Library Research Guides: What Should I Read? (Reader's Advisory): Biographies/Memoirs

Your Librarian

Contact:

Interim Director of Library Services
Office: (810) 989-5794
Library: (810) 989-5640
Text: (810) 515-7343

Overview

A biography is defined as a "reconstruction in print or on film, of the lives of real men and women. Together with autobiography—an individual's interpretation of his own life—it shares a venerable tradition, meeting the demands of different audiences through the ages."

A memoir is defined as "history or narrative composed from or stressing personal experience and acquaintance with the events, scenes, or persons described."

Text: "biography." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Paul Lagasse, and Columbia University, Columbia University Press, 7th edition, 2017. Credo Reference, http://sc4.idm.oclc.org/login?qurl=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/columency/biography/0?institutionId=5065. Accessed 28 Mar 2018.

""memoir." Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, Merriam-Webster, 1995. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A148921113/AONE?u=lom_stclaircocc&sid=AONE&xid=faa400ee. Accessed 28 Mar. 2018.

Biography/Memoir E-Books

To download or read these e-books, you will be prompted to enter your Portal Username and Password.

Please contact the library if you are having trouble.

Brief Lives: Sigmund Freud by David Carter Born to Jewish parents in mid-19th-century Austria, Sigmund Freud is a controversial figure needing no introduction, yet his reputation owes as much to myth as to the facts of his life and his work. Here, David Carter uncovers the man buried beneath the mythology, tracing the life of this inimitable figure from his origins as the gifted first born of eight children, through his stellar academic career and his relationships and rifts with famous figures such as Josef Breuer. Also explored is why, despite his groundbreaking work on psychoanalytic theories--including the functioning of the subconscious, the repression of trauma, and the psychological import of dreams--Freud has frequently been the subject of derision and ridicule.
ISBN: 9781843919223
Publication Date: 2011
The Child Who Never Grew by Pearl S. Buck A "groundbreaking" memoir about raising a special-needs daughter in an era of misinformation and prejudice--a classic that helped transform our perceptions (Publishers Weekly). It was my child who taught me to understand so clearly that all people are equal in their humanity and that all have the same human rights. Pearl S. Buck is known today for earning a Nobel Prize in Literature and for such New York Times-bestselling novels as The Good Earth. What many do not know is that she wrote that great work of art with the motivation of paying for a special school for her oldest daughter, Carol, who had a rare developmental disorder. What was called "mental retardation" at the time--though some used crueler terms--was a disability that could cause great suffering and break a parent's heart. There was little awareness of how to deal with such children, and as a result some were simply hidden away, considered a source of shame and stigma, while others were taken advantage of because of their innocence. In this remarkable account, which helped bring the issue to light, Pearl S. Buck candidly discusses her own experience as a mother, from her struggle to accept Carol's diagnosis to her determination to give her child as full and happy a life as possible, including a top-quality education designed around her needs and abilities. Both heartrending and inspiring, The Child Who Never Grew provides perspective on just how much progress has been made in recent decades, while also offering common sense and timeless wisdom for the challenges still faced by those who love and care for someone with special needs. It is a clear-eyed and compelling read by a woman renowned for both her literary talent and her humanitarian spirit. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author's estate.
ISBN: 9781453263594
Publication Date: 2012
The Door of Last Resort: Memoirs of a Nurse Practitioner by Frances Ward Having spent decades in urban clinical practice while working simultaneously as an academic administrator, teacher, and writer, Frances Ward is especially well equipped to analyze the American health care system. In this memoir, she explores the practice of nurse practitioners through her experiences in Newark and Camden, New Jersey, and in north Philadelphia. Ward views nurse practitioners as important providers of primary health care (including the prevention of and attention to the root causes of ill health) in independent practice and as equal members of professional teams of physicians, registered nurses, and other health care personnel. She describes the education of nurse practitioners, their scope of practice, their abilities to prescribe medications and diagnostic tests, and their overall management of patients' acute and chronic illnesses. Also explored are the battles that nurse practitioners have waged to win the right to practice--battles with physicians, health insurance companies, and even other nurses. The Door of Last Resort, though informed by Ward's experiences, is not a traditional memoir. Rather, it explores issues in primary health care delivery to poor, urban populations from the perspective of nurse practitioners and is intended to be their voice. In doing so, it investigates the factors affecting health care delivery in the United States that have remained obscure throughout the current national debate
ISBN: 9780813560533
Publication Date: 2013
Galileo: Watcher of the Skies by David Wootton A provocative and penetrating new life of Galileo, placing the man, his achievements, and his failures in the broader history of the Scientific Revolution Galileo (1564-1642) is one of the most important and controversial figures in the history of science. A hero of modern science and key to its birth, he was also a deeply divided man: a scholar committed to the establishment of scientific truth yet forced to concede the importance of faith, and a brilliant analyst of the elegantly mathematical workings of nature yet bungling and insensitive with his own family. Tackling Galileo as astronomer, engineer, and author, David Wootton places him at the center of Renaissance culture. He traces Galileo through his early rebellious years; the beginnings of his scientific career constructing a "new physics"; his move to Florence seeking money, status, and greater freedom to attack intellectual orthodoxies; his trial for heresy and narrow escape from torture; and his house arrest and physical (though not intellectual) decline. Wootton reveals much that is new--from Galileo's premature Copernicanism to a previously unrecognized illegitimate daughter--and, controversially, rejects the long-established orthodoxy which holds that Galileo was a good Catholic. Absolutely central to Galileo's significance--and to science more broadly--is the telescope, the potential of which Galileo was the first to grasp. Wootton makes clear that it totally revolutionized and galvanized scientific endeavor to discover new and previously unimagined facts. Drawing extensively on Galileo's voluminous letters, many of which were self-censored and sly, this is an original, arresting, and highly readable biography of a difficult, remarkable Renaissance genius.
ISBN: 9780300197297
Publication Date: 2013
Harriet Tubman: Abolitionist and Conductor of the Underground Railroad by Barbara Krasner "Harriet Tubman has become perhaps the most well-known African American in American history. Readers will learn about how the determined Tubman made her own destiny, using the Underground Railroad to return to the South nineteen times to bring her family and hundreds of others to safety. This lively text describes the intense physical hardships she faced, as well as the constant threat of capture, as she fought for freedom, gave speeches, and worked as a Civil War nurse, cook, and spy."
ISBN: 9781680486599
Publication Date: 2017
J. S. Bach: A Life in Music by Peter Williams Peter Williams approaches afresh the life and music of arguably the most studied of all composers, interpreting both Bach's life by deconstructing his original obituary in the light of more recent information and his music by evaluating his priorities and irrepressible creative energy. How, even though belonging to musical families on both his parents' sides, did he come to possess so bewitching a sense of rhythm and melody and a mastery of harmony that established nothing less than a norm in Western culture? In considering that the works of a composer are his biography, the book's title A Life in Music means both a life spent making music and one revealed in the music as we know it. A distinguished scholar and performer, Williams re-examines Bach's life as an orphan and family man, as an extraordinarily gifted composer and player and as an ambitious artist who never suffered fools gladly.
ISBN: 9780521870740
Publication Date: 2007
James McNeill Whistler by Victoria Charles Whistler suddenly shot to fame like a meteor at a crucial moment in the history of art, a field in which he was a pioneer. Like the impressionists, with whom he sided, he wanted to impose his own ideas. Whistler's work can be divided into four periods. The first may be called a period of research in which he was influenced by the Realism of Gustave Courbet and by Japanese art. Whistler then discovered his own originality in the Nocturnes and the Cremorne Gardens series, thereby coming into conflict with the academics who wanted a work of art to tell a story. When he painted the portrait of his mother, Whistler entitled it Arrangement in Grey and Black and this is symbolic of his aesthetic theories. When painting the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens it was not to depict identifiable figures, as did Renoir in his work on similar themes, but to capture an atmosphere. He loved the mists that hovered over the banks of the Thames, the pale light, and the factory chimneys which at night turned into magical minarets. Night redrew landscapes, effacing the details. This was the period in which he became an adventurer in art; his work, which verged on abstraction, shocked his contemporaries. The third period is dominated by the full-length portraits that brought him his fame. He was able to imbue this traditional genre with his profound originality. He tried to capture part of the souls of his models and placed the characters in their natural habitats. This gave his models a strange presence so that they seem about to walk out of the picture to physically encounter the viewer. By extracting the poetic substance from individuals he created portraits described as "mediums" by his contemporaries, and which were the inspiration for Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Towards the end of his life, the artist began painting landscapes and portraits in the classical tradition, strongly influenced by Velázquez. Whistler proved to be extremely rigorous in ensuring his paintings coincided with his theories. He never hesitated in crossing swords with the most famous art theoreticians of his day. His personality, his outbursts, and his elegance were a perfect focus for curiosity and admiration. He was a close friend of Stéphane Mallarmé, and admired by Marcel Proust, who rendered homage to him in A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. He was also a provocative dandy, a prickly socialite, a demanding artist, and a daring innovator.
ISBN: 9781780423043
Publication Date: 2011
Montage of a Dream: The Art and Life of Langston Hughes by John Edgar Tidwell (Editor); Cheryl R. Ragar (Editor); Arnold Rampersad (Foreword by) Over a forty-six-year career, Langston Hughes experimented with black folk expressive culture, creating an enduring body of extraordinary imaginative and critical writing. Riding the crest of African American creative energy from the Harlem Renaissance to the onset of Black Power, he commanded an artistic prowess that survives in the legacy he bequeathed to a younger generation of writers, including award winners Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, and Amiri Baraka. Montage of a Dream extends and deepens previous scholarship, multiplying the ways in which Hughes's diverse body of writing can be explored. The contributors, including such distinguished scholars as Steven Tracy, Trudier Harris, Juda Bennett, Lorenzo Thomas, and Christopher C. De Santis, carefully reexamine the significance of his work and life for their continuing relevance to American, African American, and diasporic literatures and cultures. Probing anew among Hughes's fiction, biographies, poetry, drama, essays, and other writings, the contributors assert fresh perspectives on the often overlooked "Luani of the Jungles" and Black Magic and offer insightful rereadings of such familiar pieces as "Cora Unashamed," "Slave on the Block," and Not without Laughter. In addition to analyzing specific works, the contributors astutely consider subjects either lightly explored by or unavailable to earlier scholars, including dance, queer studies, black masculinity, and children's literature. Some investigate Hughes's use of religious themes and his passion for the blues as the fabric of black art and life; others ponder more vexing questions such as Hughes's sexuality and his relationship with his mother, as revealed in the letters she sent him in the last decade of her life. Montage of a Dream richly captures the power of one man's art to imagine an America holding fast to its ideals while forging unity out of its cultural diversity. By showing that Langston Hughes continues to speak to the fundamentals of human nature, this comprehensive reconsideration invites a renewed appreciation of Hughes's work--and encourages new readers to discover his enduring relevance as they seek to understand the world in which we all live.
ISBN: 9780826217165
Publication Date: 2007-05-18
The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur by Mark Perry "A dazzling biography." --Boston Globe At times, even his admirers seemed unsure of what to do with General Douglas MacArthur. Imperious, headstrong, and vain, MacArthur matched an undeniable military genius with a massive ego and a rebellious streak that often seemed to destine him for the dustbin of history. Yet despite his flaws, MacArthur is remembered as a brilliant commander whose combined-arms operation in the Pacific--the first in the history of warfare--secured America's triumph in World War II and changed the course of history. In The Most Dangerous Man in America, celebrated historian Mark Perry examines how this paradox of a man overcame personal and professional challenges to lead his countrymen in their darkest hour. As Perry shows, Franklin Roosevelt and a handful of MacArthur's subordinates made this feat possible, taming MacArthur, making him useful, and finally making him victorious. A gripping, authoritative biography of the Pacific Theater's most celebrated and misunderstood commander, The Most Dangerous Man in America reveals the secrets of Douglas MacArthur's success--and the incredible efforts of the men who made it possible.
ISBN: 9780465051687
Publication Date: 2015