The Plutarch Award Longlist for 2019
Here are the nominees for the 2019 Plutarch Award, honoring the best biography published in 2018, listed in alphabetical order by author:
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- Craig Brown’s Ninety-nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret was just one of the books discussed in this panel.
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- AFTER EMILY: TWO REMARKABLE WOMEN AND THE LEGACY OF AMERICA’S GREATEST POET by Julie Dobrow, (W. W. Norton) A public scandal, a bitter lawsuit, and a decades-long dispute over the tiny hand-sewn books of poetry discovered in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom at the time of her death propel Julie Dobrow’s narrative of an ambitious mother-daughter pair whose work shaped American literary history. Dobrow’s impressive scholarship, crystal-clear prose, and insistence on the value of lives on the edge of history’s spotlight make this a uniquely memorable and instructive biography.
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- IN EXTREMIS: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE WAR CORRESPONDENT MARIE COLVIN by Lindsey Hilsum, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) How much risk is too much? Or, as Marie Colvin herself asked, where does bravery end and bravado begin? These questions hover in the background and then come to the fore in Lindsay Hilsum’s account of the daring and driven war correspondent, one of far too many journalists killed in the line of duty in recent years. Colvin’s diaries and the judicious use of excerpts from her vivid news stories make this book a riveting journey.
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- INSEPARABLE: THE ORIGINAL SIAMESE TWINS AND THEIR RENDEZVOUS WITH AMERICAN HISTORY by Yunte Huang, (Liveright) A master class in literary, cultural and historical contextualization, Inseparable draws the reader into the life of a divided and conformist mid-nineteenth century America. Yunte Huang’s dazzling account of the lives of Siamese twins Eng and Chang explores our ongoing struggle with “normality” and “the other” in society.
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- THE IMPROBABLE WENDELL WILKIE: THE BUSINESSMAN WHO SAVED THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AND CONCEIVED A NEW WORLD ORDER by David Levering Lewis, (Liveright) An imaginative biography of the Republican presidential nominee of 1940, Wendell Wilkie, written with eloquence and flair. David Levering Lewis makes a subtle yet profound argument that Wilkie offered an expansive and even progressive view of free market capitalism, anticipated globalism, and delivered prescient criticism of the imperial presidency, inspiring us to re-examine the New Deal and Second World War eras with fresh eyes.
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- THE MORALIST: WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD HE MADE by Patricia O’Toole, (Simon & Schuster) A stirring and ultimately tragic account of the arrogant idealist who entered the White House a popular reformer and left office defeated and isolated, his vision of a new world order undermined by his own stubbornness. At once damning and sympathetic, Patricia O’Toole’s psychologically astute narrative locates Wilson in an America whose political realities are not so different from our own, and offers an indelible portrait of a president whose legacy is still urgently debated.
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- CHURCHILL: WALKING WITH DESTINY by Andrew Roberts, (Viking) A magnificent and carefully nuanced life and times of Winston Churchill, elegantly written, studded with new research, and deeply imagined. Andrew Roberts accomplishes a minor miracle in offering a fresh, empathetic portrait in an authoritative and fast-paced narrative that never flags. Roberts explores Winston Churchill’s strengths and weaknesses as a leader, his self-centeredness and his generosity, allowing us to feel both Churchill’s personal vulnerabilities as well as his force as a public figure.
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- ANTHONY POWELL: DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF TIME by Hilary Spurling, (Alfred A. Knopf) Anthony Powell was a novelist best known for his cycle A Dance to the Music of Time, which in its twelve volumes traced the fortunes of England’s upper and middle classes from the 1920s to 1971, applying the scope of Proust to the world of Evelyn Waugh. In this biography, Hilary Spurling writes with impressive objectivity from a close personal perspective, elegantly and adroitly balancing literary criticism with social and intellectual history, and evoking her subject and his associates–friends, lovers, and enemies–so vividly that they rise from the page.
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- THE NEW NEGRO: THE LIFE OF ALAIN LOCKE by Jeffrey C. Stewart, (Oxford University Press) A magisterial, meticulously detailed biography of one of American Modernism’s most fascinating figures. Jeffrey C. Stewart opens a new world of inquiry into black intellectual history with this panoramic account of the godfather of the Harlem Renaissance and the global travails of New Negroes from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War.
Commended Books
In a year when an abundance of fine biographies went to press, the 2019 Plutarch Award Jury would also like to honor the following eight works:
An American Odyssey: The Life and Work of Romare Bearden by Mary Schmidt Campbell, Oxford University Press
Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster by Stephen L. Carter, Henry Holt
Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery, Little, Brown
De Gaulle by Julian Jackson, Harvard University Press
American Eden: David Hosack, Botany and Medicine in the Garden of the New Republic by Victoria Johnson, Liveright
The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century by Mark Lamster, Little, Brown
I Am Dynamite: A Life of Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux, Tim Duggan Books
Reagan: An American Journey by Bob Spitz, Penguin Press
2019 Plutarch Jury members:
Megan Marshall, chair; Peniel E. Joseph, Susan Quinn, Will Swift, Amanda Vaill