Archive for the ‘Biography’ Category

By Steven Watts University of Missouri Press, First Paperback Printing, 2001 Click to Buy this Book! In the Introduction of this 526-page biography of Walter Elias Disney (1904–1966), Steven Watts, Chairman of the History Department at the University of Missouri-Columbia, describes some of the challenges involved in the immense undertaking of this project: the sheer […]

Sunday, August 19th, 2012 at 00:01 | 1 comment
Categories: Biography, Reviews

By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York, 2005 Click to Buy this Book! In the Author’s Note and Acknowledgments section, Martin Sherwin informs the reader that this biography was 25 years in the making. The work began in 1979 with a visit to the “Oppenheimer Ranch” […]

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012 at 00:01 | Comments Off on American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Categories: Biography, Reviews

By William Sheehan Published by Cambridge University Press, 1995, 2007 Click to Buy this Book! This 429-page biography of Edward Emerson Barnard (1857–1923), an astronomer who is best known for his discovery of Jupiter’s fifth satellite, now named Amalthea, and “Barnard’s Star,” was published in its paperback edition in 2007 and, with its new preface, […]

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 at 00:01 | 2 comments
Categories: Biography, Reviews

by Saul Bellow Published by Penguin Books; First Printing edition (April 26, 2001) Click to Buy this Book!   I don’t think that “Ravelstein” is really about Ravelstein — whoever he’s supposed to be in real life, some say Alan Bloom, but this doesn’t interest me much. The real antagonist of “Ravelstein” is Chick, Ravelstein’s […]

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012 at 00:01 | Comments Off on Ravelstein
Categories: Biography, Reviews

By John Kroger. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008. Click to Buy this book!   This absorbing 466-page book by former federal prosecutor John Kroger (Assistant United States Attorney, or AUSA) includes a Prologue, Four Parts with 19 chapters, an Epilogue, Sources, and Acknowledgements. The Parts are titled Rookie, Mafia Prosecutor, The […]

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 at 00:02 | Comments Off on Convictions: A Prosecutor’s Battles Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves
Categories: Biography, Reviews