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Blog – Posted on Monday, Jan 21

The 30 best biographies of all time.

Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”

At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction .

All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels , if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great biographies out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized biography recommendation  😉

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1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

This biography of esteemed mathematician John Nash was both a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and the basis for the award-winning film of the same name. Nasar thoroughly explores Nash’s prestigious career, from his beginnings at MIT to his work at the RAND Corporation — as well the internal battle he waged against schizophrenia, a disorder that nearly derailed his life.

2. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition by Andrew Hodges

Hodges’ 1983 biography of Alan Turing sheds light on the inner workings of this brilliant mathematician, cryptologist, and computer pioneer. Indeed, despite the title ( a nod to his work during WWII ), a great deal of the “enigmatic” Turing is laid out in this book. It covers his heroic code-breaking efforts during the war, his computer designs and contributions to mathematical biology in the years following, and of course, the vicious persecution that befell him in the 1950s — when homosexual acts were still a crime punishable by English law.

3. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is not only the inspiration for a hit Broadway musical, but also a work of creative genius itself. This massive undertaking of over 800 pages details every knowable moment of the youngest Founding Father’s life: from his role in the Revolutionary War and early American government to his sordid (and ultimately career-destroying) affair with Maria Reynolds. He may never have been president, but he was a fascinating and unique figure in American history — plus it’s fun to get the truth behind the songs.

Prefer to read about fascinating First Ladies rather than almost-presidents? Check out this awesome list of books about First Ladies over on The Archive.

4. Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

A prolific essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Hurston turned her hand to biographical writing in 1927 with this incredible work, kept under lock and key until it was published 2018. It’s based on Hurston’s interviews with the last remaining survivor of the Middle Passage slave trade, a man named Cudjo Lewis. Rendered in searing detail and Lewis’ highly affecting African-American vernacular, this biography of the “last black cargo” will transport you back in time to an era that, chillingly, is not nearly as far away from us as it feels.

5. Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert

Though many a biography of him has been attempted, Gilbert’s is the final authority on Winston Churchill — considered by many to be Britain’s greatest prime minister ever. A dexterous balance of in-depth research and intimately drawn details makes this biography a perfect tribute to the mercurial man who led Britain through World War II.

Just what those circumstances are occupies much of Bodanis's book, which pays homage to Einstein and, just as important, to predecessors such as Maxwell, Faraday, and Lavoisier, who are not as well known as Einstein today. Balancing writerly energy and scholarly weight, Bodanis offers a primer in modern physics and cosmology, explaining that the universe today is an expression of mass that will, in some vastly distant future, one day slide back to the energy side of the equation, replacing the \'dominion of matter\' with \'a great stillness\'--a vision that is at once lovely and profoundly frightening.

Without sliding into easy psychobiography, Bodanis explores other circumstances as well; namely, Einstein's background and character, which combined with a sterling intelligence to afford him an idiosyncratic view of the way things work--a view that would change the world. --Gregory McNamee

6. E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

This “biography of the world’s most famous equation” is a one-of-a-kind take on the genre: rather than being the story of Einstein, it really does follow the history of the equation itself. From the origins and development of its individual elements (energy, mass, and light) to their ramifications in the twentieth century, Bodanis turns what could be an extremely dry subject into engaging fare for readers of all stripes.

7. Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

When Enrique was only five years old, his mother left Honduras for the United States, promising a quick return. Eleven years later, Enrique finally decided to take matters into his own hands in order to see her again: he would traverse Central and South America via railway, risking his life atop the “train of death” and at the hands of the immigration authorities, to reunite with his mother. This tale of Enrique’s perilous journey is not for the faint of heart, but it is an account of incredible devotion and sharp commentary on the pain of separation among immigrant families.

8. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

Herrera’s 1983 biography of renowned painter Frida Kahlo, one of the most recognizable names in modern art, has since become the definitive account on her life. And while Kahlo no doubt endured a great deal of suffering (a horrific accident when she was eighteen, a husband who had constant affairs), the focal point of the book is not her pain. Instead, it’s her artistic brilliance and immense resolve to leave her mark on the world — a mark that will not soon be forgotten, in part thanks to Herrera’s dedicated work.

9. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Perhaps the most impressive biographical feat of the twenty-first century, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about a woman whose cells completely changed the trajectory of modern medicine. Rebecca Skloot skillfully commemorates the previously unknown life of a poor black woman whose cancer cells were taken, without her knowledge, for medical testing — and without whom we wouldn’t have many of the critical cures we depend upon today.

10. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, hitchhiked to Alaska and disappeared into the Denali wilderness in April 1992. Five months later, McCandless was found emaciated and deceased in his shelter — but of what cause? Krakauer’s biography of McCandless retraces his steps back to the beginning of the trek, attempting to suss out what the young man was looking for on his journey, and whether he fully understood what dangers lay before him.

11. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families by James Agee

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.” From this line derives the central issue of Agee and Evans’ work: who truly deserves our praise and recognition? According to this 1941 biography, it’s the barely-surviving sharecropper families who were severely impacted by the American “Dust Bowl” — hundreds of people entrenched in poverty, whose humanity Evans and Agee desperately implore their audience to see in their book.

12. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Another mysterious explorer takes center stage in this gripping 2009 biography. Grann tells the story of Percy Fawcett, the archaeologist who vanished in the Amazon along with his son in 1925, supposedly in search of an ancient lost city. Parallel to this narrative, Grann describes his own travels in the Amazon 80 years later: discovering firsthand what threats Fawcett may have encountered, and coming to realize what the “Lost City of Z” really was.

13. Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang

Though many of us will be familiar with the name Mao Zedong, this prodigious biography sheds unprecedented light upon the power-hungry “Red Emperor.” Chang and Halliday begin with the shocking statistic that Mao was responsible for 70 million deaths during peacetime — more than any other twentieth-century world leader. From there, they unravel Mao’s complex ideologies, motivations, and missions, breaking down his long-propagated “hero” persona and thrusting forth a new, grislier image of one of China’s biggest revolutionaries.

14. Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson by Andrew Wilson

Titled after one of her most evocative poems, this shimmering bio of Sylvia Plath takes an unusual approach. Instead of focusing on her years of depression and tempestuous marriage to poet Ted Hughes, it chronicles her life before she ever came to Cambridge. Wilson closely examines her early family and relationships, feelings and experiences, with information taken from her meticulous diaries — setting a strong precedent for other Plath biographers to follow.

15. The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes

What if you had twenty-four different people living inside you, and you never knew which one was going to come out? Such was the life of Billy Milligan, the subject of this haunting biography by the author of Flowers for Algernon . Keyes recounts, in a refreshingly straightforward style, the events of Billy’s life and how his psyche came to be “split”... as well as how, with Keyes’ help, he attempted to put the fragments of himself back together.

16. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder

This gorgeously constructed biography follows Paul Farmer, a doctor who’s worked for decades to eradicate infectious diseases around the globe, particularly in underprivileged areas. Though Farmer’s humanitarian accomplishments are extraordinary in and of themselves, the true charm of this book comes from Kidder’s personal relationship with him — and the sense of fulfillment the reader sustains from reading about someone genuinely heroic, written by someone else who truly understands and admires what they do.

17. Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Here’s another bio that will reshape your views of a famed historical tyrant, though this time in a surprisingly favorable light. Decorated scholar Andrew Roberts delves into the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his near-flawless military instincts to his complex and confusing relationship with his wife. But Roberts’ attitude toward his subject is what really makes this work shine: rather than ridiculing him ( as it would undoubtedly be easy to do ), he approaches the “petty tyrant” with a healthy amount of deference.

18. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV by Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson might not seem as intriguing or scandalous as figures like Kennedy, Nixon, or W. Bush. But in this expertly woven biography, Robert Caro lays out the long, winding road of his political career, and it’s full of twists you wouldn’t expect. Johnson himself was a surprisingly cunning figure, gradually maneuvering his way closer and closer to power. Finally, in 1963, he got his greatest wish — but at what cost? Fans of Adam McKay’s Vice , this is the book for you.

19. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Anyone who grew up reading Little House on the Prairie will surely be fascinated by this tell-all biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Caroline Fraser draws upon never-before-published historical resources to create a lush study of the author’s life — not in the gently narrated manner of the Little House series, but in raw and startling truths about her upbringing, marriage, and volatile relationship with her daughter (and alleged ghostwriter) Rose Wilder Lane.

20. Prince: A Private View by Afshin Shahidi

Compiled just after the superstar’s untimely death in 2016, this intimate snapshot of Prince’s life is actually a largely visual work — Shahidi served as his private photographer from the early 2000s until his passing. And whatever they say about pictures being worth a thousand words, Shahidi’s are worth more still: Prince’s incredible vibrance, contagious excitement, and altogether singular personality come through in every shot.

21. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

Could there be a more fitting title for a book about the husband-wife team who discovered radioactivity? What you may not know is that these nuclear pioneers also had a fascinating personal history. Marie Sklodowska met Pierre Curie when she came to work in his lab in 1891, and just a few years later they were married. Their passion for each other bled into their passion for their work, and vice-versa — and in almost no time at all, they were on their way to their first of their Nobel Prizes.

22. Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson

She may not have been assassinated or killed in a mysterious plane crash, but Rosemary Kennedy’s fate is in many ways the worst of “the Kennedy Curse.” As if a botched lobotomy that left her almost completely incapacitated weren’t enough, her parents then hid her away from society, almost never to be seen again. Yet in this new biography, penned by devoted Kennedy scholar Kate Larson, the full truth of Rosemary’s post-lobotomy life is at last revealed.

23. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

This appropriately lyrical biography of brilliant Jazz Age poet and renowned feminist, Edna St. Vincent Millay, is indeed a perfect balance of savage and beautiful. While Millay’s poetic work was delicate and subtle, the woman herself was feisty and unpredictable, harboring unusual and occasionally destructive habits that Milford fervently explores.

24. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes

Holmes’ famous philosophy of “biography as pursuit” is thoroughly proven here in his first full-length biographical work. Shelley: The Pursuit details an almost feverish tracking of Percy Shelley as a dark and cutting figure in the Romantic period — reforming many previous historical conceptions about him through Holmes’ compelling and resolute writing.

25. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Another Gothic figure has been made newly known through this work, detailing the life of prolific horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson. Author Ruth Franklin digs deep into the existence of the reclusive and mysterious Jackson, drawing penetrating comparisons between the true events of her life and the dark nature of her fiction.

26. The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

Fans of Into the Wild and The Lost City of Z will find their next adventure fix in this 2017 book about Christopher Knight, a man who lived by himself in the Maine woods for almost thirty years. The tale of this so-called “last true hermit” will captivate readers who have always fantasized about escaping society, with vivid descriptions of Knight’s rural setup, his carefully calculated moves and how he managed to survive the deadly cold of the Maine winters.

27. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The man, the myth, the legend: Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, is properly immortalized in Isaacson’s masterful biography. It divulges the details of Jobs’ little-known childhood and tracks his fateful path from garage engineer to leader of one of the largest tech companies in the world — not to mention his formative role in other legendary companies like Pixar, and indeed within the Silicon Valley ecosystem as a whole.

28. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Olympic runner Louis Zamperini was just twenty-six when his US Army bomber crashed and burned in the Pacific, leaving him and two other men afloat on a raft for forty-seven days — only to be captured by the Japanese Navy and tortured as a POW for the next two and a half years. In this gripping biography, Laura Hillenbrand tracks Zamperini’s story from beginning to end… including how he embraced Christian evangelism as a means of recovery, and even came to forgive his tormentors in his later years.

29. Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

Everyone knows of Vladimir Nabokov — but what about his wife, Vera, whom he called “the best-humored woman I have ever known”? According to Schiff, she was a genius in her own right, supporting Vladimir not only as his partner, but also as his all-around editor and translator. And she kept up that trademark humor throughout it all, inspiring her husband’s work and injecting some of her own creative flair into it along the way.

30. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

William Shakespeare is a notoriously slippery historical figure — no one really knows when he was born, what he looked like, or how many plays he wrote. But that didn’t stop Stephen Greenblatt, who in 2004 turned out this magnificently detailed biography of the Bard: a series of imaginative reenactments of his writing process, and insights on how the social and political ideals of the time would have influenced him. Indeed, no one exists in a vacuum, not even Shakespeare — hence the conscious depiction of him in this book as a “will in the world,” rather than an isolated writer shut up in his own musty study.

If you're looking for more inspiring nonfiction, check out this list of 30 engaging self-help books , or this list of the last century's best memoirs !

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50 Must-Read Biographies

Rebecca Hussey

Rebecca holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. She teaches courses in composition, literature, and the arts. When she’s not reading or grading papers, she’s hanging out with her husband and son and/or riding her bike and/or buying books. She can't get enough of reading and writing about books, so she writes the bookish newsletter "Reading Indie," focusing on small press books and translations. Newsletter: Reading Indie Twitter: @ofbooksandbikes

View All posts by Rebecca Hussey

The best biographies give us a satisfying glimpse into a great person’s life, while also teaching us about the context in which that person lived. Through biography, we can also learn history, psychology, sociology, politics, philosophy, and more. Reading a great biography is both fun and educational. What’s not to love?

Below I’ve listed 50 of the best biographies out there. You will find a mix of subjects, including important figures in literature, science, politics, history, art, and more. I’ve tried to keep this list focused on biography only, so there is little in the way of memoir or autobiography. In a couple cases, authors have written about their family members, but for the most part, these are books where the focus is on the biographical subject, not the author.

The first handful are group biographies, and after that, I’ve arranged them alphabetically by subject. Book descriptions come from Goodreads.

Take a look and let me know about your favorite biography in the comments!

All We Know: Three Lives by Lisa Cohen

“In  All We Know , Lisa Cohen describes their [Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland’s] glamorous choices, complicated failures, and controversial personal lives with lyricism and empathy. At once a series of intimate portraits and a startling investigation into style, celebrity, sexuality, and the genre of biography itself,  All We Know  explores a hidden history of modernism and pays tribute to three compelling lives.”

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

“Set amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as ‘Human Computers,’ calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women.”

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie

“In the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them – in works that readers of all kinds could admire.  The Life You Save May Be Your Own  is their story – a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us.”

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

“As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.”

The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser

“In a sweeping narrative, Fraser traces the cultural, familial and political roots of each of Henry’s queens, pushes aside the stereotypes that have long defined them, and illuminates the complex character of each.”

John Adams by David McCullough

“In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot — ‘the colossus of independence,’ as Thomas Jefferson called him.”

A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival by Melissa Fleming

“Emotionally riveting and eye-opening,  A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea  is the incredible story of a young woman, an international crisis, and the triumph of the human spirit. Melissa Fleming shares the harrowing journey of Doaa Al Zamel, a young Syrian refugee in search of a better life.”

At Her Majesty’s Request: An African Princess in Victorian England by Walter Dean Myers

“One terrifying night in 1848, a young African princess’s village is raided by warriors. The invaders kill her mother and father, the King and Queen, and take her captive. Two years later, a British naval captain rescues her and takes her to England where she is presented to Queen Victoria, and becomes a loved and respected member of the royal court.”

John Brown by W.E.B. Du Bois

“ John Brown is W. E. B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking political biography that paved the way for his transition from academia to a lifelong career in social activism. This biography is unlike Du Bois’s earlier work; it is intended as a work of consciousness-raising on the politics of race.”

Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster by Stephen L. Carter

“[Eunice Hunton Carter] was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s ― and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted.”

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

“An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members.”

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

“Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnet, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world.”

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

“Einstein was a rebel and nonconformist from boyhood days, and these character traits drove both his life and his science. In this narrative, Walter Isaacson explains how his mind worked and the mysteries of the universe that he discovered.”

Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother by Sonia Nazario

“In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States.”

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

“After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve ‘the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century’: What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett & his quest for the Lost City of Z?”

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman

“Amanda Foreman draws on a wealth of fresh research and writes colorfully and penetratingly about the fascinating Georgiana, whose struggle against her own weaknesses, whose great beauty and flamboyance, and whose determination to play a part in the affairs of the world make her a vibrant, astonishingly contemporary figure.”

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik Ping Zhu

“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame she was just trying to make the world a little better and a little freer. But along the way, the feminist pioneer’s searing dissents and steely strength have inspired millions. [This book], created by the young lawyer who began the Internet sensation and an award-winning journalist, takes you behind the myth for an intimate, irreverent look at the justice’s life and work.”

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

“A woman of enormous talent and remarkable drive, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Today, nearly every black woman writer of significance—including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker—acknowledges Hurston as a literary foremother.”

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

“ Shirley Jackson  reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the literary genius behind such classics as ‘The Lottery’ and  The Haunting of Hill House .”

The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

“This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart.”

The Life of Samuel Johnson   by James Boswell

“Poet, lexicographer, critic, moralist and Great Cham, Dr. Johnson had in his friend Boswell the ideal biographer. Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail.”

Barbara Jordan: American Hero by Mary Beth Rogers

“Barbara Jordan was the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South, and the first to deliver the keynote address at a national party convention. Yet Jordan herself remained a mystery.”

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

“This engrossing biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo reveals a woman of extreme magnetism and originality, an artist whose sensual vibrancy came straight from her own experiences: her childhood near Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution; a devastating accident at age eighteen that left her crippled and unable to bear children.”

Florynce “Flo” Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical by Sherie M. Randolph

“Often photographed in a cowboy hat with her middle finger held defiantly in the air, Florynce ‘Flo’ Kennedy (1916–2000) left a vibrant legacy as a leader of the Black Power and feminist movements. In the first biography of Kennedy, Sherie M. Randolph traces the life and political influence of this strikingly bold and controversial radical activist.”

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

“In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later, when he was arrested for stealing food.”

The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma by Peter Popham

“Peter Popham … draws upon previously untapped testimony and fresh revelations to tell the story of a woman whose bravery and determination have captivated people around the globe. Celebrated today as one of the world’s greatest exponents of non-violent political defiance since Mahatma Gandhi, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize only four years after her first experience of politics.”

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”   by Zora Neale Hurston

“In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history.”

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

“Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine.”

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln’s political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.”

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart

“A tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the century to mentor a generation of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro — the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness.”

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux

“Drawing from the private archives of the poet’s estate and numerous interviews, Alexis De Veaux demystifies Lorde’s iconic status, charting her conservative childhood in Harlem; her early marriage to a white, gay man with whom she had two children; her emergence as an outspoken black feminist lesbian; and her canonization as a seminal poet of American literature.”

Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary by Juan Williams

“Thurgood Marshall stands today as the great architect of American race relations, having expanded the foundation of individual rights for all Americans. His victory in the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the landmark Supreme Court case outlawing school segregation, would have him a historic figure even if he had not gone on to become the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court.”

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

“In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself.”

The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk by Randy Shilts

“ The Mayor of Castro Street  is Shilts’s acclaimed story of Harvey Milk, the man whose personal life, public career, and tragic assassination mirrored the dramatic and unprecedented emergence of the gay community in America during the 1970s.”

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

“The most famous poet of the Jazz Age, Millay captivated the nation: She smoked in public, took many lovers (men and women, single and married), flouted convention sensationally, and became the embodiment of the New Woman.”

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell

This book is “a vivid portrait of Montaigne, showing how his ideas gave birth to our modern sense of our inner selves, from Shakespeare’s plays to the dilemmas we face today.”

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm

“From the moment it was first published in The New Yorker, this brilliant work of literary criticism aroused great attention. Janet Malcolm brings her shrewd intelligence to bear on the legend of Sylvia Plath and the wildly productive industry of Plath biographies.”

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley   by Peter Guralnick

“Based on hundreds of interviews and nearly a decade of research, [this book] traces the evolution not just of the man but of the music and of the culture he left utterly transformed, creating a completely fresh portrait of Elvis and his world.

Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale

“Kate Summerscale brilliantly recreates the Victorian world, chronicling in exquisite and compelling detail the life of Isabella Robinson, wherein the longings of a frustrated wife collided with a society clinging to rigid ideas about sanity, the boundaries of privacy, the institution of marriage, and female sexuality.”

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

“A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained?”

The Invisible Woman: The Story of Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan by Claire Tomalin

“When Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857, she was 18: a professional actress performing in his production of  The Frozen Deep . He was 45: a literary legend, a national treasure, married with ten children. This meeting sparked a love affair that lasted over a decade, destroying Dickens’s marriage and ending with Nelly’s near-disappearance from the public record.”

Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol by Nell Irvin Painter

“Slowly, but surely, Sojourner climbed from beneath the weight of slavery, secured respect for herself, and utilized the distinction of her race to become not only a symbol for black women, but for the feminist movement as a whole.”

The Black Rose by Tananarive Due

“Born to former slaves on a Louisiana plantation in 1867, Madam C.J. Walker rose from poverty and indignity to become America’s first black female millionaire, the head of a hugely successful beauty company, and a leading philanthropist in African American causes.”

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

“With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life, [Chernow] carries the reader through Washington’s troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian Wars, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention and his magnificent performance as America’s first president.”

Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula J. Giddings

“ Ida: A Sword Among Lions  is a sweeping narrative about a country and a crusader embroiled in the struggle against lynching: a practice that imperiled not only the lives of black men and women, but also a nation based on law and riven by race.”

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

“But the true saga of [Wilder’s] life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser—the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series—masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography.”

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon

“Although mother and daughter, these two brilliant women never knew one another – Wollstonecraft died of an infection in 1797 at the age of thirty-eight, a week after giving birth. Nevertheless their lives were so closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies so eerily similar, it seems impossible to consider one without the other.”

Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee

“Subscribing to Virginia Woolf’s own belief in the fluidity and elusiveness of identity, Lee comes at her subject from a multitude of perspectives, producing a richly layered portrait of the writer and the woman that leaves all of her complexities and contradictions intact.”

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable

“Of the great figures in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins’ bullets at age thirty-nine.”

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

“On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.”

Want to read more about great biographies? Check out this post on presidential biographies , this list of biographies and memoirs about remarkable women , and this list of 100 must-read musician biographies and memoirs .

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The 21 most captivating biographies of all time

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• Biographies illuminate pivotal times and people in history. 
• The biography books on this list are heavily researched and fascinating stories.
• Want more books? Check out the best classics , historical fiction books , and new releases.

For centuries, books have allowed readers to be whisked away to magical lands, romantic beaches, and historical events. Biographies take readers through time to a single, remarkable life memorialized in gripping, dramatic, or emotional stories. They give us the rare opportunity to understand our heroes — or even just someone we would never otherwise know. 

To create this list, I chose biographies that were highly researched, entertainingly written, and offer a fully encompassing lens of a person whose story is important to know in 2021. 

The 21 best biographies of all time:

The biography of a beloved supreme court justice.

"Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.25

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a Supreme Court Justice and feminist icon who spent her life fighting for gender equality and civil rights in the legal system. This is an inspirational biography that follows her triumphs and struggles, dissents, and quotes, packaged with chapters titled after Notorious B.I.G. tracks — a nod to the many memes memorializing Ginsburg as an iconic dissident. 

The startlingly true biography of a previously unknown woman

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $8.06

Henrietta was a poor tobacco farmer, whose "immortal" cells have been used to develop the polio vaccine, study cancer, and even test the effects of an atomic bomb — despite being taken from her without her knowledge or consent. This biography traverses the unethical experiments on African Americans, the devastation of Henrietta Lacks' family, and the multimillion-dollar industry launched by the cells of a woman who lies somewhere in an unmarked grave.

The poignant biography of an atomic bomb survivor

"A Song for Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai: Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb" by Paul Glynn, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.51

Takashi Nagai was a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. A renowned scientist and spiritual man, Nagai continued to live in his ruined city after the attack, suffering from leukemia while physically and spiritually helping his community heal. Takashi Nagai's life was dedicated to selfless service and his story is a deeply moving one of suffering, forgiveness, and survival.

The highly researched biography of Malcolm X

"The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X" by Les Payne and Tamara Payne, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $18.99

Written by the investigative journalist Les Payne and finished by his daughter after his passing, Malcolm X's biography "The Dead are Arising" was written and researched over 30 years. This National Book Award and Pulitzer-winning biography uses vignettes to create an accurate, detailed, and gripping portrayal of the revolutionary minister and famous human rights activist. 

The remarkable biography of an Indigenous war leader

"The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History" by Joseph M. Marshall III, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $14.99 

Crazy Horse was a legendary Lakota war leader, most famous for his role in the Battle of the Little Bighorn where Indigenous people defeated Custer's cavalry. A descendant of Crazy Horse's community, Joseph M. Marshall III drew from research and oral traditions that have rarely been shared but offer a powerful and culturally rich story of this acclaimed Lakota hero.

The captivating biography about the cofounder of Apple

"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $16.75

Steve Jobs is a cofounder of Apple whose inventiveness reimagined technology and creativity in the 21st century. Water Issacson draws from 40 interviews with Steve Jobs, as well as interviews with over 100 of his family members and friends to create an encompassing and fascinating portrait of such an influential man.

The shocking biography of a woman committed to an insane asylum

"The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear" by Kate Moore, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $22.49

This biography is about Elizabeth Packard, a woman who was committed to an asylum in 1860 by her husband for being an outspoken woman and wife. Her story illuminates the conditions inside the hospital and the sinister ways of caretakers, an unfortunately true history that reflects the abuses suffered by many women of the time.

The defining biography of a formerly enslaved man

"Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $12.79

50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States, Cudjo Lewis was captured, enslaved, and transported to the US. In 1931, the author spent three months with Cudjo learning the details of his life beginning in Africa, crossing the Middle Passage, and his years enslaved before the Civil War. This biography offers a first-hand account of this unspoken piece of painful history.

The biography of a famous Mexican painter

"Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo" by Hayden Herrera, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $24.89

Filled with a wealth of her life experiences, this biography of Frida Kahlo conveys her intelligence, strength, and artistry in a cohesive timeline. The book spans her childhood during the Mexican Revolution, the terrible accident that changed her life, and her passionate relationships, all while intertwining her paintings and their histories through her story.

The exciting biography of Susan Sontag

"Sontag: Her Life and Work" by Benjamin Moser, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $20.24

Susan Sontag was a 20th-century writer, essayist, and cultural icon with a dark reputation. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, archived works, and photographs, this biography extends across Sontag's entire life while reading like an emotional and exciting literary drama.

The biography that inspired a hit musical

"Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $11.04

The inspiration for the similarly titled Broadway musical, this comprehensive biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton aims to tell the story of his decisions, sacrifice, and patriotism that led to many political and economic effects we still see today. In this history, readers encounter Hamilton's childhood friends, his highly public affair, and his dreams of American prosperity. 

The award-winning biography of an artistically influential man

"The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke" by Jeffrey C Stewart, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $25.71

Alain Locke was a writer, artist, and theorist who is known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Outlining his personal and private life, Alain Locke's biography is a blooming image of his art, his influences, and the far-reaching ways he promoted African American artistic and literary creations.

The remarkable biography of Ida B. Wells

"Ida: A Sword Among Lions" by Paula J. Giddings, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.99

This award-winning biography of Ida B. Wells is adored for its ability to celebrate Ida's crusade of activism and simultaneously highlight the racially driven abuses legally suffered by Black women in America during her lifetime. Ida traveled the country, exposing and opposing lynchings by reporting on the horrific acts and telling the stories of victims' communities and families. 

The tumultuous biography that radiates queer hope

"The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk" by Randy Shilts, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $11.80

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California who was assassinated after 11 months in office. Harvey's inspirational biography is set against the rise of LGBTQIA+ activism in the 1970s, telling not only Harvey Milk's story but that of hope and perseverance in the queer community. 

The biography of a determined young woman

"Obachan: A Young Girl's Struggle for Freedom in Twentieth-Century Japan" by Tani Hanes, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $9.99

Written by her granddaughter, this biography of Mitsuko Hanamura is an amazing journey of an extraordinary and strong young woman. In 1929, Mitsuko was sent away to live with relatives at 13 and, at 15, forced into labor to help her family pay their debts. Determined to gain an education as well as her independence, Mitsuko's story is inspirational and emotional as she perseveres against abuse. 

The biography of an undocumented mother

"The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story" by Aaron Bobrow-Strain, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $18.40

Born in Mexico and growing up undocumented in Arizona, Aida Hernandez was a teen mother who dreamed of moving to New York. After being deported and separated from her child, Aida found herself back in Mexico, fighting to return to the United States and reunite with her son. This suspenseful biography follows Aida through immigration courts and detention centers on her determined journey that illuminates the flaws of the United States' immigration and justice systems.

The astounding biography of an inspiring woman

"The Black Rose: The Dramatic Story of Madam C.J. Walker, America's First Black Female Millionaire" by Tananarive Due, available on Amazon for $19

Madam C.J. Walker is most well-known as the first Black female millionaire, though she was also a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and born to former slaves in Louisiana. Researched and outlined by famous writer Alex Haley before his death, the book was written by author Tananarive Due, who brings Haley's work to life in this fascinating biography of an outstanding American pioneer.

A biography of the long-buried memories of a Hiroshima survivor

"Surviving Hiroshima: A Young Woman's Story" by Anthony Drago and Douglas Wellman, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.59

When Kaleria Palichikoff was a child, her family fled Russia for the safety of Japan until the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima when she was 22 years old. Struggling to survive in the wake of unimaginable devastation, Kaleria set out to help victims and treat the effects of radiation. As one of the few English-speaking survivors, Kaleria was interviewed extensively by the US Army and was finally able to make a new life for herself in America after the war.

A shocking biography of survival during World War II

"Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival" by Laura Hillenbrand, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $8.69

During World War II, Louis Zamperini was a lieutenant bombardier who crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1943. Struggling to stay alive, Zamperini pulled himself to a life raft where he would face great trials of starvation, sharks, and enemy aircraft. This biography creates an image of Louis from boyhood to his military service and depicts a historical account of atrocities during World War II.  

The comprehensive biography of an infamous leader

"Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.39

Mao was a Chinese leader, a founder of the People's Republic of China, and a nearly 30-year chairman of the Chinese Communist Party until his death in 1976. Known as a highly controversial figure who would stop at very little in his plight to rule the world, the author spent nearly 10 years painstakingly researching and uncovering the painful truths surrounding his political rule.

The emotional biography of a Syrian refugee

"A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival" by Melissa Fleming, available on Amazon and Bookshop from $15.33

When Syrian refugee Doaa met Bassem, they decided to flee Egypt for Europe, becoming two of thousands seeking refuge and making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. After four days at sea, their ship was attacked and sank, leaving Doaa struggling to survive with two small children clinging to her and only a small inflation device around her wrist. This is an emotional biography about Doaa's strength and her dangerous and deadly journey towards freedom.

• Main content

The 50 Best Biographies of All Time

Think you know the full and complete story about George Washington, Steve Jobs, or Joan of Arc? Think again.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Biographies have always been controversial. On his deathbed, the novelist Henry James told his nephew that his “sole wish” was to “frustrate as utterly as possible the postmortem exploiter” by destroying his personal letters and journals. And one of our greatest living writers, Hermione Lee, once compared biographies to autopsies that add “a new terror to death”—the potential muddying of someone’s legacy when their life is held up to the scrutiny of investigation.

Why do we read so many books about the lives and deaths of strangers, as told by second-hand and third-hand sources? Is it merely our love for gossip, or are we trying to understand ourselves through the triumphs and failures of others?

To keep this list from blossoming into hundreds of titles, we only included books currently in print and translated into English. We also limited it to one book per author, and one book per subject. In ranked order, here are the best biographies of all time.

Crown The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss

You’re probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo , the 1844 revenge novel by Alexandre Dumas. But did you know it was based on the life of Dumas’s father, the mixed-race General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave? Thanks to Reiss’s masterful pacing and plotting, this rip-roaring biography of Thomas-Alexandre reads more like an adventure novel than a work of nonfiction. The Black Count won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2013, and it’s only a matter of time before a filmmaker turns it into a big-screen blockbuster.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown

Few biographies are as genuinely fun to read as this barnburner from the irreverent English critic Craig Brown. Princess Margaret may have been everyone’s favorite character from Netflix’s The Crown , but Brown’s eye for ostentatious details and revelatory insights will help you see why everyone in the 1950s—from Pablo Picasso and Gore Vidal to Peter Sellers and Andy Warhol—was obsessed with her. When book critic Parul Sehgal says that she “ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice,” you know you’re in for a treat.

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, by Alec Nevala-Lee

If you want to feel optimistic about the future again, look no further than this brilliant biography of Buckminster Fuller, the “modern Leonardo da Vinci” of the 1960s and 1970s who came up with the idea of a “Spaceship Earth” and inspired Silicon Valley’s belief that technology could be a global force for good (while earning plenty of critics who found his ideas impractical). Alec Nevala-Lee’s writing is as serene and precise as one of Fuller’s geodesic domes, and his research into never-before-seen documents makes this a genuinely groundbreaking book full of surprises.

Free Press Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, by Robin D.G. Kelley

The late American jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk has been so heavily mythologized that it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. But Robin D. G. Kelley’s biography is an essential book for jazz fans looking to understand the man behind the myths. Monk’s family provided Kelley with full access to their archives, resulting in chapter after chapter of fascinating details, from his birth in small-town North Carolina to his death across the Hudson from Manhattan.

University of Chicago Press Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, by Meryle Secrest

There are dozens of books about America’s most celebrated architect, but Secrest’s 1998 biography is still the most fun to read. For one, she doesn’t shy away from the fact that Wright could be an absolute monster, even to his own friends and family. Secondly, her research into more than 100,000 letters, as well as interviews with nearly every surviving person who knew Wright, makes this book a one-of-a-kind look at how Wright’s personal life influenced his architecture.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography, by Arnold Rampersad

Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel, Invisible Man , is about a Black man who faced systemic racism in the Deep South during his youth, then migrated to New York, only to find oppression of a slightly different kind. What makes Arnold Rampersand’s honest and insightful biography of Ellison so compelling is how he connects the dots between Invisible Man and Ellison’s own journey from small-town Oklahoma to New York’s literary scene during the Harlem Renaissance.

Oscar Wilde: A Life, by Matthew Sturgis

Now remembered for his 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde was one of the most fascinating men of the fin-de-siècle thanks to his poems, plays, and some of the earliest reported “celebrity trials.” Sturgis’s scintillating biography is the most encyclopedic chronicle of Wilde’s life to date, thanks to new research into his personal notebooks and a full transcript of his libel trial.

Beacon Press A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life & Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks, by Angela Jackson

The poet Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1950, but because she spent most of her life in Chicago instead of New York, she hasn’t been studied or celebrated as often as her peers in the Harlem Renaissance. Luckily, Angela Jackson’s biography is full of new details about Brooks’s personal life, and how it influenced her poetry across five decades.

Atria Books Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century, by Dana Stevens

Was Buster Keaton the most influential filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century? Dana Stevens makes a compelling case in this dazzling mix of biography, essays, and cultural history. Much like Keaton’s filmography, Stevens playfully jumps from genre to genre in an endlessly entertaining way, while illuminating how Keaton’s influence on film and television continues to this day.

Algonquin Books Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation, by Dean Jobb

Dean Jobb is a master of narrative nonfiction on par with Erik Larsen, author of The Devil in the White City . Jobb’s biography of Leo Koretz, the Bernie Madoff of the Jazz Age, is among the few great biographies that read like a thriller. Set in Chicago during the 1880s through the 1920s, it’s also filled with sumptuous period details, from lakeside mansions to streets choked with Model Ts.

Vintage Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, by Hermione Lee

Hermione Lee’s biographies of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton could easily have made this list. But her book about a less famous person—Penelope Fitzgerald, the English novelist who wrote The Bookshop, The Blue Flower , and The Beginning of Spring —might be her best yet. At just over 500 pages, it’s considerably shorter than those other biographies, partially because Fitzgerald’s life wasn’t nearly as well documented. But Lee’s conciseness is exactly what makes this book a more enjoyable read, along with the thrilling feeling that she’s uncovering a new story literary historians haven’t already explored.

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

Many biographers have written about Sylvia Plath, often drawing parallels between her poetry and her death by suicide at the age of thirty. But in this startling book, Plath isn’t wholly defined by her tragedy, and Heather Clark’s craftsmanship as a writer makes it a joy to read. It’s also the most comprehensive account of Plath’s final year yet put to paper, with new information that will change the way you think of her life, poetry, and death.

Pontius Pilate, by Ann Wroe

Compared to most biography subjects, there isn’t much surviving documentation about the life of Pontius Pilate, the Judaean governor who ordered the execution of the historical Jesus in the first century AD. But Ann Wroe leans into all that uncertainty in her groundbreaking book, making for a fascinating mix of research and informed speculation that often feels like reading a really good historical novel.

Brand: History Book Club Bolívar: American Liberator, by Marie Arana

In the early nineteenth century, Simón Bolívar led six modern countries—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela—to independence from the Spanish Empire. In this rousing work of biography and geopolitical history, Marie Arana deftly chronicles his epic life with propulsive prose, including a killer first sentence: “They heard him before they saw him: the sound of hooves striking the earth, steady as a heartbeat, urgent as a revolution.”

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang

Ever read a biography of a fictional character? In the 1930s and 1940s, Charlie Chan came to popularity as a Chinese American police detective in Earl Derr Biggers’s mystery novels and their big-screen adaptations. In writing this book, Yunte Huang became something of a detective himself to track down the real-life inspiration for the character, a Hawaiian cop named Chang Apana born shortly after the Civil War. The result is an astute blend between biography and cultural criticism as Huang analyzes how Chan served as a crucial counterpoint to stereotypical Chinese villains in early Hollywood.

Random House Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Nancy Milford

Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the most fascinating women of the twentieth century—an openly bisexual poet, playwright, and feminist icon who helped make Greenwich Village a cultural bohemia in the 1920s. With a knack for torrid details and creative insights, Nancy Milford successfully captures what made Millay so irresistible—right down to her voice, “an instrument of seduction” that captivated men and women alike.

Simon & Schuster Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

Few people have the luxury of choosing their own biographers, but that’s exactly what the late co-founder of Apple did when he tapped Walter Isaacson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. Adapted for the big screen by Aaron Sorkin in 2015, Steve Jobs is full of plot twists and suspense thanks to a mind-blowing amount of research on the part of Isaacson, who interviewed Jobs more than forty times and spoke with just about everyone who’d ever come into contact with him.

Brand: Random House Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), by Stacy Schiff

The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov once said, “Without my wife, I wouldn’t have written a single novel.” And while Stacy Schiff’s biography of Cleopatra could also easily make this list, her telling of Véra Nabokova’s life in Russia, Europe, and the United States is revolutionary for finally bringing Véra out of her husband’s shadow. It’s also one of the most romantic biographies you’ll ever read, with some truly unforgettable images, like Vera’s habit of carrying a handgun to protect Vladimir on butterfly-hunting excursions.

Greenblatt, Stephen Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt

We know what you’re thinking. Who needs another book about Shakespeare?! But Greenblatt’s masterful biography is like traveling back in time to see firsthand how a small-town Englishman became the greatest writer of all time. Like Wroe’s biography of Pontius Pilate, there’s plenty of speculation here, as there are very few surviving records of Shakespeare’s daily life, but Greenblatt’s best trick is the way he pulls details from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets to construct a compelling narrative.

Crown Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

When Kiese Laymon calls a book a “literary miracle,” you pay attention. James Baldwin’s legacy has enjoyed something of a revival over the last few years thanks to films like I Am Not Your Negro and If Beale Street Could Talk , as well as books like Glaude’s new biography. It’s genuinely a bit of a miracle how he manages to combine the story of Baldwin’s life with interpretations of Baldwin’s work—as well as Glaude’s own story of discovering, resisting, and rediscovering Baldwin’s books throughout his life.

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Best Biographies of All Time: Top 20 Most Interesting Reads

Kathy Edens

Have you ever read a biography that was gripping enough to keep you turning pages long after you should’ve been asleep? If not, then maybe you’re not reading the right books.

We culled the best of the best from over a half dozen sources, and still can’t capture all the great biographies worth reading.

Here, in no particular order, are the best biographies that read as good as, if not better than, fiction.

Final Thoughts

1. unbroken: a world war ii story of survival, resilience and redemption by laura hillenbrand.

At once devastating and uplifting, Unbroken is the story of Louis Zamperini, from his incorrigible boyhood actions to the sport that turned him around and led him to the Olympics.

But then WWII came calling, changing Louis and testing his endurance and ingenuity. The story comes full circle when, decades later, Zamperini returns to Japan, not as a POW, but as an honored guest at the Olympics.

2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta herself didn’t lead a glamorous life, but her cells, taken without her knowledge, have led to such ground-breaking accomplishments as the polio vaccine.

These cells, known as HeLa, are one of the most important tools in medicine and have been bought and sold by the billions. They are still alive today, over sixty years after Henrietta’s death.

3. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Fiction couldn’t be as suspenseful and seductive as this real story about a death in one of Savannah’s grandest mansions in 1981. Was it murder or self-defense?

Peeling the curtain back on well-bred society ladies, gigolos, and a Southern belle who epitomizes "the soul of pampered self-absorption," this book has everything from drag queens to a voodoo priestess. You can’t make this stuff up.

4. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Imagine a young, well-to-do man who gave away all his money, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, then hitchhiked to Alaska and disappeared into the wilderness.

Four months later, hunters found his decomposed remains. This book tells the story of Christopher Johnson McCandless and his death in the wild.

5. Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil by Rüdiger Safranski

Heidegger, a great philosopher without whom there would be no Sartre or Foucault, also had many failures and flaws.

He made a pact with the devil, Adolf Hitler, and teetered between good and evil, brilliance and blindness. This book chronicles his ideas and his personal commitments and betrayals.

6. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Based on over forty interviews with Jobs and hundreds with family, friends, colleagues, competitors, and adversaries, Walter Isaacson’s biography reads like a roller coaster ride.

This is the unvarnished truth: Jobs cooperated, but had no control over what Isaacson wrote or even the right to read it before publication. Nothing was off-limits.

7. John Adams by David McCullough

John Adams was not just one of the founding fathers; he was a brilliant, fiercely independent, and always honest patriot totally committed to the American Revolution. McCullough intertwines politics, war, and social issues with love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, and betrayal to create one book you can’t put down.

8. Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford

Edna St. Vincent Millay was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. She lived a flamboyant life in the Jazz Age alongside other literary heroes like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Milford goes underneath the dazzling performance Edna puts on for the crowds and uncovers a rich and deep family connection between the three Millay sisters and their mother. One reviewer described it as a little bit Little Women with a touch of Mommy Dearest .

9. The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary was a thoroughly ambitious project that collected definitions from around the world.

There was one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, who contributed over 10,000, but the overseeing committee was stunned when they tracked him down to honor him. Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

10. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

Another vivid story about a brilliant man teetering between genius and madness, this book reads like a suspense novel but is the true story of John Nash, a mathematical genius who slipped into madness.

Thanks to the support and loyalty of Nash’s admirers, he eventually won a Nobel Prize for triggering the game theory revolution.

11. Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt

An interesting insight into how a young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the 1500s and becomes the greatest playwright of all time.

Showing Shakespeare as an acutely sensitive and talented boy, Greenblatt helps you see, hear, and feel how he became the world-renowned playwright against the rich backdrop of Elizabethan life.

12. Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

Author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston tells the gripping and horrifying story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade.

This is the story of Cudjo Lewis, abducted from Africa and put on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States. Lewis was captured and put in bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.

13. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel

In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G. H. Hardy, a pre-eminent English mathematician, with several ideas about numbers.

Hardy realized the boy’s genius and arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. From the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, the story of their journey together is inspiring and magical.

14. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo was a woman of extreme magnetism and originality thanks to her childhood experiences near Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution.

From a devastating accident that left her crippled and unable to bear children to her tempestuous marriage and intermittent love affairs, this is an extraordinary story of a 20th century woman who has become a legend.

15. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

During the Civil Rights Movement, no one knew the story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians and their role in the space program.

Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, this group, called the "Human Computers," calculated the flight paths that would lead to historic achievements.

16. John Brown by W.E.B. Du Bois

A groundbreaking political biography, John Brown moved Du Bois from his comfortable life as an academic to a lifelong career in social activism.

John Brown was the first Caucasian man willing to die for the rights of black people. The narrative Du Bois presents is compelling and one that is rarely presented in our history books.

17. Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite With His Mother by Sonia Nazario

Award-winning journalist Nazario tells the vivid and engaging story of a Honduran boy’s unforgettable odyssey to reach his mother in the United States.

He has no money and only a slip of paper with his mother’s US telephone number. Enrique makes the hard and dangerous journey from Mexico the only way he knows how—clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains.

18. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

In an interesting twist to the usual depiction of bloodthirsty pillagers, Weatherford shows how Genghis Khan introduced many progressive advancements to the societies he conquered.

Khan abolished torture, brought universal religious freedom, and destroyed feudal systems wherever he went. This is an engaging story of how he helped form the Mongol empire.

19. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram

Boyd was a world-class fighter pilot whose machinations changed warfare and strategy not only in the air but on the ground and at sea.

He is the founder of our modern concept of maneuver warfare, and his way of analyzing and solving problems is used today in corporate boardrooms.

20. Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook

Most first ladies didn’t do much beyond party planning, but Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to get things done.

Cook brings Roosevelt to life and shines a light on her political and social acumen in turning a meaningless position into one of power to influence and make change.

We didn’t want to stop here; there are so many more you should read. Let’s get a comprehensive list going in the comments below. What other unforgettable biographies did we miss?

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Top 10 literary biographies

From Shakespeare to Shelley, Edith Wharton to VS Naipaul … literature’s greats have biographies to match

T he idea of writing about authors is, for me, irresistible, and I’ve just published my seventh. It was about Gore Vidal and I have often recalled Vidal’s wise suggestion (made 30 years ago) that I should write about major figures, as important lives make for Important Lives.

Needless to say, anyone involved in this business becomes a student of Great Lives, and I’ve spent decades reading and rereading my favourite examples in the genre. The beginning of literary biography for anyone is probably Boswell’s classic life of Samuel Johnson (1791), an entertaining portrait of the inimitable sage, or such Victorian treasures as Elizabeth Gaskell’s astute life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) or John Forster’s intimate biography of Charles Dickens (1874), his close friend. The 20th century saw many fine literary biographies emerging on both sides of the Atlantic, but it also produced numerous heavy and boring tomes: on the American side Mark Schorer’s staggeringly detailed life of Sinclair Lewis from 1961 or Joseph Blotner’s anaesthetising life of William Faulkner from 1974; on the British, Norman Sherry’s tedious three-volume life of Graham Greene, finished in 1991.

It is such a huge field that I have narrowed my 10 favourites down to the era after the second world war.

1. Henry James by Leon Edel (Five volumes: 1953 to 1972) I’ve read these at least five times, slowly. Savouring each morsel. Although there are famously reductive (pseudo-Freudian) elements, the scholarship is impressive, the alertness to James’s shifting sensibility superb. It’s beautifully written, too. No later biographer of James can ignore this monument to the art of biography.

2. James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (1959) One of the best modern examples of literary biography, with its artfully chosen detail and narrative arc combining with a close reading of major texts.

3. Edith Wharton : A Biography by RWB Lewis (1975) Full of scholarship and astute readings, with a fine general sense of the times as well. It’s a good place to begin, but Hermione Lee’s brilliantly written biography in 2007 was a necessary compliment, challenging the somewhat stodgy view that Lewis put forward, revealing her complex sexuality and originality as a writer.

4. The Life of Langston Hughes by Arnold Rampersad (two volumes: 1986, 1988) Rampersad summons the rich world of the Harlem Renaissance and reveals the depth of African-American literary consciousness in this remarkable biography.

5. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes (1974) A startling, elegantly written, example of artistic biography. Holmes utterly revised our sense of this key Romantic poet, taking us into his political thoughts and activities, exploring his poetry in fresh ways.

6. Dickens by Peter Ackroyd (1990) This is among my favorite books. I’ve read it again and again, as Ackroyd is himself a writer of Dickensian vitality – the biographer and subject are so well matched here.

7. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt (2004). A vast shelf of biographies of the Bard exists, but this is the book I would take with me to a desert island along with Shakespeare’s plays. It has energy and a great deal of unassertive yet far-reaching scholarship.

8. Tolstoy by A N Wilson (1989) Wilson writes so well, and he brings a blazing critical intelligence to bear as well as novelistic skills in assembling a great life of a great writer. I love this book.

9. The Imperfect Life of T S Eliot by Lyndall Gordon (1998) This brings together Eliot’s Early Years – a truly groundbreaking book – and Eliot’s New Life. We see Eliot in all of his alienated grandeur here, a deeply strange man, prejudiced, terrified of women, and yet massively gifted as a poet and critic. The very recent biography of young Eliot by Robert Crawford deepens our vision of Eliot and should be read beside Gordon’s work.

10. The World Is What It Is by Patrick French (2009) This biography of V S Naipaul, is wildly entertaining as well as informative. There is a kind of unwavering clarity and honest here. The complex genius if Naipaul is fully exposed. It’s a model of its kind.

• Jay Parini’s Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal is published by Little, Brown at £25 and is available from the Guardian bookshop at £20.
• Biography books
• Henry James
• James Joyce
• Edith Wharton
• Langston Hughes
• Charles Dickens

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40 Inspiring Biographies of Remarkable Women

• Monday, March 08, 2021

Biographies and memoirs are raw, real and riveting. We can learn so much about the lives of these strong women from books where human stories intersperse with history, culture and the political climate. Do read and get empowered.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

The Firebrand and the First Lady

Empress Dowager Cixi

Harriet Tubman

The Year of Magical Thinking

Ida B. the Queen

What You Have Heard is True

My Own Words

Romantic Outlaws

The Last Black Unicorn

The Truths We Hold

Once I Was You

Dust Tracks on a Road

Eyes on the Street

My Life, My Love, My Legacy

Know My Name

Grandma Gatewood's Walk

Things I've Been Silent About

Florynce "Flo" Kennedy

Year of Yes

Diary of a Mad Diva

A Singular Woman

Hidden Figures

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Year of the Monkey

My Beloved World

My Life on the Road

Just As I Am

Whiskey in a Teacup

I Am Malala

Research and Readers Advisory Professional

Loves learning about other cultures and broadening her reading horizons through a vast selection of multicultural fiction.

The Best Historical Biographies of Influential Figures and Events

From Ulysses S. Grant to Juneteenth, Sylvia Plath to James Baldwin, here are biographies that make you think again about famous historical events and trailblazers.

I was pondering—as one does—what makes history come alive, and I noticed listeners often say, “This is the biography X deserves!” when they love a title. Sometimes biographies are about multiple people or a famous event, but a great biography manages through deep research and narrative arc to provide a fresh take on a familiar subject. Here, I’ve curated my favorite biographies that reveal a “household name” in a whole new way in audio; all of them feature rich historic detail and unpausable, stellar narration. Enjoy!

Jesus Christ

By Reza Aslan

Narrated by Reza Aslan

A fascinating, provocative, and meticulously researched biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth....

To look at the historical Jesus within the context of Roman-occupied Palestine seems to fascinate everyone: Christians, atheists, and adherents to other religions. The author’s narration adds to the experience of Zealot .

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

By Jack Weatherford

Narrated by Jonathan Davis, Jack Weatherford

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

It took an anthropologist—who spent years learning Mongolian, living on the steppes for a part of each year, and listening for the truth of Genghis Khan’s life—to flesh out a biography of a man whose life may actually have been bigger than his myth.

George Washington

You Never Forget Your First

By Alexis Coe

Narrated by Brittany Pressley, Alexis Coe

With irresistible style and warm humor, You Never Forget Your First combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have listeners - including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads - inhaling every word....

The father of our country, up close and personal. Alexis Coe delves into primary sources to assemble a picture of Washington that includes but is not limited to the truth about those wooden teeth, his complex and loving relationship with family members, the enslaved people he owned, and of course his political and military wisdom.

Ulysses S. Grant

By Ron Chernow

Narrated by Mark Bramhall

Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant....

The Civil War didn’t win itself, people. Grant was a brilliant military supply problem-solver who inspired the loyalty of those he commanded, and he was an underrated president too. Ron Chernow’s prose and Mark Bramhall’s narration are both sublime!

On Juneteenth

By Annette Gordon-Reed

Narrated by Karen Chilton

The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Texas native....

Almost everyone has heard of Juneteenth, but it took Annette Gordon-Reed’s essays to drive home the deep and multifaceted meaning of the holiday. Growing up in Texas, she shares how Juneteenth history is a part of her state’s, and our nation’s, history.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Prairie Fires

By Caroline Fraser

Narrated by Christina Moore

Since her wholesome familial autobiographies are almost universally read and nearly synonymous with her name, you might think you know all there is to know about Laura Ingalls Wilder. But through the unfiltered eye of an outsider, Prairie Fires brings the dramatic and tumultuous life of America’s most famous pioneer girl into full light for the first time. As the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series , author Caroline Fraser is perhaps more familiar with Ingalls Wilder than anyone else alive. Meanwhile, narrator Christina Moore’s broad background in children’s lit (you may recognize her as the voice behind classics like Practical Magic , Go Ask Alice , and Julie of the Wolves ) makes her the perfect selection to illuminate the woman behind one of the world’s most treasured storybook collections.

I love the Little House books, although they aren’t perfect. Prairie Fires explores how the real Ingalls family was playing a pioneer game they couldn’t win, and how Laura Ingalls Wilder overcame and transmuted her personal grief into beloved, and flawed, works of fiction.

Winston Churchill

The Splendid and the Vile

By Erik Larson

Narrated by John Lee, Erik Larson

John Lee is known for narrating some epic books: Ken Follet's Kingsbridge novels, Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers , and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. He's a narrator, actor, and producer who has won multiple Audie Awards, Earphones Awards, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine. With over 500 audiobooks under his belt, he has plenty of experience narrating everything from epic fantasy to fascinating nonfiction.

I tried not to be a fan of this book (I was Churchill-ed out, I guess), but Editor Kat’s interview with Erik Larson, and John Lee’s narration, brought out the greatness of the story. I got chills when I listened to Churchill’s 1941 Christmas Eve speech (included in the audiobook), and to know what was behind it.

Nazi Scientist Diaspora

Operation Paperclip

By Annie Jacobsen

Narrated by Annie Jacobsen

Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into one of the most complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secrets of the 20th century....

Annie Jacobsen draws upon declassified American and German documents to sketch out Operation Paperclip, the government program to repatriate (formerly?) Nazi scientists from the defunct Third Reich to America after World War II.

Alan Turing

Alan Turing: The Enigma

By Andrew Hodges

Narrated by Gordon Griffin

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis....

The genius of Alan Turing is as much about what he overcame as about what he accomplished. Bonus: This is the book upon which the film was based!

Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By Rebecca Skloot

Narrated by Cassandra Campbell, Bahni Turpin

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences....

Henrietta Lacks wasn’t a household name when I was growing up, but she is now, thanks to this riveting bio. It traces the all-too-brief life of a poor Black mother with cancer, whose cells were used without her consent to pave the way for breakthroughs from the polio vaccine to cancer treatments.

Ethel Rosenberg

By Anne Sebba

Narrated by Orlagh Cassidy

New York Times best-selling author Anne Sebba's moving biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife and mother whose execution for espionage-related crimes defined the Cold War and horrified the world....

Executed after her conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage (not even actual espionage!), Ethel Rosenberg was more than a possible spy. Through her prison correspondence and other primary sources, she comes to life as a wife, a mother, an idealist, and a tragic personal story.

Sylvia Plath

By Heather Clark

Narrated by Laura Jennings

The highly anticipated new biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art....

Red Comet was a revelation to me, the first biography of Sylvia Plath that centered the story on her artistic development, not her mental illness. It was a joy to get to know the poet as the beloved daughter of an immigrant family, an earnest aspiring artist, and—to paraphrase Virginia Woolf—“a mind that consumed all impediments” in her art.

James Baldwin

Begin Again

By Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Narrated by Eddie S. Glaude

James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race....

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. wrote so much more than a mere biography of James Baldwin. His appreciation for Baldwin’s crucible in the “after-times” of post-civil rights America taught me a lot about Baldwin’s life, and even more about how Baldwin’s lived experience can inform my own path as an ordinary citizen striving for a just society.

Charles Manson

By Tom O'Neill, Dan Piepenbring

Narrated by Kevin Stillwell

Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up....

Helter Skelter was a great story, but it’s not the end of the story, or even the whole story! Chaos puts Manson in context against the backdrop of a drug-soaked youth culture, the Hollywood power structure, and CIA investigations. 20 years in the making and worth the wait!

Jimmy Carter

His Very Best

By Jonathan Alter

Narrated by Michael Boatman

Jonathan Alter tells the epic story of an enigmatic man of faith and his improbable journey from barefoot boy to global icon. Alter paints an intimate and surprising portrait of the only president since Thomas Jefferson who can fairly be called a Renaissance Man, a complex figure....

Jonathan Alter collected thousands of hours of interviews with the Carter family and colleagues to assemble a rich, evenhanded, groundbreaking look at the life of a complex president. Amazingly, there’s no other comprehensive bio that covers Carter’s early life, his Navy career, his presidency, and his post-presidential humanitarian contributions. This one sounds like a novel.

And the Band Played On

By Randy Shilts

Narrated by Victor Bevine

And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly....

Victor Bevine’s narration brings to life the widespread grief and hard-won triumphs of the era when AIDS burst upon the world scene. Randy Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science, politics, public health, and the gay community who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced.

By Walter Isaacson

Narrated by Dylan Baker

From the author of the best-selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, this is the exclusive biography of Steve Jobs....

Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson explores the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

Summitting Mount Everest

Into Thin Air

By Jon Krakauer

Narrated by Philip Franklin

Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author who was there (and luckily safe), Jon Krakauer. It’s the comprehensive “biography” of a tragedy, start to finish.

By Dave Cullen

Narrated by Don Leslie

"The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror..."  So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders". It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers....

What really happened on April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on the scene and spent 10 years on this book, which is widely recognized as the definitive account of the Columbine High School massacre. 

The Best Biography Audiobooks to Educate, Fascinate, and Inspire

We’ve rounded up the most impressive subjects, the best authors, and some expert narrators to bring you the best biography audiobooks available on the market.

100 Years Later, Uncovering the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre

The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was one of the most despicable moments in US history, and it remained obscured for decades. In a growing selection of new books and podcasts, the story of what truly happened is coming to light.

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The 7 Best Biography Sites for Famous and Inspirational People

Biographies give us a historical look into the lives and times of notable people. They help to teach, inspire, and improve us as people.

Famous people, both living and dead, can help to inspire us to greater things and teach us about missing gaps in our own knowledge. Indeed, by studying the lives of some of the most famous people throughout history, you can turn yourself into a better person. And who doesn’t want that?

Thanks to the internet, you don’t need to spend a fortune on physical biographies in your local bookstore. Here are the best websites for biographies of renowned people who have ever lived.

1. Biography

Biography has been online for many years and has become one of the most well-known sites out there for memoirs, interviews, and life stories.

The People section has grown to thousands of entries and covers everyone from actors to scientists. When you click on a person's profile, you'll get a brief overview of their life, a list of “quick facts”, and information on their education, career, and personal life.

Biography also has entire sections dedicated to nostalgia, celebrities, history and culture, and crime and scandal. Most of the content in these sections takes a long-form article approach.

If you enjoy the content on the main site, make sure you also check out Biography's YouTube channel. Most of the videos are a couple of minutes long and focus on a single person.

S9 is like a Wikipedia of biographies . The content is editable by the users, and they also can contribute to the existing biographies on the site.

Every day, there is a selection of featured biographies, with many of the selections being for people you might not have heard of but who have achieved wonderful things in their lives. The site also has a birthday section and a latest biographies section, allowing you to delve into the lives of different fascinating people every time you log on.

S9 even has a biographical game in the form of a quiz. The questions are, predictably, based on people's lives. Fair warning—to get a good score, you need to have a serious deep amount of knowledge.

3. Notable Biographies

The simply organized encyclopedia on famous and historical personalities is very readable with an alphabetically arranged Wikipedia-like presentation. You can also add your own information through a form.

It lacks the large number of entries that you will find on some of the other sites on this list, but don't let that put you off. If you're looking for a who's-who of various global luminaries rather than endless lists of people you have never heard of, this is the site for you.

4. Women's History Month

Women's History Month is an official site produced by the US government. Of course, the month of the celebration itself is March, but you can visit and enjoy the site and its massive amount of content throughout the year.

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance, and celebration of the vital role of women in American history.

Overall, the site is an exhaustive resource on women who have impacted history through the ages. It pays tribute to some of the greatest women in history with multimedia content and other exhibits.

5. Wikipedia

If you want information on famous people, you can never go too far wrong with the ubiquitous Wikipedia. If anyone has achieved something globally noteworthy in their lives, you can be almost certain that they will have an entry on the site.

Of course, for the true giants of history, the entries can run to tens of thousands of words. But even for slightly less-famous people, you will still be able to find plenty of information.

Wikipedia is also one of the few biography sites that is available in multiple languages. For regionally famous people, you might find their local entry has far more information than the English-language entry. You can use Google Translate if you cannot understand the language in question.

And hey, if no article exists about the person in question, you can always try and make one yourself!

6. Academy of Achievement

The Academy of Achievement aims to provide readers with insight into the visionaries and pioneers who have shaped the modern world around us. The academy has existed for more than six decades, thus making inclusion in its hall of fame an honor in its own right.

For all the people who have made it onto the hallowed list over the years, you can access complete biographies, samples of their work, images, interviews, video content, and more.

7. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

If you're a politics fanatic, you will love the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. It features a biography for all 12,877 people who have served in the House of Representatives and Congress since the forming of the United States.

For each person, you will be able to find information about the congresses they served, the years they served, the state/territory they represented, their position, and their party. Of course, there is also a text article dedicated to each person, with information on their personal life, background, and career.

We've also covered some of the best sites for unbiased fact-checking if this isn't enough for your politics fix.

8. Academy of American Poets

If literature is more your thing, head to the Academy of American Poets. It offers more than 3,000 biographies of contemporary and classical poets from the US.

The site also offers non-biographical content. For example, there are thousands of poems for you to read, a poem-a-day feature, a library containing books, texts, and more, and even materials for teachers and links to poetry events near your location.

Learn About People to Become a Better Person

No matter what hobbies and interests you have, there is always something to be learned by studying the lives of other people.

Whether they help you find an answer to a moral question, inspire you to start a new project, or simply helps you pass some time on your commute, these sites will all help to keep you entertained and engaged for hours.

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13 Celebrity Autobiographies That Are Seriously Worth Reading

By Lindsey Lanquist

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Celeb autobiographies can be pretty hit or miss. I don't want to name any names, but if all you've done is profit from an inherited empire of wealth, I'm probably not too interested in what you have to say. Some celebs, though, have risen to the occasion and penned—or hired someone to pen—books that are actually worth reading.

Below are 13 of our favorite celeb-authored books.

Modern Romance , Aziz Ansari

Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance isn't quite an autobiography, but the comedian did write it himself. The book is a thoughtful—but funny (of course)—look at the contemporary world of dating. And Ansari teamed up with an NYU sociologist to help him take a deeper dive into the technology-infused world of ~modern romance~. Get ready to learn something—and to have a serious laugh. (Shop here for $11.52.)

The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo , Amy Schumer

This book won't hit stores until August, but we're excited to see Amy Schumer's frank and unapologetic writing emerge in a new format. Anyone who loved Trainwreck , who watches Inside Amy Schumer on the reg, or who just has an affinity for funny women should look out for The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo. (Pre-shop here for $15.40.)

Bossypants , Tina Fey

Reading Tina Fey's writing is as entertaining as watching the actress on TV, so get ready to turn Bossypants ' pages as quickly as you'd hit the "continue watching" button on Netflix. Fey's autobiography tells her story from nerdy start to wildly successful finish, with a little bit of SNL in between. Plus, her novel's title and core message make an empowering point: "You're no one until someone calls you bossy." Hear that, ladies? (Shop here for $5.41.)

Seriously...I'm Kidding , Ellen DeGeneres

Everybody loves Ellen DeGeneres, and her book is packed with the same witty humor and silly personality the TV star has become known for. Hear anecdotes from the star's past, and flip the book over to read rave reviews about Seriously...I'm Kidding penned by the comedienne herself. "What I'm saying is, let us begin, shall we?" DeGeneres wrote in her book's intro. And seriously, what's holding you back? (Shop here for $10.20.)

In the Country We Love , Diane Guerrero

Orange Is The New Black actress Diane Guerrero has a seriously important story to tell, and she wants you to hear it. Her book, In the Country We Love , details her family's journey with immigration and deportation—painting a vivid picture of a social issue facing many in our country. Guerrero's story is one of strength and resilience in the face of adversity, and it's incredibly captivating. (Shop here for $11.75.)

Happy Accidents , Jane Lynch

Before Jane Lynch was a wildly popular actress known for her roles in Glee and The 40-Year-Old Virgin , she was a little girl from Illinois dreaming of making it in Hollywood. The story sounds familiar, but with Lynch's clever voice and hilarious anecdotes, her path to success was all but stereotypical. Lynch's book is amusing and inspiring—making it quite the page-turner. ** (Shop here for $14.99.) **

Not That Kind of Girl , Lena Dunham

Though Lena Dunham can be a somewhat polarizing figure, Not That Kind of Girl is a charming, unapologetic look at young womanhood. The book is a compilation of Dunham's essays, e-mails, and lists, and tells a coming-of-age story through the awkward, down-to-earth voice the author and actress has become known for. (Shop here for $17.72.)

Wildflower , Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore takes a more heartfelt, less humorous approach to telling her story with Wildflower . The book is fun and insightful, and it traces Barrymore's journey to the point of fulfillment she's reached today. Emotional and heartwarming, Wildflower is the perfect read for anyone craving a happy ending. (Shop here for $9.52.)

If You Ask Me , Betty White

No celeb autobiography list would be complete without a nod to Betty White—the queen of all queens. White's If You Ask Me paints a hilariously unglamorous look at the world of Hollywood through the eyes of someone who knows it better than most. Plus, who doesn't want to read about Betty White's frank opinions on the world? (Shop here for $9.28.)

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? , Mindy Kaling

Touted as one of the best recent celeb releases, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? is a beautiful and hilarious look at Mindy Kaling's transformation from obedient "chubster" child to acclaimed comedic writer and actress. Part journey to success story and part collection of humorous thoughts on the world, Kaling's book is everything you'd expect it to be, which is—in a word—magic. (Shop here for $8.05.)

My Horizontal Life , Chelsea Handler

Most people aren't brave or honest enough to pen an anthology of their one-night stands, but Chelsea Handler isn't most people. Her 2013 book, My Horizontal Life , leads the reader on a journey through wild nights out that end in equally exciting bouts of passion—over and over and over again. Handler's voice is classically blunt and humorous, leaving the reader constantly entertained. (Shop here for $6.05.)

Yes Please , Amy Poehler

Amy Poehler is phenomenal, and Yes Please is another example of the actress proving just how awesome she is. Filled with tales of doing cocaine and treating careers like bad boyfriends, Yes Please is the smart, hilarious read only Poehler could've written. Get ready to get to know the Parks and Recreation actress a whoooole lot better. (Shop here for $7.78.)

Scrappy Little Nobody , Anna Kendrick

Another upcoming release, Anna Kendrick's Scrappy Little Nobody is sure to be a hit. Kendrick's silly sense of humor makes pretty much anything she does fun and adorable, and we're excited to see what anecdotes Scrappy Little Nobody holds. (Pre-shop here for $16.06.)

Get ready to hit the bookstore and dive into these serious page-turners. And let us know which ones are your favorites!

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Photo Credit: Jocelyn Runice

SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.

Literary Devices

Literary devices, terms, and elements, definition of biography.

A biography is a description of a real person’s life, including factual details as well as stories from the person’s life. Biographies usually include information about the subject’s personality and motivations, and other kinds of intimate details excluded in a general overview or profile of a person’s life. The vast majority of biography examples are written about people who are or were famous, such as politicians, actors, athletes, and so on. However, some biographies can be written about people who lived incredible lives, but were not necessarily well-known. A biography can be labelled “authorized” if the person being written about, or his or her family members, have given permission for a certain author to write the biography.

The word biography comes from the Greek words bios , meaning “life” and – graphia , meaning “writing.”

Difference Between Biography and Autobiography

A biography is a description of a life that is not the author’s own, while an autobiography is the description of a writer’s own life. There can be some gray area, however, in the definition of biography when a ghostwriter is employed. A ghostwriter is an author who helps in the creation of a book, either collaborating with someone else or doing all of the writing him- or herself. Some famous people ask for the help of a ghostwriter to create their own autobiographies if they are not particularly gifted at writing but want the story to sound like it’s coming from their own mouths. In the case of a ghostwritten autobiography, the writer is not actually writing about his or her own life, but has enough input from the subject to create a work that is very close to the person’s experience.

Common Examples of Biography

The genre of biography is so popular that there is even a cable network originally devoted to telling the stories of famous people’s lives (fittingly called The Biography Channel). The stories proved to be such good television that other networks caught on, such as VH1 producing biographies under the series name “Behind the Music.” Some examples of written biographies have become famous in their own right, such as the following books:

• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (made even more famous by the musical “Hamilton,” created by Lin-Manuel Miranda)
• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
• Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson

Significance of Biography in Literature

The genre of biography developed out of other forms of historical nonfiction, choosing to focus on one specific person’s experience rather than all important players. There are examples of biography all the way back to 44 B.C. when Roman biographer Cornelius Nepos wrote Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae (“Lives of those capable of commanding”). The Greek historian Plutarch was also famous for his biographies, creating a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans in his book Parallel Lives . After the printing press was created, one of the first “bestsellers” was the 1550 famous biography Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari. Biography then got very popular in the 18th century with James Boswell’s 1791 publication of The Life of Samuel Johnson . Biography continues to be one of the best selling genres in literature, and has led to a number of literary prizes specifically for this form.

Examples of Biography in Literature

And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn’t care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He’s still going to make these hikes, he’d insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you’re saying that their lives matter less than some others’, and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world.

( Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder)

Tracy Kidder’s wonderful example of biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains , brought the work of Dr. Paul Farmer to a wider audience. Dr. Farmer cofounded the organization Partners in Health (PIH) in 1987 to provide free treatment to patients in Haiti; the organization later created similar projects in countries such as Russia, Peru, and Rwanda. Dr. Farmer was not necessarily a famous man before Tracy Kidder’s biography was published, though he was well-regarded in his own field. The biography describes Farmer’s work as well as some of his personal life.

On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness”, having marked several passages that moved him: “He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others…” Then, on July 3, he shouldered his backpack and began the twenty-mile hike to the improved road. Two days later, halfway there, he arrived in heavy rain at the beaver ponds that blocked access to the west bank of the Teklanika River. In April they’d been frozen over and hadn’t presented an obstacle. Now he must have been alarmed to find a three-acre lake covering the trail.

( Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer)

Jon Krakauer is a writer and outdoorsman famous for many nonfiction books, including his own experience in a mountaineering disaster on Mount Everest in 1996. His book Into the Wild is a nonfiction biography of a young boy, Christopher McCandless who chose to donate all of his money and go into the wilderness in the American West. McCandless starved to death in Denali National Park in 1992. The biography delved into the facts surrounding McCandless’s death, as well as incorporating some of Krakauer’s own experience.

A commanding woman versed in politics, diplomacy, and governance; fluent in nine languages; silver-tongued and charismatic, Cleopatra nonetheless seems the joint creation of Roman propagandists and Hollywood directors.

( Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff)

Stacy Schiff wrote a new biography of Cleopatra in 2010 in order to divide fact from fiction, and go back to the amazing and intriguing personality of the woman herself. The biography was very well received for being both scrupulously referenced as well as highly literary and imaginative.

Confident that he was clever, resourceful, and bold enough to escape any predicament, [Louie] was almost incapable of discouragement. When history carried him into war, this resilient optimism would define him.

( Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand)

Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling biography Unbroken covers the life of Louis “Louie” Zamperini, who lived through almost unbelievable circumstances, including running in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, being shot down as a bomber in WWII, surviving in a raft in the ocean for 47 days, and then surviving Japanese prisoner of war camps. Zamperini’s life story is one of those narratives that is “stranger than fiction” and Hillenbrand brings the drama brilliantly to the reader.

I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, and he started talking about God. He [Jobs] said, “ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50/50, maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more, maybe it’s because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated, somehow it lives on.”

( Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson)

Steve Jobs is one of the most famous cultural icons of modern-day America and, indeed, around the world, and thus his biography was eagerly awaited. The author, Walter Isaacson, was able to interview Jobs extensively during the writing process. Thus, the above excerpt is possible where the writer is a character in the story himself, asking Jobs about his views on life and philosophy of the world.

Test Your Knowledge of Biography

1. Which of the following statements is the best biography definition? A. A retelling of one small moment from another person’s life. B. A novel which details one specific character’s full life. C. A description of a real person’s entire life, written by someone else.

2. Which of the following scenarios qualifies as a biography? A. A famous person contracts a ghostwriter to create an autobiography. B. A famous author writes the true and incredible life story of a little known person. C. A writer creates a book detailing the most important moments in her own life.

3. Which of the following statements is true? A. Biographies are one of the best selling genres in contemporary literature. B. Biographies are always written about famous people. C. Biographies were first written in the 18th century.

22 Famous Scientists Who Changed How We View the World (and the Universe)

From medicine to physics and astronomy, these scholars have saved lives and improved our understanding across all aspects of the natural world.

Whether it’s a medicine that has saved countless lives or an equation that helped propel the evolution of energy and technology, these breakthroughs arose from the scientific method of observation and experimentation.

Here are 22 of the most famous scientists from the 15 th century to today and how their crucial contributions in many fields of study still impact us.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Astronomer and mathematician 1473-1543

For centuries, people incorrectly believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Copernicus theorized otherwise, with the belief that the size and speed of a planet’s orbit depended on its distance from the centralized sun.

Rather than a breakthrough, however, Copernicus’ hypotheses were met with controversy as they deviated from the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. The church even outright banned his research collection, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres , in 1616 long after the German scientist’s death.

Galileo Galilei

Physicist and astronomer 1564-1642

Galileo changed how we literally see the world by taking early telescopes and improving their design. The Italian scientist made lenses capable of magnifying objects twenty-fold .

When Galileo used his tools to look toward the heavens, he discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons, now named in his honor , and stars far off in the Milky Way not visible to the human eye. His findings built the foundation for modern astronomy.

Learn More About Galileo Galilei

Robert Hooke

Astronomer, physicist, and biologist 1635-1703

Englishman Hooke coined the term “cell,” now known as the basic structural unit of all organisms, in his 1665 book Micrographia after observing the cell walls in slices of cork tissue. But his studies weren’t limited to biology. He is famous for Hooke’s Law, which states that the force required to compress or extend a spring is proportional to the distance of compression or extension. He also helped redesign London buildings destroyed by the city’s “Great Fire” in 1666.

Learn More About Robert Hooke

Sir Isaac Newton

Physicist and mathematician 1643-1727

You probably know about Newton’s three laws of motion, including that objects will remain at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon. But did you also know his theory of gravity allowed the Englishman to calculate the mass of each planet and Earth’s ocean tides? Although Albert Einstein would later improve on some of his theories, Newton remains one of the most important minds in history.

Fun fact: Newton’s mother tried to pull him out of school at age 12 to become a farmer. Seems like a good thing that plan fell through.

Learn More About Isaac Newton

Charles Darwin

Biologist 1809-1882

Growing up in Great Britain, Darwin was raised in a Christian family and held creationist beliefs. That’s not what you’d expect from the man whose landmark 1859 book On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection provided a detailed description of the theory of evolution. In his writings, he outlined his natural selection concept, in which species that evolve and adapt to their environment thrive while the others perish.

Learn More About Charles Darwin

Ada Lovelace

Mathematician and computer scientist 1815-1852

A computer scientist in the 1800s? Yes—Lovelace’s notes and instructions on mentor Charles Babbage ’s “analytical engine” are considered a breakthrough on the path to modern computers. For example, the London-born Lovelace first theorized a process now called looping, in which computer programs repeat a series of instructions until a desired outcome is reached.

Although her contributions weren’t recognized until the 20 th century, her legacy was forever cemented in 1980 when the U.S. Department of Defense named the new computer language Ada in her honor.

Learn More About Ada Lovelace

Gregor Mendel

Geneticist 1822-1884

Mendel, from Austria, became an Augustinian monk and an educator, instead of taking over his family’s farm as his father wished. His growing skills did pay off, as Mendel used pea plants to study the transmission of hereditary traits. His findings that traits were either dominant or recessive and passed on independently of one another became the foundation for modern genetic studies.

Learn More About Gregor Mendel

Louis Pasteur

Chemist and microbiologist 1822-1895

Pasteur used his observations of microorganisms to suggest hygienic methods we take for granted today, like sterilizing linens, dressings, and surgical instruments. The process of treating food items with heat to kill pathogens—known as pasteurization—also bears his name.

However, the French scientist is arguably most renowned for his efforts in creating vaccines for diseases such as cholera, smallpox, anthrax, and rabies. He worked on the rabies vaccine despite suffering from a severe brain stroke in 1868.

Learn More About Louis Pasteur

Sigmund Freud

Psychologist 1856-1939

Although his research initially focused on neurobiology, Freud—who was born in what is now the Czech Republic but grew up in Austria—became known for his psychoanalytic theory that past traumatic experiences caused neuroses in patients. He also proposed the ideas of the id, ego, and superego as the three foundations of human personality and that dreams were a method of coping with conflicts rooted in the subconscious.

Learn More About Sigmund Freud

Nikola Tesla

Physicist and mathematician 1856-1943

Chances are you’re reading this in a lit room. If so, you have the Croatia-born Tesla to thank. He designed the alternative current, or AC, electric system, which remains the primary method of electricity used throughout the world (rival Thomas Edison created a direct current system).

Additionally, his patented Tesla coil used in radio transmission antennas helped build the foundation for wireless technology. The scientist also helped pioneer remote and radar technology.

Learn More About Nikola Tesla

George Washington Carver

Botanist and agricultural scientist Circa 1864-1943

Washington Carver is best known for his work with the peanut plant. Born into slavery , the Missouri native developed more than 300 uses for it —including shaving cream, shampoo, plastics, and of course, recipes for foods like bread and candies. But he also looked out for farmers by teaching them livestock care and cultivation techniques. Washington Carver built fruitful friendships with major figures like automaker Henry Ford , whom he worked with to create a soybean-based alternative to rubber and an experimental lightweight car body.

Learn More About George Washington Carver

Marie Curie

Physicist and chemist 1867-1934

Curie, originally from modern-day Poland, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize —in physics—and also became the first person to win two Nobel prizes .

The scientist, with the help of husband Pierre Curie , discovered radioactivity and the elements polonium and radium. She also championed the use of portable X-ray machines on the battlefields of World War I. Curie died from aplastic anemia, likely caused by her exposure to radiation.

Learn More About Marie Curie

Albert Einstein

Physicist 1879-1955

In addition to his frizzy hair and reported distaste for wearing socks, Einstein became famous for his theory of relativity , suggesting that space and time are intertwined . And, of course, the famous equation E=MC², which showed that even the tiniest particles can produce large amounts of energy.

The German scientist was also a champion for civil rights , once calling racism a “disease.” He joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the 1940s.

Learn More About Albert Einstein

Physicist 1885-1962

Bohr studied and played soccer at Denmark’s University of Copenhagen before embarking to England to work with J.J. Thomson , who discovered the electron. Bohr proposed an entirely different model of the atom, in which electrons can jump between energy levels. This helped pave the way for quantum mechanics.

Bohr was also a key contributor to the Manhattan Project, in which the United States developed an atomic bomb during World War II. Bohr worked with project director J. Robert Oppenheimer , the subject of the 2023 biopic Oppenheimer .

Learn More About Niels Bohr

Rachel Carson

Biologist 1907-1964

Carson penned the famous book Silent Spring in 1962. The American scientist’s research on the adverse effects of DDT and other pesticides in nature is credited with beginning the modern environmental movement . Soon after the book’s release, the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970, and the use of DDT was banned by 1972. Carson, who died of breast cancer, posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

Learn More About Rachel Carson

Alan Turing

Computer scientist and mathematician 1912-1954

A skilled cryptanalyst, Turing helped decipher coded messages from the German military during World War II. The British mathematician is also considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, with his Turing Test purported to measure a machine’s ability to exhibit behaviors comparable to human beings.

Turing’s life and efforts during the war were the basis for the 2014 movie The Imitation Game , starring Benedict Cumberbatch .

Learn More About Alan Turing

Gertrude B. Elion

Biochemist and pharmacologist 1918-1999

Elion, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988, developed 45 patents in medicine throughout her remarkable career. Hired by Burroughs-Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) in 1944, the American soon went on to develop a drug, 6-MP, to combat leukemia. In 1977, she and her team created the antiviral drug acyclovir that debunked the idea that any drug capable of killing a virus would be too toxic for humans. It’s used to treat herpes, chickenpox, and shingles.

Learn More About Gertrude B. Elion

Katherine Johnson

Mathematician 1918-2020

Each of NASA’s early milestones—from sending an astronaut, Alan Shepard , to space for the first time in 1961, to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew landing on the moon eight years later—were all possible because of Johnson. The West Virginia native helped perform the mathematical calculations necessary to determine their correct flight paths .

In a show of gratitude, NASA named a building at its Langley Research Center in Virginia after Johnson in 2017. Her inspiring true story was told in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures , with Taraji P. Henson playing her on the big screen.

Learn More About Katherine Johnson

Rosalind Franklin

Chemist and biophysicist 1920-1958

Franklin began working at King’s College London in 1951 and used X-ray diffraction techniques to find that human DNA had two forms: a dry “A” form and wet “B” form. However, Franklin’s discovery was overlooked after a colleague leaked her findings to scientists Francis Crick and James Watson . That pair went on to create the double helix model for DNA structure. Franklin died from ovarian cancer at age 37.

Learn More About Rosalind Franklin

Jane Goodall

Primatologist 1934-present

Goodall’s extensive study of chimpanzees has helped us understand how similar humans are to our evolutionary relatives. After arriving in Tanzania in 1960, the British scientist discovered chimps create and use tools, develop complex language and social systems, and aren’t exclusively vegetarian as once believed.

Once she understood chimpanzees, Goodall turned her efforts to preserving their habitats and preventing unethical treatment of the animals in scientific experiments.

Learn More About Jane Goodall

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

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• Homework Tips
• Learning Styles & Skills
• Study Methods
• Time Management
• Private School
• College Admissions
• College Life
• Graduate School
• Business School
• Distance Learning
• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
• B.A., History, Armstrong State University

Are you looking for an interesting person to write about? You'll find that the more you are intrigued or inspired by your subject, the more time you'll give to this assignment.

This list may inspire you. Try to find a biography subject you enjoy reading about!

• Albert Einstein (scientist)
• Alexander Fleming (scientist)
• Alexander Graham Bell (inventor)
• Alexander the Great (leader)
• Amelia Earhart (aviation)
• Anne Frank (Holocaust)
• Benjamin Franklin (Founding Father)
• Betty Ford (inspirational)
• Carl Sagan (scientist)
• Charles Lindbergh (aviation)
• Clarence Birdseye (inventor)
• Eli Whitney (inventor)
• Elie Wiesel (Holocaust)
• Frank Lloyd Wright (architect)
• George Eastman (inventor)
• George Washington Carver (agricultural chemist)
• Henry Ford (industrialist)
• Isaac Newton (scientist)
• Jacques Cousteau (explorer)
• Jane Goodall (anthropologist)
• Johann Gutenberg (inventor)
• John Deere (inventor)
• John F. Kennedy (political leader)
• John James Audubon (nature)
• Jonas Salk (scientist, inventor)
• Karl Benz (inventor)
• Leonardo da Vinc i (scientist and artist)
• Lewis Braille (inventor)
• Margaret Mead (anthropologist)
• Marie Curie (physicist and chemist)
• Martin Luther King, Jr. (civil rights)
• Medgar Evers (civil rights)
• Mohandas Gandhi (political leader)
• Mother Teresa (Nobel Prize winner)
• Nelson Mandel a (political leader)
• Patrick Henry (Founding Father)
• Rachel Carson (conservationist)
• Robert Goddard (physicist and inventor)
• Rosa Parks (civil rights)
• Samuel Morse (inventor)
• Sandra Day O'Connor (political leader)
• Stephen Hawking (scientist)
• Susan B. Anthony (famous women)
• Thomas Edison (inventor)
• W.E.B. Dubois (civil rights)
• Wright Brothers (inventors)
• Winston Churchill (political leader)
• 100 Famous Women of the 20th Century
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• Biography of Samuel F.B. Morse, Inventor of the Telegraph
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• 18 Classic Poems of the Christmas Season
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• Biography of Pierre Curie, Influential French Physicist, Chemist, Nobel Laureate
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Stories About People (Biographies) Text & MP3 Files

Activists & people important to social reform.

• Betty Friedan - Women's Rights
• Cesar Chavez - Labor Activist
• Frederick Douglass - African-Americans's Rights
• Jane Jacobs - Activist, Writer, Moral Thinker And Economist
• Labor Leaders: Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, A. Philip Randolph, and Cesar Chavez
• Margaret Sanger - Led the Fight for Birth Control for Women
• Martin Luther King, Jr. - Part 1 - African-Americans's Rights
• Martin Luther King, Jr. - Part 2
• Molly Brown
• Rosa Parks - - African-Americans's Rights
• Samuel Gompers - 'The Grand Old Man of Labor'
• Susan B. Anthony - Women's Rights
• W.E.B. Du Bois - African-Americans's Rights
• Note: Many people listed in other categories were also activists.
• Andy Warhol - The Father of Pop Art
• Diane Arbus - Photographer
• Edward Hopper - Painter
• Edward Weston - Photographer
• George Catlin - Part 1 - Painter
• George Catlin - Part-2 - Painter
• Georgia O'Keefe - Painter
• Isabella Stewart Gardner - Art Collector and Cultural Supporter
• Jackson Pollock - Painter
• Mary Cassatt - Painter
• Nam June Paik - Video Artist
• Robert Rauschenberg
• Winslow Homer - Painter

Athletes (People Who Do Sports)

• Arthur Ashe - Tennis
• Babe Ruth - Baseball
• Bob Feller - Baseball
• Jackie Robinson - Baseball
• Jesse Owens - Runner
• John Wooden - Basketball
• Kay Yow and Betty Jameson - Founders Of Women's Sports Organizations
• Lou Gehrig - Baseball
• Roberto Clemente - Baseball
• Wilma Rudolph - The First American Woman to Win Three Gold Medals in One Olympics

Business & Industry

• Henry Ford - Part 1 - Automobiles / Cars
• Henry Ford - Part 2
• Katharine Graham - Owner and Publisher of The Washington Post
• Madam C.J. Walker - Hair-Care Products
• Mary Kay Ash - Cosmetics
• Milton Hershey - Candy Company
• Ray Kroc - McDonald's.
• William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper Business

Entertainers

• Annie Oakley - Sharp Shooter
• Billy Wilder - Movie Director
• Bob Hope - Comedian
• Charlton Heston - Actor
• Cliff Robertson - Actor, Writer, Producer and Director
• Eartha Kitt - Singer and Actress
• Edward R. Murrow - Radio and TV Broadcaster
• Elizabeth Taylor - Actress
• Fred Astaire - Dancer and Actor
• Gene Kelly - Dancer and Actor
• George Abbott - "Mr. Broadway"
• Harry Houdini - Magician
• Hollywood: Cecil B. DeMille, Samuel Goldwyn and Louis Mayer
• Jack Benny - Comedian
• James Stewart - Actor
• Jessica Tandy - Actress
• Katharine Hepburn - Actress
• Lucille Ball - Actress and Comedian
• Mae West - Actress
• Marilyn Monroe - Actress
• Marlon Brando - Actor
• Martha Graham - The Mother of Modern Dance
• The Marx Brothers - Actors and Comedians
• Milton Berle - Actor
• Patricia Neal - Actress
• Paul Newman - Actor
• Sydney Pollack - Movie Director And Producer
• Walt Disney
• Willis Conover - VOA Radio Program on Jazz
• Kennedy Center Honors of 2009 - Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro, Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, and Bruce Springsteen
• Kennedy Center Honors of 2008 - Barbra Streisand, Morgan Freeman, George Jones, Twyla Tharp, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey
• Kennedy Center Honors of 2007 - Brian Wilson, Steve Martin, Leon Fleisher, Martin Scorsese, and Diana Ross
• Clara Barton - Started the American Red Cross
• Doctor Spock - Baby and Child Care
• Elizabeth Blackwell - Doctor
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver - Creator of the Special Olympics
• Six Medical Research Heroes - Jesse William Lazear, Clara Maass, Joseph Goldberger, Matthew Lukwiya, Carlo Urbani and Anita Roberts

Inventors, Designers, Developers, Explorers, ...

• Buckminster Fuller
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• George Ballas - Inventor of the Weed Eater
• James Rouse - A Developer of Shopping Malls and a Planned City
• Louis Kahn - Building Designer
• Philo Farnsworth - The Father of Television (4:00)
• Radio Pioneers - Guglielmo Marconi, Lee De Forest, Edwin Armstrong, David Sarnoff, William S. Paley, Edward R. Murrow & William Shirer
• Steve Fossett - Adventurer
• Thomas Edison
• The Wright Brothers
• Six Building Desingers - Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster and Eduardo Souta de Moura.

Journalists

• Margaret Bourke-White-1 - Photojournalist
• Margaret Bourke-White-2
• Carl Rowan - Reporter
• Henry Loomis - VOA Special English
• Ida Tarbell - Reporter
• Jacob Riis - Reporter
• Nellie Bly - Reporter
• Walter Cronkite - Reporter
• Aaron Copland - Composer
• Bess Lomax Hawes - Folk Musician (4:00)
• Billie Holiday
• Beverly Sills
• Burl Ives - Actor, Singer Recorded Hundreds of Songs
• Irving Berlin
• The Carter Family
• Celia Cruz - Salsa
• Charlie Parker - Jazz
• Cole Porter- Part 1
• Cole Porter- Part 2
• Duke Ellington- Part 1
• Duke Ellington- Part 2
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Elvis Presley
• George Gershwin - Part 1 - Composer
• George Gershwin - Part 2 - Composer
• Hank Williams - Country
• Isaac Stern - Violinist
• Itzhak Perlman - Violinist
• James Brown - Soul Music
• Janis Joplin
• Jerome Kern - The Father of American Musical Theater
• John Coltrane - Jazz Saxophonist
• John Lewis - Jazz Pianist / MJQ
• Johnny Cash - Country
• Julia Ward Howe - Wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
• Lena Horne - Singer and Actress
• Leonard Bernstein
• Les Paul - Guitarist
• Louis Armstrong - Jazz
• Maria Callas - Opera Singer
• Marian Anderson - Part 1 - Singer
• Marian Anderson - Part 2
• Michael Jackson
• Nina Simone
• Patsy Cline - Country Singer
• Paul Robeson - Singer And International Political Activist
• Ray Charles - Part 1
• Ray Charles - Part 2
• Richard Rodgers - Composer
• Roger Miller - Singer-Songwriter
• Sam Cooke - Singer-Songwriter
• Scott Joplin - Ragtime Composer
• Shirley Horn - Jazz
• Stephen Foster - Songwriter
• Todd Duncan - Broke a Major Color Barrier for Black Singers of Classical Music
• Woody Guthrie - Part 1 - Singer-Songwriter
• Woody Guthrie - Part 2

Native Americans / American Indians

• Crazy Horse - A leader of the Lakota Indians
• Pocahontas - The First Native-American to Marry a White Person
• It is highly likely that there are other native Americans listed in other categories.
• Doc Holliday - A Famous Gunfighter
• Frank and Jesse James - Famous Outlaw Brothers
• Gunfighters - Part 1 Luke Short, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and William Matthew Tilghman
• Gunfighters - Part 2 James Miller and John Slaughter
• Alan Shepard - The First American to Travel into Space
• Amelia Earhart - The First Woman to Fly Alone Across the Atlantic
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Pilot & Writer
• Bessie Coleman
• Charles Lindbergh - The First Person to Fly Alone Across the Atlantic
• Jackie Cochran - Set Many Speed, Distance and Altitude Records
• Jimmy Doolittle
• Wiley Post - The First Pilot to Circle the World Alone
• Aviation Hall of Fame Members Harriet Quimby, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Neil Armstrong, Edwin Link, John Montgomery, Giuseppe Bellanca, Charles E. Taylor, Calbraith Rodgers and Jacqueline Cochran

Politicians

• Barbara Jordan
• Bella Abzug
• Davy Crockett - Hunter, Fighter, Storyteller and Elected Official
• Edward Kennedy
• Eleanor Roosevelt - Wife of a President
• Eugene McCarthy
• Franklin Roosevelt
• Lady Bird Johnson - Wife of a President
• Ronald Reagan
• Sam Houston - Part 1 - An Early Leader of Texas
• Sam Houston - Part 2
• Shirley Chisholm - The First Black Woman Elected to Congress
• Albert Einstein
• Barbara McClintock
• Charles Darwin
• Dian Fossey - Studied Gorillas
• Edward Teller - 'Father of the Hydrogen Bomb'
• Edwin Hubble - Astronomer
• Isaac Newton - One of the World's Greatest Scientists
• Margaret Mead - Anthropologist
• Norman Borlaug - Agricultural Scientist
• Oppenheimer and Fermi - Two Developers of the First Atomic Bomb
• Percival Lowell (Planet Pluto)
• Rachel Carson - Environmental Protection Movement
• Sigmund Freud - Psychiatrist

Teachers and Educators

• John Dewey (4:00)
• Mary Lyon - A Leader in Women's Education
• Stanley Kaplan - A Test Prep Pioneer (4:00)
• Jaime Escalante - A Math Teacher (4:00)
• Ann Landers - Advice Columns
• Arthur Miller - Playwright
• Barbara Cooney - Children's Books
• Charles Schulz - "Peanuts" Comic Strip
• Clare Booth Luce - News Reporter, Magazine Editor, Member of Congress and Ambassador
• Doctor Seuss - Children's Books
• Dorothy West
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Edith Wharton
• Emily Dickinson - Poet
• Ernest Hemingway - Part 1
• Ernest Hemingway - Part 2
• F. Scott Fitzgerald - Part 1
• F. Scott Fitzgerald - Part 2
• Flannery O'Connor
• Gwendolyn Brooks - Poet
• Helen Keller - Part 1
• Helen Keller - Part 2
• James Baldwin
• John Kenneth Galbraith - Economist, Liberal Thinker, Author, Professor, Presidential Advisor And Ambassador
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Langston Hughes - Part 1 - Poet
• Langston Hughes - Part 2
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Louisa May Alcott - Children's Books
• Lucille Clifton - Poet
• Maurice Sendak
• Pearl S. Buck
• Phillis Wheatley - Early African-American Poet
• Ralph Ellison
• Ralph Waldo Emerson - Philosopher and Writer
• Robert Frost - Part 1 - Poet
• Robert Frost - Part 2
• Shel Silverstein - Poet, Writer, Composer, Singer, Musician and Artist
• Stephen Vincent Benet - Part 1 - Popular Writer of the Early 1900s
• Stephen Vincent Benet - Part 2
• Susan Sontag
• Truman Capote
• Walt Whitman - Poet
• Willa Cather
• William Faulkner - Part 1
• William Faulkner - Part 2
• William Shakespeare - Part 1
• William Shakespeare - Part 2
• Zora Neale Hurston

Year-end Special Programs

• Some People Who Died in 2010 Elizabeth Edwards, Paul Miller, Dorothy Kamenshek, Leslie Nielsen, Louise Bourgeois & Jerry Bock
• Some People Who Died in 2009 John Updike, Frank McCourt, Farrah Fawcet, John Hope Franklin, Abe Pollin & Mary Travers
• Some People Who Died in 2008 David Foster Wallace, Odetta, Irvine Robbins, Cyd Charisse & George Carlin
• Some People Who Died in 2007 Brooke Astor, Evel Knievel, Leona Helmsley & Max Roach
• Some People Who Died in 2006 Robert Altma, Ann Richards, R.W. Apple, William Styron & Ruth Brown
• Some People Who Died in 2005 Johnny Carson, Gladys Tantaquidgeon, John H. Johnson, Anne Bancroft & Shelby Foote
• Some People Who Died in 2004 Christopher Reeve, Julia Child, Mattie Stepanek, Estee Lauder & Robert Merrill

More People

• Brigham Young - A leader of the Mormons
• Douglas MacArthur - Military Leader
• Johnny Appleseed - He Planted Many Apple Trees
• Joshua Abraham Norton - He Declared Himself Emperor of the USA
• Red Adair - Famous for Putting Out Dangerous Oil Well Fires
• Robert Edison Fulton - Rode Around the World on a Motorcycle
• Thurgood Marshall - The First African American to Serve on the US Supreme Court

More Than One Person, Groups of People, ...

• The Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
• Shadow Wolves - They Track Smugglers

More People - Four-Minute Programs

• Earl Cooley - One of the First Smokejumpers
• Joseph Juran - A Leader in Quality Control
• Michael DeBakey - A Heart Surgeon
• Peter Drucker - A Management Expert

More People - Excerpts

• Women Spies: Virginia Hall, Harriet Tubman, Josephine Baker and Julia Child (8:12)

Only the Text, No MP3 Files

• zz-Artie Shaw- No MP3 File
• zz-Nat King Cole - No MP3 File
• These are good for people studying English because it is possible to read along while listening.
• These are in VOA's Special English .
• These will print very cleanly (without printing the MP3 player and menu.)
• "All text, audio and video material produced exclusively by the Voice of America is public domain. However, some images and graphics are licensed for use and covered by all applicable copyright laws. "
• Though the source material was in the public domain, I have done some editing . If you need the public domain version of any of these stories, please visit http://voanews.com/specialenglish/ .

Other VOA Material on This Web Site

• Voice of America Special English Study

This page is part of Interesting Things for ESL Students .

Copyright © 1997-2015 by Charles Kelly

20 Short Bio Examples to Use for Inspiration

• By Carla Deña
• No Comments

Are you looking for short biography examples to inspire you as you create your own? You’ve come to the right place! In this article, we’ll count down 20 short bio examples that make an impact and introduce the person the best way possible. Let these pieces guide you as you write a bio that highlights your best skills and achievements and makes a great first impression. 

Short Professional Bio 101

But before we look at short bio examples, let’s review the basics of creating a bio. Typically, bios are used for websites, social media accounts, or other professional documents. Similarly, it’s also typically a part of writing a resume or writing a pitch .

If you’re planning to Google “sample of biography about myself” and copy and paste the first template you find, then you’re doing it wrong. This document should be unique and personal. In the same vein, you must also customize it according to a purpose. So, it’s vital to avoid generic sample professional bio templates at all cost.

Most of the time, short biographies are best suited for websites. Just as with website copywriting and creating any other document for online consumption, readers best absorb a website bio if it’s short and sweet. 

Generally, a short bio is limited to three to five short paragraphs or even less, if possible. One type of short biographies is called a micro-bio, which only includes up to three sentences. Social media accounts typically use micro-bios.

20 Short Bio Examples 

Here are creative, short bio examples we found on the website and social media accounts. The list is divided into three sections: professional, creative, and funny.

Short Professional Bio Examples 

1. mitch albom.

This bio from the website of best-selling author, journalist, and broadcaster, Mitch Albom, is the first of our short creative bio examples. Even if the bio is relatively short, it tells the readers just how impressive Albom is in his field.

2. Padma Lakshmi

The Top Chef host’s bio is four paragraphs long. Out of all the many hats she wears, however, the piece describes her as a “food expert, model, actress and best-selling author.” In the same vein, it showcases her most important awards in the first few sentences.

3. Gabby Bernstein

The life coach and author’s About page features a short intro: “Meet Gabby, #1 New York Times Best Selling Author, International Speaker, and Spirit Junkie.” Below is a longer piece about Gabby and her journey to where she is now.

4. Massy Arias

The Certified Personal Trainer’s bio is exactly only 51 words long. Consequently, she complements this short bio with another section that explains her mission to lead people to a healthier lifestyle.

5. Paula McLain

McLain’s bio showcases her New York Times bestselling novels right from the start, namely The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun. In the same way, it mentions her latest novel, Love and Ruin, subtly implying that it could also be a bestseller.

6. Tara Stiles

The New York City-based model turned yoga instructor has a short bio that summarizes her expertise in wellness practices. It also mentions the Strala Yoga founder’s bestselling book.

7. James Patterson

Readers know this American author for several novel series, as mentioned in the first few sentences of his bio. Aside from that, it also highlights his collaborations with former US President Bill Clinton and the Albert Einstein Estate.

8. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge

This piece from the British Royal website shows how to write a concise bio without losing an ounce of elegance. The piece states when Duchess became a member of the Royal Family as well as the children she gave birth to, including the future king of the monarchy. Sections about his advocacies follow the bio.

9. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

Similar to the bio of Duchess Catherine, Meghan’s bio on the Royal website mentions the year she became part of the monarchy. It also states her date of birth and the name of her parents. The short bio precedes sections about her education, career and charities.

10. Dan Brown

Dan Brown’s may be brief, but it’s far from being short on achievements. Not only does it mention his bestselling novels, but it also states his background, including how he became fascinated by science and religion.

11. Adriene Mishler

If you think you can’t create a great bio with less than 70 words, then check out this piece about Adriene Mishler. The bio highlights the yoga teacher’s achievements and the vastness of her community. 

12. Mark Ruffalo

The actor’s Twitter micro-bio summarizes his most important roles in life: husband, father, actor, director, and a climate change advocate.

Creative Bio Examples

13. tim ferriss.

The author podcaster’s About page is creative and unique. He offers a short version of 110 words. And right below it is the “long-winded version” with details about his career, education, and experience.

14. Katie Wells (Wellness Mama)

Katie Wells is the blogger behind Wellness Mama, which aims to provide answers for healthier families. The lines in the bio include, “Katie Wells… wants to live in a world where laundry folds itself, moms get to wear the superhero costumes they’ve already earned…”

15. Lindsay (Pinch of Yum)

Lindsay of Pinch of Yum has a creative bio even if the word count is limited to 28. Furthermore, she made the bio personal by mentioning her favorite things: “camera, lake days, and dark chocolate.”

16. Ali (Gimme Some Oven)

Ali of Gimme Some Oven features a short, 25-word bio that starts with “My favorite thing in life is time spent around the table.” Indeed, the line aptly summarizes what the blog is all about.

17. Bobby Flay

If most celebrity chefs’ bios offer a boring enumeration of the restaurants they’ve handled, then Bobby Flay’s bio was made to stand out. The first line is quite warm and personal: “Food is the epicenter of my life – what inspires me every day.”

Funny Personal Bio Examples

18. trevor noah.

The bio of the South African comedian is as funny as his commentaries. The description says, “I was in the crowd when Rafiki held Simba over the edge of the cliff, like an African Michael Jackson.”

19. Ellen DeGeneres

Similarly, this TV host’s Twitter bio also banks on humor. She introduces herself as, “Comedian, talk show host and ice road trucker. My tweets are real, and they’re spectacular.”

20. Thomas Frank (College Info Geek)

Indeed, funny biographies don’t only grace the description sections of Twitter accounts. In particular, Thomas Frank of College Info Geek does a great job at this. Instead of putting a generic intro heading such as “About” or “Bio,” he used the headline, “Just Who The Heck Are You, Dude?” 

Whether you go for a professional, creative, or funny bio, make sure that it reflects who you are and what you have to offer. Keep these in mind when you write short bio examples yourself. Remember, the goal is to create a piece that will make a good impression and allow you to put your best foot forward. Good luck!

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