anything, except a man.

I suspect that the women of The Equivalents found Radcliffe a turning point where they could do that. But, knowing that Betty Friedan was an early visitor, they also talked about equity – and the “problem that had no name.” This was a space where a woman could discover that the wandering, absent husband, or the imperious male colleague was not her problem alone. As Doherty writes, these shared confidences could lead a woman to realize that “there was nothing wrong with her, but there might be something wrong with the world.”

I would just raise the ante on the Bechdel test and suggest that a book must contain a scene in which mothers talk to one another about anything other than their children!

Doherty captures so well the intensity and vicissitudes of these relationships. One can feel moments when Sexton’s needs are too much for Kumin, for instance. Then there’s the electricity of collaboration between mediums, for instance Swann’s artwork appears on the poets’ book covers. The Equivalents arrived as “well-behaved women” and may not have thought of themselves as feminists, but their determined efforts at self-expression radiated out into the world and laid the groundwork for revolution. In closing her sublime book, Doherty relates that when Bunting was asked why her “messy experiment” was so successful, she modestly responded: “We spoke to their condition.”

Doherty closes her marvellous book with a call to arms: “Women today live under new conditions. It is time for another messy experiment and for a new group of women to speak.”

March 19, 2021

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor is a co-author of American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley; His Battle for Chicago and the Nation with Adam Cohen, with whom she also cofounded The National Book Review. She has chaired four Pulitzer Prize juries, served as president of the National Book Critics Circle, and presided over the Harold Washington Literary Award selection committee three times. Former Time magazine correspondent in New York and Chicago and long-time literary editor of the Chicago Tribune, she is working on a biography of women in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras for Liveright/W.W. Norton.

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Best biographies and memoirs of 2021

Brian Cox is punchy, David Harewood candid and Miriam Margolyes raucously indiscreet

In a bonanza year for memoirs, Ruth Coker Burks got us off to a strong start with All the Young Men (Trapeze), a clear-eyed and poignant account of her years spent looking after Aids patients in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1980s. While visiting a friend in hospital, Burks witnessed a group of nurses drawing straws over who should enter a room labelled “Biohazard”, the ward for men with “that gay disease”. And so she took it upon herself to sit with the dying and bury them when their families wouldn’t. Later, as the scale of fear and prejudice became apparent, she helped patients with food, transport, social security and housing, often at enormous personal cost. Her book, written with Kevin Carr O’Leary, finds light in the darkness as it reveals the love and camaraderie of a hidden community fighting for its life.

Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl (Penguin), an exuberant account of Paris Lees’s tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where “the streets are paved wi’ dog shit”. Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders’ institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter.

Miriam Margolyes’s This Much Is True (John Murray) traces her path from cherished child of an Oxford GP to Bafta-winning actor to chat-show sofa staple, in a raucously indiscreet memoir replete with fruity tales of sexual experimentation, tricky co-stars and Olympic-level farting. And Bob Mortimer’s winningly heartfelt And Away… (Gallery) reveals the brilliant highs and terrible lows of his childhood as the “irritating runt” of four brothers, his initial career as a solicitor and subsequent reinvention as a celebrated comic alongside his partner in crime, Vic Reeves.

Themes of identity and belonging underpin Beautiful Country (Viking), Qian Julie Wang’s elegantly affecting account of her move from China to New York where she lived undocumented and under threat of deportation, and Nadia Owusu’s powerful Aftershocks (Sceptre), in which the author recalls a peripatetic childhood as the daughter of a volatile Armenian-American mother and a Ghanaian father, a United Nations official who died when she was 13. Both books tell remarkable stories of displacement, heartache and resilience.

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (Bodley Head) is another tale of extraordinary resilience, as the artist Ai Weiwei vividly reflects on his own life and that of his father, who was a poet. Both men fell foul of the Chinese authorities: Ai’s father, Ai Qing, was exiled to a place nicknamed “Little Siberia”, where he lived with his young son in a dug-out pit with a roof made from mud and branches, while Ai himself was imprisoned in 2011 for 11 weeks on spurious tax charges. Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Penguin) is a beautifully written account of life under a crumbling Stalinist system in Albania and the shock and chaos of what came next. In telling her story and examining the political systems in which she was raised, the author and LSE professor asks tough questions about the nature of freedom.

In Maybe I Don’t Belong Here (Bluebird), the actor David Harewood lays bare his struggles with racial injustice and mental illness, and shows how these things are connected. Harewood’s childhood was punctuated by racist abuse; later, as he tried to get his career off the ground, he was bullied by colleagues and critics. At 23, he had a psychotic breakdown during which it took six police officers to restrain him, and was dispatched to a psychiatric ward where, he learns from his hospital records, he was described as a “large black man” and administered drugs at four times the recommended dose. His recollections of his unravelling, treatment and recovery are acutely drawn.

Huma Abedin’s electrifying memoir Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds (Simon & Schuster) grapples with her multiple identities as a woman with Indian parents, who was born in Michigan and raised in Saudi Arabia. It is also a brave and unflinching account of her job as aide to Hillary Clinton and her years as the wife of Anthony Weiner , the congressman at the centre of a sexting scandal that landed him in prison, prompted an investigation by child services and ultimately derailed Clinton’s presidential campaign. Of the night Abedin learned her work emails had been discovered on her husband’s laptop, which would lead to the FBI reopening its investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, she recalls: “I wrote one line in my notebook. ‘I do not know how I am going to survive this. Help me God.’”

The actor Brian Cox lost his father to pancreatic cancer when he was eight years old, his mother battled with mental illness and his childhood was one of almost Dickensian poverty. But you won’t find self-pity in his meandering but amusingly irreverent memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat (Quercus). Instead, we get a whistlestop tour of his working life, during which he takes entertaining pot-shots at Johnny Depp (“overrated”), Steven Seagal (“ludicrous”) and Edward Norton (“a pain in the arse”).

Finally, two terrific biographies. Frances Wilson’s smart and scholarly Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence (Bloomsbury) paints a vivid picture of a brilliant writer who was “censored and worshipped” in his lifetime, and remained furious at the world and at those not sufficiently cognisant of his genius.

And Paula Byrne’s The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (William Collins), about the British postwar novelist whom Philip Larkin compared to Jane Austen, is a touching and revealing portrait of a flawed romantic and a free spirit.

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The Best Biographies of 2021

From first ladies to rock stars, these were the year's best releases.

The best biographies don't just give us an in-depth account of someone's life—they also reframe history and give us a new perspective on the past. We've waded through 2021's new releases to bring you a roundup of the most satisfying and fascinating biographies. Whether you're looking to learn about a misunderstood historical leader, an unexpectedly influential figure who has been forgotten with the passage of time, or a new angle on well-known icons, these biographies won't let you down.

Related: 2020’s Best Biographies Spanned Centuries and Explored Vital Figures

The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III

By Andrew Roberts

George III has an unflattering reputation among Americans, who see him as the greedy king who ruled the colonies with an iron fist. The musical Hamilton has further reduced his image to the butt of a joke. However, this new account by the New York Times bestselling author of Churchill and Napoleon offers a different perspective on America’s last king. In this biography, George III emerges as an enlightened leader whose competence was overshadowed by mental illness, disastrous advisors, and bad luck. As it turns out, there’s a treasure trove of information about “Britain’s most misunderstood monarch” that paints him in a very different light ( The American Spectator ).

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Agent Sniper

By Tim Tate

Michal Goleniewski, alias Agent Sniper, was a huge asset to the US during the Cold War. A Polish intelligence agent who also surreptitiously spied for Russia, Goleniewski turned triple agent in 1959 when he defected to the US and handed over secrets from both nations. Yet after a successful few years working with the CIA, Goleniewski was shouldered out of the agency. Agent Sniper fleshes out this influential and little-known spy who left a legacy on Western espionage.

Related: Sidney Reilly, the Infamous Spy Who Inspired James Bond

Calhoun: American Heretic

By Robert Elder

Elected to Congress in 1810, John C. Calhoun served as secretary of war under James Monroe and as vice president during the John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson administrations. Throughout his lifetime, he was staunchly pro-slavery; in fact, his ideology laid the groundwork for Southern secession. This timely new biography on Calhoun and the far-reaching influence of his racist politics comprises a “forcefully argued case for placing Calhoun at the center of any honest account of America's tangled past" ( Kirkus Reviews ).

The Triumph of Nancy Reagan

By Karen Tumulty

Everyone knows that behind the scenes, the first ladies are doing more than picking out china patterns—they’re influential historical figures in their own right. This couldn’t be more true of Nancy Reagan, who reckoned with a troubled early childhood before marrying Ronald Reagan and helping to shape his political career. Though unseen by the public, the extent to which he relied on her sharp social skills and keen advice cannot be overstated. In this biography, Nancy Reagan “comes out looking better than do many of her worst critics and her husband’s strongest allies—two categories that often overlapped" ( New Yorker ).

Related: 13 Books About Fascinating First Ladies

Led Zeppelin: The Biography

By Bob Spitz

The New York Times bestselling author of The Beatles turns his gaze on Led Zeppelin in this “towering achievement of research and storytelling” ( Chicago Tribune ). This English band changed the music industry and created the blueprint for rock stars, all while smashing previously held records and rising to become one of the best-selling music artists of all time. This authoritative biography ushers readers inside tour buses, packed stadiums, and the recording studio to understand the inner workings of the band and the unprecedented influence it wielded over the 1970s and beyond.

Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

By Anderson Cooper & Katherine Howe

Born on Staten Island at the turn of the 19th century, Cornelius Vanderbilt quit school at the age of 11 to work on his father’s boat. Surpassing all expectations for his life, he would go on to become one of the richest men in American history, a wealth that was generated by the shipping and railroad empires he built. Co-written by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, a member of the Vanderbilt family, this account chronicles the family dynasty over the last two centuries—from their humble beginnings to unimaginable luxury and beyond.

Related: 10 Railroad History Books That Shed Light on the Industry  

Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny

By Ann Marks

Vivian Maier was a quiet, unassuming woman who worked as a nanny. It wasn’t until after her death that her collection of over 140,000 photographs was discovered in a Chicago storage locker. Her street photography, which captured everyday 20th-century life through candids, has since received critical acclaim for its emotional depth and authenticity. And yet, the woman behind the camera remains a mystery. Drawing on Maier’s personal records and, of course, the photos she took, this biography unveils the previously unknown details of her life.

The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter

By Kai Bird

A one-term president who was defeated in a landslide by Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter’s post-presidential activities are generally viewed more favorably than his tenure in the White House. Here, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Kai Bird takes a closer look at Carter as president, arguing that he was a political outsider whose core beliefs and agenda were misunderstood by the American people. This much-needed reevaluation of Carter “not only sets the record straight…it brings him to life in a way that few other biographers have been able to thus far” ( Variety ).

Related: The Best Presidential Biographies For History Buffs

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37 Great 2021 Memoirs to Add to Your TBR Pile

From Michelle Zauner's 'Crying in H Mart' to Tarana Burke's 'Unbound.'

If you haven't been able to successfully  finish a book  during the pandemic, good news: There's an exciting batch of memoirs that have been released this year that will give you another chance to feel something. From the late  Cicely Tyson's  Just as I Am  to Michelle Zauner's  Crying in H Mart  to Tyler Cameron's part memoir/part self-help book  You Deserve Better , there's a memoir for everyone, ahead.

The one and only Bevy Smith is here to teach us, through her signature wit and charm, how we can all live our best lives. Available January 12, 2021

Nadia Owusu's gripping memoir takes readers through the unstable childhood, family secrets, and depression that eventually lead to her self-discovery. Available January 12, 2021

Two days before Cicely Tyson passed away, the award-winning actress and activist published her memoir, Just as I Am, which reminisces on the impactful life she lived. Available January 26, 2021

Here, former Nylon Editor-in-Chief Gabrielle Korn shares her career journey in media as a young white lesbian woman and how she navigated the industry's arbitrary definition of success. Available January 26, 2021

In Surviving the White Gaze, cultural critic Rebecca Carroll reflects on her childhood growing up in a white rural New Hampshire town with adopted parents and how she forged her own path as a Black woman in America. Available February 2, 2021

As Priyanka Chopra Jonas told Marie Claire in her spring 2021 cover story, Unfinished is the real her on display. “I call it the in-between-interviews book. I’ve been in so many interviews in my life, but nobody knows what happened in between them,” she says. “I’m not someone who shares my vulnerabilities, my fears. And somehow in the process of writing this book—because it was so cathartic—I happened to go to those places.” Available February 9, 2021

Beauty lovers, rejoice: Jamie Kern Lima, the founder of IT Cosmetics, is here to show you how she built a billion-dollar brand and fought through society's impossible beauty standards along the way. Available February 23, 2021

Beloved novelist Isabel Allende's The Soul of a Woman details her moving coming-of-age story as a lifelong feminist and the work that still needs to be done for future generations. Available March 2, 2021

Jessica Zucker, founder of the #IHadaMiscarriage campaign and the respective @ihadamiscarriage Instagram account, continues to destigmatize the emotional, complex experience for so many women in her memoir, I Had a Miscarriage. Available March 9, 2021

In her candid memoir, Sharon Stone discusses how she rebuilt her life after a stroke that forever altered life as she knew it. Available March 30, 2021

In Perdita Felicien's memoir, My Mother's Daughter, the two-time Olympian recounts what came before all eyes were on her at the 2003 and 2004 Olympics: racism, domestic abuse, homelessness, and a transformative path guided by the love of her mother. Available March 30, 2021

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and In the Heights writer Quiara Alegría Hudes shares her coming-of-age story growing up in North Philly with a powerful circle around her, determined to amplify their stories through her art. Available April 6, 2021

Through a blend of journalism and personal narrative, former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin explores what happens when women come together and harness their collective power. Available April 6, 2021

Michelle Zauner's New York Times bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart, Marie Claire's May book club pick, will tug at your heartstrings as Zauner details the loss of her mother and how she grapples with her grief and Korean American identity in the aftermath. Available April 20, 2021

Elizabeth Nyamayaro's I Am a Girl from Africa tells the story of the former United Nations senior advisor's inspiring full-circle journey after a UN aid worker saved her life when she was eight years old. Later in her life, she would go on to launch the HeForShe campaign and help bring change across the globe. Available April 20, 2021

Senator Mazie K. Hirono's Heart of Fire documents her life journey from being raised on a farm in rural Japan to becoming the first Asian American woman and only immigrant serving in the U.S. Senate. Available April 20, 2021

In Stronger, Cindy McCain opens up about her 38-year marriage to the late U.S. Senator John McCain and how they built a successful life together. Available April 27, 2021

Attention The Good Wife fans: If you think you know Julianna Margulies, think again. Sunshine Girl illustrates how Margulies's challenging childhood shaped her into the person she is today. Available May 4, 2021

If your weekends consist of devouring the weddings section of The New York Times, Cate Doty's Mergers and Acquisitions needs to be on your TBR list. Here, the former NYT editor takes readers behind the scenes as a weddings announcements writer and what happened when she began to fall in love herself. Available May 4, 2021

After the death of her father in the summer of 2020 due to kidney failure, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares valuable lessons on grief many of us can relate to these days. Available May 11, 2021

In Better, Not Bitter, Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five tells his story about growing up in Harlem in the '80s, being wrongfully convicted, and the lessons he's learned throughout his life about the racist systems we live in and how we can combat them.

The late, great Katherine Johnson shares her inspiring life story working at NASA as a research mathematician and helping land the first man on the moon in the aptly-titled My Remarkable Journey. Available May 25, 2021

Those who have had read Ashley C. Ford's work know they can expect excellent storytelling in her debut memoir, Somebody's Daughter, where she explores her complex childhood and how it's shaped her into the person she is today. Available June 1, 2021

Akwaeke Emezi, author of the critically-acclaimed The Death of Vivek Oji, returns with their debut memoir, Dear Senthuran. As Emezi explains, "As someone who’s been carefully curating their public image for years, it feels almost dangerous to write so honestly, but the final result is a text that I love, one that deeply engages with the metaphysics of Black spirit & singularly faces the Black reader." Available June 8, 2021

Raised by her grandparents in a predominately white community in upstate New York, Danielle Henderson shows readers how the intelligence, wit, and sass she embodied under unconventional circumstances has guided her to become the strong Black woman she is today. Available June 8, 2021

Ursula Burns, the first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company, looks back on her life and shares valuable career lessons she's learned about corporate America while working her way up the ladder. Available June 15, 2021

Yogis will be familiar with Jessamyn Stanley and her first book, Every Body Yoga. Through a series of charming and thoughtful autobiographical essays, Yoke ultimately explains why Stanley practices yoga in the first place. "I’m scared of showing my belly to the world but I’ve walked too close to the edge of the diving board to not jump off now," Stanley says, referring to her second book. "It’s actually more like being pushed off. And maybe like hitting the edge on the way down." You can read Stanley's interview with MC about her new book here. Available June 22, 2021

Yes, Tyler Cameron wrote a book. Yes, it's about how to build meaningful relationships. Yes, you should order it right now. Available July 27, 2021

In a devastatingly timely memoir, Saturday Night Live's Cecily Strong writes about grieving the death of her cousin who passed away from glioblastoma and how she's applying the lessons he taught her amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Available August 10, 2021

The Real Housewives of New York City fans will love Dorinda Medley's Make It Nice, which details the former housewife's life as she lives by her one-true motto: "make it nice." Available August 17, 2021

From the perspective of her childhood self, New York Times bestselling author and civil rights litigator Qian Julie Wang recounts life as an undocumented Chinese immigrant living in poverty in America. Available September 7, 2021

In Unbound, Tarana Burke shares the story behind the birth of the Me Too movement and her path towards true liberation after being sexually assaulted as a child and a teenager. As Glennon Doyle notes, "Unbound is the most important book of the year. And @TaranaBurke has the most important voice, heart and mission of our generation." Available September 14, 2021

Per usual, Gabrielle Union keeps it real in You Got Anything Stronger?—the followup to her first book, We're Going to Need More Wine, where Union discusses everything from her experience with surrogacy to racism in Hollywood. Available September 14, 2021

If you loved The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, you'll appreciate Tucci's latest, Taste: My Life Through Food, where the actor shares personal anecdotes behind his favorite Italian recipes. Available October 5, 2021

Billy Porter's Unprotected tells the story of the award-winning actor and singer's life growing up as a Black gay man in America, and how he's used his voice and art to pave the way for others. Available October 19, 2021

Emily Ratajkowski expands on the themes of her viral essay in My Body—an exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power where the model and actress recounts experiences from her own life about the commodification of women and urges society to do better. Available November 9, 2021

Bachelorette alum Hannah Brown shares never-before-told stories about being on the show, the growth she's experienced since, and how she embraces the messiness of life. Available November 23, 2021

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Rachel Epstein is a writer, editor, and content strategist based in New York City. Most recently, she was the Managing Editor at Coveteur, where she oversaw the site’s day-to-day editorial operations. Previously, she was an editor at Marie Claire , where she wrote and edited culture, politics, and lifestyle stories ranging from op-eds to profiles to ambitious packages. She also launched and managed the site’s virtual book club, #ReadWithMC. Offline, she’s likely watching a Heat game or finding a new coffee shop. 

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The Best Biographies to Add to Your Reading List

From elon musk to the creator of nike, take a journey into someone else's life with these best-selling biographies., rachel cormack.

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There’s an age-old saying which goes, “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.” In effect, it’s a reminder to always be empathetic and understand that an individual’s experiences and adversities irrefutably shape who they become. One of the easiest ways to do this is by reading a memoir or biography. Through these unflinching personal accounts, you can deep-dive into another person’s life and, momentarily, take a break from your own.

Of course, since no two lives are the same, no two memoirs are. There are some that have a fictional flair and some that are all fact; some that profile celebrities and some that focus on the everyman. There are a few that are written as first-person recounts (known as autobiographies and memoirs) and a few that are written by biographers or historians (biographies).

So, exactly which books —and whose lives—are worth reading about? It’s truly impossible to list them all, but here are four powerful reads to get you started.

1. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

This isn’t the first book we’ve seen about Elon Musk and it probably won’t be the last. But it’s the first one that Musk cooperated with—he spent 30 hours with the author—so it’s one of the most detailed (and personal) to date. Penned by veteran technology journalist Ashlee Vance, the bestselling title traces the life of the South African-born entrepreneur, inventor and engineer, from his rough upbringing to his rise as a global business magnate. It delves into his groundbreaking companies—Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity—and tracks the startling advances the 48-year-old has made regarding electric cars, space exploration and solar energy.

Pros: Its fascinating subject matter.

Cons: It was published in 2015, so it may be a little out of date given how quickly the tech world moves.

Courtesy of Amazon

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a…: $14.94

2. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

One for the sneakerheads, this candid memoir was written by Nike founder and board chairman Phil Knight and gives the inside scoop on the world’s most valuable apparel brand. Knight offers a refreshingly honest account of the company’s beginnings as a disruptive start-up to its evolution into an iconic, billion-dollar brand. The story undulates, shifting between epic fails and major triumphs, all the while Knight remains entirely unfiltered and humble. This beautifully crafted book is perfect for Nike fans or people in business.

Pros: It comes straight from the founder’s mouth and has great entrepreneurship lessons.

Cons: Take all autobiographies with a grain of salt, they invariably include a little self-promotion.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike: $16.90

3. The Accidental President

This biography is as just as unexpected as Harry S. Truman’s presidentship. Written by prolific American author and journalist A. J. Baime, it presents a meticulously researched yet warmly human portrait of the unlikely leader who was thrust into the presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unexpected death. It covers Truman’s first four months in office when he had to take on Germany, Japan, Stalin and the atomic bomb, no less. No other president had ever faced this much adversity in such a short amount of time, and the book does this nail-biting period justice.

Pros: It’s both informative and entertaining.

Cons: At $139 a pop, it’s not exactly cheap.

The Accidental President:

4. A Promised Land

As one of the country’s most compelling presidents in history, 44th president Barack Obama leads readers through his journey from his early career in politics to the detailing his thoughts on key events that occurred under his leadership, including the use of drones, the global financial crisis, and Operation Neptune’s Spear.

Pros: A deep dive into the former president’s time in the oval office.

Cons: 768 pages may feel a bit daunting for some readers.

A Promised Land: $18.50

Rachel Cormack is a digital editor at Robb Report. She cut her teeth writing for HuffPost, Concrete Playground, and several other online publications in Australia, before moving to New York at the…

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Best Sellers in Biographies & Memoirs

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The 10 Best Books of 2021

Editors at The Times Book Review choose the best fiction and nonfiction titles this year.

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How Beautiful We Were

By imbolo mbue.

Following her 2016 debut, “ Behold the Dreamers ,” Mbue’s sweeping and quietly devastating second novel begins in 1980 in the fictional African village of Kosawa, where representatives from an American oil company have come to meet with the locals, whose children are dying because of the environmental havoc (fallow fields, poisoned water) wreaked by its drilling and pipelines. This decades-spanning fable of power and corruption turns out to be something much less clear-cut than the familiar David-and-Goliath tale of a sociopathic corporation and the lives it steamrolls. Through the eyes of Kosawa’s citizens young and old, Mbue constructs a nuanced exploration of self-interest, of what it means to want in the age of capitalism and colonialism — these machines of malicious, insatiable wanting.

Random House. $28. | Read our review | Read our profile of Mbue | Listen to Mbue on the podcast

By Katie Kitamura

In Kitamura’s fourth novel, an unnamed court translator in The Hague is tasked with intimately vanishing into the voices and stories of war criminals whom she alone can communicate with; falling meanwhile into a tumultuous entanglement with a man whose marriage may or may not be over for good. Kitamura’s sleek and spare prose elegantly breaks grammatical convention, mirroring the book’s concern with the bleeding lines between intimacies — especially between the sincere and the coercive. Like her previous novel, “A Separation,” “Intimacies” scrutinizes the knowability of those around us, not as an end in itself but as a lens on grand social issues from gentrification to colonialism to feminism. The path a life cuts through the world, this book seems to say, has its greatest significance in the effect it has on others.

Riverhead Books. $26. | Read our review | Read our profile of Kitamura

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

By honorée fanonne jeffers.

“The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” the first novel by Jeffers, a celebrated poet, is many things at once: a moving coming-of-age saga, an examination of race and an excavation of American history. It cuts back and forth between the tale of Ailey Pearl Garfield, a Black girl growing up at the end of the 20th century, and the “songs” of her ancestors, Native Americans and enslaved African Americans who lived through the formation of the United States. As their stories converge, “Love Songs” creates an unforgettable portrait of Black life that reveals how the past still reverberates today.

Harper/HarperCollins. $28.99. | Read our review | Listen to Jeffers on the podcast

No One Is Talking About This

By patricia lockwood.

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The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2022

Featuring buster keaton, jean rhys, bernardine evaristo, kate beaton, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Memoir and Biography .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (Liveright) 17 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“One of the many triumphs of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves is that he manages to find a form that accommodates the spectacular changes that have occurred in Ireland over the past six decades, which happens to be his life span … it is not a memoir, nor is it an absolute history, nor is it entirely a personal reflection or a crepuscular credo. It is, in fact, all of these things helixed together: his life, his country, his thoughts, his misgivings, his anger, his pride, his doubt, all of them belonging, eventually, to us … O’Toole, an agile cultural commentator, considers himself to be a representative of the blank slate on which the experiment of change was undertaken, but it’s a tribute to him that he maintains his humility, his sharpness and his enlightened distrust …

O’Toole writes brilliantly and compellingly of the dark times, but he is graceful enough to know that there is humor and light in the cracks. There is a touch of Eduardo Galeano in the way he can settle on a telling phrase … But the real accomplishment of this book is that it achieves a conscious form of history-telling, a personal hybrid that feels distinctly honest and humble at the same time. O’Toole has not invented the form, but he comes close to perfecting it. He embraces the contradictions and the confusion. In the process, he weaves the flag rather than waving it.”

–Colum McCann ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh (Milkweed)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Assured and affecting … A powerful and bracing memoir … This is a book that will make you see the world differently: it asks you to reconsider the animals and insects we often view as pests – the rat, for example, and the moth. It asks you to look at the sea and the sky and the trees anew; to wonder, when you are somewhere beautiful, whether you might be in a thin place, and what your responsibilities are to your location.It asks you to show compassion for people you think are difficult, to cultivate empathy, to try to understand the trauma that made them the way they are.”

–Lynn Enright ( The Irish Times )

3. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly)

14 Rave • 4 Positive

“It could hardly be more different in tone from [Beaton’s] popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant … Yes, it’s funny at moments; Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction; it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment …

There are some gorgeous drawings in Ducks of the snow and the starry sky at night. But the human terrain, in her hands, is never only black and white … And it’s this that gives her story not only its richness and depth, but also its astonishing grace. Life is complex, she tell us, quietly, and we are all in it together; each one of us is only trying to survive. What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book. It really does deserve to win all the prizes.”

–Rachel Cooke ( The Guardian )

4. Stay True by Hua Hsu (Doubleday)

14 Rave • 3 Positive

“… quietly wrenching … To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice; nor is it mainly about being Asian American, even though there are glimmers of that too. Hsu captures the past by conveying both its mood and specificity … This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life … Hsu is a subtle writer, not a showy one; the joy of Stay True sneaks up on you, and the wry jokes are threaded seamlessly throughout.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

5.  Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo (Grove)

13 Rave • 4 Positive

“Part coming-of-age story and part how-to manual, the book is, above all, one of the most down-to-earth and least self-aggrandizing works of self-reflection you could hope to read. Evaristo’s guilelessness is refreshing, even unsettling … With ribald humour and admirable candour, Evaristo takes us on a tour of her sexual history … Characterized by the resilience of its author, it is replete with stories about the communities and connections Evaristo has cultivated over forty years … Invigoratingly disruptive as an artist, Evaristo is a bridge-builder as a human being.”

–Emily Bernard ( The Times Literary Supplement )

1. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

14 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Rundell is right that Donne…must never be forgotten, and she is the ideal person to evangelise him for our age. She shares his linguistic dexterity, his pleasure in what TS Eliot called ‘felt thought’, his ability to bestow physicality on the abstract … It’s a biography filled with gaps and Rundell brings a zest for imaginative speculation to these. We know so little about Donne’s wife, but Rundell brings her alive as never before … Rundell confronts the difficult issue of Donne’s misogyny head-on … This is a determinedly deft book, and I would have liked it to billow a little more, making room for more extensive readings of the poems and larger arguments about the Renaissance. But if there is an overarching argument, then it’s about Donne as an ‘infinity merchant’ … To read Donne is to grapple with a vision of the eternal that is startlingly reinvented in the here and now, and Rundell captures this vision alive in all its power, eloquence and strangeness”

–Laura Feigel ( The Guardian )

2. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland (Harper)

12 Rave • 3 Positive

“Compelling … We know about Auschwitz. We know what happened there. But Freedland, with his strong, clear prose and vivid details, makes us feel it, and the first half of this book is not an easy read. The chillingly efficient mass murder of thousands of people is harrowing enough, but Freedland tells us stories of individual evils as well that are almost harder to take … His matter-of-fact tone makes it bearable for us to continue to read … The Escape Artist is riveting history, eloquently written and scrupulously researched. Rosenberg’s brilliance, courage and fortitude are nothing short of amazing.”

–Laurie Hertzel ( The Star Tribune )

3. I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys by Miranda Seymour (W. W. Norton & Company)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Pan

“…illuminating and meticulously researched … paints a deft portrait of a flawed, complex, yet endlessly fascinating woman who, though repeatedly bowed, refused to be broken … Following dismal reviews of her fourth novel, Rhys drifted into obscurity. Ms. Seymour’s book could have lost momentum here. Instead, it compellingly charts turbulent, drink-fueled years of wild moods and reckless acts before building to a cathartic climax with Rhys’s rescue, renewed lease on life and late-career triumph … is at its most powerful when Ms. Seymour, clear-eyed but also with empathy, elaborates on Rhys’s woes …

Ms. Seymour is less convincing with her bold claim that Rhys was ‘perhaps the finest English woman novelist of the twentieth century.’ However, she does expertly demonstrate that Rhys led a challenging yet remarkable life and that her slim but substantial novels about beleaguered women were ahead of their time … This insightful biography brilliantly shows how her many battles were lost and won.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Wall Street Journal )

4. The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

9 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Grisly yet inspiring … Fitzharris depicts her hero as irrepressibly dedicated and unfailingly likable. The suspense of her narrative comes not from any interpersonal drama but from the formidable challenges posed by the physical world … The Facemaker is mostly a story of medical progress and extraordinary achievement, but as Gillies himself well knew—grappling daily with the unbearable suffering that people willingly inflicted on one another—failure was never far behind.”

5. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life by James Curtis (Knopf)

8 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Keaton fans have often complained that nearly all biographies of him suffer from a questionable slant or a cursory treatment of key events. With Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life —at more than 800 pages dense with research and facts—Mr. Curtis rectifies that situation, and how. He digs deep into Keaton’s process and shows how something like the brilliant two-reeler Cops went from a storyline conceived from necessity—construction on the movie lot encouraged shooting outdoors—to a masterpiece … This will doubtless be the primary reference on Keaton’s life for a long time to come … the worse Keaton’s life gets, the more engrossing Mr. Curtis’s book becomes.”

–Farran Smith Nehme ( The Wall Street Journal )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The Best Books of 2021

This Year's Must-Reads

The Ten Best History Books of 2021

Our favorite titles of the year resurrect forgotten histories and help explain how the U.S. got to where it is today

Meilan Solly

Senior Associate Digital Editor, History

After 2020 brought the most devastating global pandemic in a century and a national reckoning with systemic racism , 2021 ushered in a number of welcome developments, including Covid vaccines , the return of beloved social traditions like the Olympics and public performances , and incremental but measurable progress in the fight   against racial injustice . 

During this year of change, these ten titles collectively serve a dual purpose. Some offer a respite from reality, transporting readers to such varied locales as ancient Rome, Gilded Age America and Angkor in Cambodia. Others reflect on the fraught nature of the current moment, detailing how the nation’s past—including the mistreatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and police brutality—informs its present and future. From a chronicle of civilization told through clocks to a quest for Indigenous justice in colonial Pennsylvania, these were some of our favorite history books of 2021.

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

“It’s terrifying to realize that most of humanity lives in places that are destined to die,” writes Annalee Newitz in the opening pages of Four Lost Cities . This stark statement sets the stage for the journalist’s incisive exploration of how cities collapse—a topic with clear ramifications for the “global-warming present,” as Kirkus notes in its review of the book. Centered on the ancient metropolises of Çatalhöyük , a Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia; Pompeii , the Roman city razed by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 C.E.; Angkor , the medieval Cambodian capital of the Khmer Empire; and Cahokia , a pre-Hispanic metropolis in what is now Illinois, Four Lost Cities traces its subjects’ successes and failures, underscoring surprising connections between these ostensibly disparate societies. 

All four cities boasted sophisticated infrastructure systems and ingenious feats of engineering. Angkor, for instance, became an economic powerhouse in large part due to its complex network of canals and reservoirs, while Cahokia was known for its towering earthen pyramids , which locals imbued with spiritual significance. Despite these innovations, the featured urban hubs eventually succumbed to what Newitz describes as “prolonged periods of political instability”—often precipitated by poor leadership and social hierarchies—“coupled with environmental collapse.” These same problems plague modern cities, the writer argues, but the past offers valuable lessons for preventing such disasters in the future, including investing in “resilient infrastructure, … public plazas, domestic spaces for everyone, social mobility and leaders who treat the city’s workers with dignity.”

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history―and figure out why people abandoned them

Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace

In the winter of 1722, two white fur traders murdered Seneca hunter Sawantaeny after he refused their drunken, underhanded attempts to strike a deal. The ensuing furor, writes historian Nicole Eustace in Covered With Night , threatened to spark outright war between English colonists and the Indigenous inhabitants of the mid-Atlantic. Rather than enter into a prolonged, bloody battle, the Susquehanna River valley’s Native peoples forged an agreement, welcoming white traders back into their villages once Sawantaeny’s body had been metaphorically “covered,” or laid to rest in a “respectful, ritualized way,” as Eustace told Smithsonian magazine’ s Karin Wulf earlier this year.

“Native people believe that a crisis of murder makes a rupture in the community and that rupture needs to be repaired,” Eustace added. “They are not focused on vengeance; they are focused on repair, on rebuilding community. And that requires a variety of actions. They want emotional reconciliation. They want economic restitution.”

The months of negotiation that followed culminated in the Albany Treaty of 1722 , which provided both “ritual condolences and reparation payments” for Sawantaeny’s murder, according to Eustace. Little known today, the historian argues, the agreement underscores the differences between Native and colonial conceptions of justice. Whereas the former emphasized what would now be considered restorative justice (an approach that seeks to repair harm caused by a crime), the latter focused on harsh reprisal, meting out swift executions for suspects found guilty. “The Pennsylvania colonists never really say explicitly, ‘We’re following Native protocols. We’re accepting the precepts of Native justice,’” Eustace explained to Smithsonian . “But they do it because in practical terms they didn’t have a choice if they wanted to resolve the situation.”

Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

An immersive tale of the killing of a Native American man and its far-reaching implications for the definition of justice from early America to today

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Sackler family’s role in triggering the U.S. opioid epidemic attracted renewed attention this year with the release of “ Dopesick ,” a Hulu miniseries based on Beth Macy’s 2018 book of the same name , and Patrick Radden Keefe ’s award-winning Empire of Pain , which exhaustively examines the rise—and very public fall—of the drug-peddling American “dynasty.” 

Meticulously researched, the book traces its roots to the early 2010s, when the journalist was reporting on Mexican drug cartels for the New York Times magazine . As Keefe tells the London Times , he realized that 25 percent of the revenue generated by OxyContin, the most popular pill pushed by Sackler-owned Purdue Pharma, came from the black market. Despite this trend, the family was better known for its donations to leading art museums than its part in fueling opioid addiction. “There was a family that had made billions of dollars from the sale of a drug that had such a destructive legacy,” Keefe says, “yet hadn’t seemed touched by that legacy.” Infuriated, he began writing what would become Empire of Pain .

The resulting 560-page exposé draws on newly released court documents, interviews with more than 200 people and the author’s personal accounts of the Sacklers’ attempts to intimidate him into silence. As the New York Times notes in its review, the book “paint[s] a devastating portrait of a family consumed by greed and unwilling to take the slightest responsibility or show the least sympathy for what it wrought.” 

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain

Historian Keisha N. Blain derived the title of her latest book from a well-known quote by its subject, voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer : “We have a long fight and this fight is not mine alone, but you are not free whether you are white or Black, until I am free.” As Blain wrote for Smithsonian last year, Hamer, who grew up in the Jim Crow South in a family of sharecroppers , first learned about her right to vote in 1962, at the age of 44. After attempting to register to vote in Mississippi, she faced verbal and physical threats of violence—experiences that only strengthened her resolve.

Blain’s book is one of two new Hamer biographies released in 2021. The other, Walk With Me by historian Kate Clifford Larson , offers a more straightforward account of the activist’s life. Comparatively, Blain’s volume situates Hamer in the broader political context of the civil rights movement. Both titles represent a long-overdue celebration of a woman whose contributions to the fight for equal rights have historically been overshadowed by men like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America

Explores the Black activist’s ideas and political strategies, highlighting their relevance for tackling modern social issues including voter suppression, police violence, and economic inequality

Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love by Rebecca Frankel

On April 30, 1942, 11-year-old Philip Lazowski found himself separated from his family during a Nazi selection in the Polish town of Zhetel. Realizing that the elderly, the infirm and unaccompanied children were being sent in one direction and families with work permits in the other, he tried to blend in with the children of a woman he recognized, only to hear her hiss , “Don’t stand next to us. You don’t belong in this group.” Looking around, Lazowski soon spotted another stranger and her daughters. Desperate, he pleaded with her to let him join them. After pausing momentarily, the woman— Miriam Rabinowitz —took his hand and said, “If the Nazis let me live with two children, they’ll let me live with three.”

All four survived the selection. From there, however, their paths temporarily diverged. Lazowski reunited with his family, remaining imprisoned in the Zhetel ghetto before fleeing into the nearby woods, where he remained hidden for the next two and a half years. Miriam, her husband Morris and their two children similarly sought refuge in a forest but did not encounter Lazowski again until after the war. (Lazowski later married one of the Rabinowitz daughters, Ruth, after running into Miriam at a 1953 wedding in Brooklyn—a “stroke of luck that … mirrors the random twists of fate that enabled the family to survive while so many others didn’t,” per Publishers Weekly .) 

As journalist Rebecca Frankel writes in Into the Forest , the Rabinowitzes and Lazowski were among the roughly 25,000 Jews who survived the war by hiding out in the woods of Eastern Europe. The majority of these individuals (about 15,000) joined the partisan movement , eking out a meager existence as ragtag bands of resistance fighters, but others, like the Rabinowitzes, formed makeshift family camps, “aiming not for revenge but survival,” according to the Forward . Frankel’s account of the family’s two-year sojourn in the woods captures the harsh realities of this lesser-known chapter in Holocaust history, detailing how forest refugees foraged for food (or stole from locals when supplies were scarce), dug underground shelters and remained constantly on the move in hopes of avoiding Nazi raids. Morris, who worked in the lumber business, used his pre-war connections and knowledge of the forest to help his family survive, avoiding the partisans “in the hope of keeping outside the fighting fray,” as Frankel writes for the New York Times . Today, she adds, the stories of those who escaped into the woods remain “so elusive” that some scholars have referred to them as “the margins of the Holocaust.”

Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love

From a little-known chapter of Holocaust history, one family’s inspiring true story

The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age by Amy Sohn

Though its title might suggest otherwise, The Man Who Hated Women focuses far more on the American women whose rights Anthony Comstock sought to suppress than the sexist government official himself. As novelist and columnist Amy Sohn explains in her narrative non-fiction debut, Comstock , a dry goods seller who moonlighted as a special agent to the U.S. Post Office and the secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, spent more than four decades hounding activists who advocated for women’s reproductive rights. In 1873, he lobbied Congress to pass the Comstock Act , which made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd or lascivious” material—including documents related to birth control and sexual health —through the mail; in his view, the author adds, “obscenity, which he called a ‘hydra-headed-monster,’ led to prostitution, illness, death, abortions and venereal disease.”

The Man Who Hated Women centers on eight women activists targeted by Comstock: among others, Victoria Claflin Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; anarchist and labor organizer Emma Goldman; Planned Parenthood founder and notorious eugenicist Margaret Sanger ; abortionist Ann “ Madam Restell ” Lohman; and homeopath Sarah Chase , who fought back against censorship by dubbing a birth control device the “Comstock Syringe.” Weaving together these women’s stories, Sohn identifies striking parallels between 19th- and 20th-century debates and contemporary threats to abortion rights. “Risking destitution, imprisonment and death,” writes the author in the book’s introduction, “[these activists] defined reproductive liberty as an American right, one as vital as those enshrined in the Constitution. … Without understanding [them], we cannot fight the assault on women’s bodies and souls that continues even today.”

The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age

A narrative history of Anthony Comstock, anti-vice activist and U.S. Postal Inspector, and the remarkable women who opposed his war on women’s rights at the turn of the 20th century

African Europeans: An Untold History by Olivette Otele

In this sweeping chronicle , scholar Olivette Otele challenges white-centric narratives of European history by tracing African people’s presence on the continent from the 3rd century to the 21st. Featuring a rich cast of characters, including Renaissance duke Alessandro de’ Medici , 18th-century polymath Joseph Boulogne , and actress and artists’ muse Jeanne Duval , African Europeans artfully examines changing conceptions of race and how these ideas have shaped both real-world experiences and accounts of the past. 

“The term ‘African European’ is … a provocation for those who deny that one can have multiple identities and even citizenships, as well as those who claim that they do not ‘see color,’” writes Otele in the book’s introduction. “The aims of this volume are to understand connections across time and space, to debunk persistent myths, and to revive and celebrate the lives of African Europeans.”

African Europeans: An Untold History

A dazzling history of Africans in Europe, revealing their unacknowledged role in shaping the continent

The Eagles of Heart Mountain by Bradford Pearson

Life at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated between August 1942 and November 1945, was punctuated by harsh winters, inadequate medical care, and racist treatment by white staff and locals. A year or so after the camp’s opening, however, prisoners gained an unlikely source of hope: high school football. As journalist Bradford Pearson writes in The Eagles of Heart Mountain , the team—made up mainly of second-generation immigrants who’d never played the sport before—went undefeated in the 1943 season and lost just one game the year after that. 

Pearson juxtaposes the heartwarming tale of the underdog Eagles with details of how players resisted the draft. Reluctant to fight on behalf of a country that had ordered their detainment, several of the young men refused to enlist, leaving them vulnerable to (additional) imprisonment. “We are not being disloyal,” declared the Heart Mountain–based Fair Play Committee. “We are not evading the draft. We are all loyal Americans fighting for justice and democracy right here at home.”

The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America

The impeccably researched, deeply moving, never-before-told tale about a World War II incarceration camp in Wyoming and its extraordinary high school football team

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks by David Rooney

“[F]or thousands of years,” argues David Rooney in About Time , humans have “harnessed, politicized and weaponized” time, using clocks to “wield power, make money, govern citizens and control lives.” A former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, home of Greenwich Mean Time , Rooney traces his fascination with horology to his childhood, when his parents ran a clockmaking and restoration business. Over a lifetime spent studying clocks, the scholar realized that the devices could be used as windows into civilization, revealing insights on “capitalism, the exchange of knowledge, the building of empires and the radical changes to our lives brought by industrialization.”

About Time centers on 12 clocks created over some 2,000 years, from a sundial at the Roman forum in 263 B.C.E. to a plutonium time-capsule clock buried in Osaka, Japan, in 1970. As the centuries progressed, timekeeping tools became increasingly accurate—a development that could “never [be] politically neutral,” notes the Washington Post in its review of the book. Instead, the standardization of time enabled capitalist endeavors like the opening and closing of financial markets and social control measures such as laws limiting when consumers could purchase alcohol. Overall, writes Rooney, his “personal, idiosyncratic and above all partial account” seeks to demonstrate that “monumental timekeepers mounted high up on towers or public buildings have been put there to keep us in order, in a world of violent disorder, … as far back as we care to look.” 

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks

A captivating, surprising history of timekeeping and how it has shaped our world

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton

Between July 1964 and April 2001, almost 2,000 urban rebellions sparked by racially motivated police intimidation, harassment and violence broke out across the U.S. These “explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order,” in Elizabeth Hinton ’s words , are often characterized as riots—a term the Yale historian rejects in favor of “rebellion.” Citing a rich trove of historical data, Hinton’s America on Fire   convincingly argues that Black rebellions occur in response to police violence rather than the other way around. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s “ War on Crime ,” for example, contributed to the growth of local police forces that “encroach[ed on] all aspects of Black social life, transforming typical youthful transgressions into fodder for police assaults on young Black people,” per the New Yorker .

Published almost exactly a year after George Floyd was killed in police custody, America on Fire deftly draws parallels between the violence that followed the assassinations of civil rights leaders in the 1960s and the 2020 protests. Only “extraordinary” acts of police violence, like the well-documented murder of Floyd, prompt such rebellions today: “[T]he daily violence and indignities that Black people experience in encounters with police go unaddressed,” notes the Washington Post in its review of the book. “In this sense, Hinton argues that the status quo has won. Ordinary police violence has become normalized, run-of-the-mill. We respond to only its most brutal forms.”

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

From one of our top historians, a groundbreaking story of policing and “riots” that shatters our understanding of the post–civil rights era

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Meilan Solly | | READ MORE

Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's senior associate digital editor, history.