Ten American Biographies Everyone Should Read

Human Events Online ^ | 11-14-03 | Human Events

[freekitty]

Good list.

[WOSG]

Great list. I especially like the inclusion of Grant's autobiography, even though I've read only portions of it. Reading good biographies is one of the best ways to enjoy reading while gainin insight into character and our history. It's the aerobics of the mind!

There is a list of books that Morton Blackwell suggests every conservative should read:

http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/04RESOURCES/RTLlist.htm

Heritage Conservative Reading List also has great suggestions:

http://www.heritage.org/about/community/insider/reading_list.html

Also check my own Freeper homepage, at the bottom a list of books and thinkers that shaped my thinking:
http://www.freerepublic.com/~wosg/

[Alberta's Child]

I would add When Hell Was In Session by Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton to that list, for a superb perspective on the Vietnam War from a former POW who later pursued a career in politics long before John McCain made it "fashionable."

[SJSAMPLE]

I'm reading "Theodore Rex" by Edmund Morris, right now.
It's his second book on Teddy, this time focusing on his years in the White House. A great lesson about the man and early 20th century US history.

[eno_]

The Heritage Foundation list is good, and I have read several of those books. But Bennet's Book of Virtues is a pretty lame collection that is overbearingly didactic.

Add Plutarch's Lives Suetonius's Thirteen Caesars and Churchill, and you have what every American child should read before the end of 11th grade. I wish I had, and my kids will.And for fun I'll throw in The Prince, and Machiavelli's much less well know but vastly more entertaining Belphagor - so they know the travails of a husband.

[MoralSense]

I found Morison's "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" superb, and read it twice. By comparison, I found "Theodore Rex" dull, as though Morison had lost his touch.

One question about the list: No autobio of Benjamin Franklin? That's surely one of the classics.

[Bosco]

I'll add "Stonewall Jackson" by Robertson to the list.

[shekkian]

I liked "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again" by Jimmy Doolittle.

[ruoflaw]

Thanks for the list

[stevem]

I was glad to see Grant made the list. His memoirs were by far the best memoirs I ever read. It read like a fine novel, and had humor interspersed throughout...a dry humor that Grant was known for.

[carpio]

Thank you. I may make this next summer's reading list.

[Verginius Rufus]

Suetonius' Thirteen Caesars? I have a copy of Suetonius, but mine has only twelve Caesars. Which one am I missing? Sid Caesar? Caesar Rodney?

[VOA]

Albert Beveridge, the biographer of Marshall, called The Life of George Washington
"to this day the fullest and most trustworthy treatment of that period from the conservative
point of view."

That does sound like a good one.

I can also recommend Flexners "Washington, The Indispensible Man", which I think
is an abridgement of a multi-volume work as well.

[Theodore R.]

Despite the excellence of Grant's memoirs (he could write), the book was a financial flop. It caused Mark Twain's publishing house to go bankrupt. Twain then went on a worldwide lecture tour to pay off his creditors. He insisted on keeping a commitment to Mrs. Grant though he was losing money on her royalties. Grant finished his memoirs, then died shortly afterwards of cancer.

Twain was offered 50 cents on the dollar by his creditors, but he insisted on paying all he owed -- hence his worldwide speaking tour. That's the tour where the London reporter asked Twain how he could still be living when there were reports that Twain had died. "Just say that reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," said Twain, who did much of his writing from his Hartford home.

[eno_]

Jeez and there I was happy to have spelled Seutonius corectly without getting up to go to the bookshelf.

[Pharmboy]

Douglas Southall Freeman (author of the Lee bio) is also the author of a 7 volume bio of General Washington.

[VOA]

Thanks for the tip on the Freeman treatment of Geo. Washington.
Some day I'll have time to read. I hope!

[zip]

ping

[billbears]

10. Abraham Lincoln Title: A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War Author: Harry V. Jaffa

Imaginary union before the states bump. With this list, what to do after only reading two off the whole list (Adams and Lee)? Hamilton, Grant, and two about lincoln? Heck I'm sure someone wrote a book about Clay as well. Why is that one not on there? Might as well be. Sheesh!!