Gottlieb to Receive Inaugural BIO Editorial Excellence Award

November 9th, 2014

Robert Gottlieb will receive the BIO Editorial Excellence Award…

…from his long-time associate Robert Caro

On December 3, BIO will present its first Editorial Excellence Award to Robert Gottlieb. The award honors an editor who has made outstanding contributions to the field of biography. A former editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster and Knopf, Gottlieb has edited countless best-selling novels as well as modern classics of the biographer’s craft.

Robert Caro, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the many writers who has benefited from Gottlieb’s skills, will present the award and offer a tribute. The two men first worked together on Caro’s The Power Broker, about New York City’s “master builder,” Robert Moses. The book earned Caro his first Pulitzer, and 40 years after its publication, it is a staple of college reading lists for courses on city planning and journalism.

Editing that classic work was not always easy for the two men. Caro told TBC, “I have a bad temper, and although Bob denies it, so does he. While we were editing The Power Broker, one or the other of us was always jumping up and stalking out of the room to cool off. Now he, of course, had the tactical advantage over me because when we were working at Knopf, he, as president of the company, could leave and go to somebody’s else office and transact some business, but I had no place to go except the bathroom. I went to the bathroom a lot, as I recall.”

Despite that sometimes-contentious start, Caro and Gottlieb have continued their relationship as Caro chronicles the life of Lyndon Johnson in a multi-volume biography (he is currently working on the fifth and concluding book). Gottlieb told BIO member Kate Buford that before he got a first draft of The Power Broker, “I had no interest whatsoever in Robert Moses—until I started reading. By the time I’d read the first chapter, I had a consuming interest—in him and in Caro.” (You can read the complete interview, first published in TBC in April 2014, here).

For his part, Caro praises Gottlieb for going beyond considering only what might be newsworthy, as many editors do. Caro said, “I have always believed that for a biography—for any non-fiction work—to endure, the level of its prose has to be just as high as the level of the prose in a novel that endures. The writing is what matters. And with Gottlieb, I found an editor who was interested in that, too. When we’re working together, what matters—and it is all that matters—is what is on the page in front of us.”

Gottlieb, in an interview with The Paris Review, offered a humble of appraisal of what he does: “Editing is simply the application of the common sense of any good reader.”

Attendees of the December 3 award ceremony can expect to hear many more insights on both the editor’s and the biographer’s craft from these two respected figures. The event will be 6-8 p.m. at the New York Society Library, 53 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075. Tickets are $45 and include drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Space is limited, so reserve early here.

Rich Variety of Biographies Highlight Fall Season

September 9th, 2014

By James McGrath Morris
From the twerks of Miley Cyrus to the typography of Giambattista Bodoni, from the humor of Bill Cosby to the antics of Charlie Chaplin, from the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower to the rule of Joseph Stalin, the more than 100 biographies coming to bookstores this fall run the gamut of possibilities. While biography, like other segments of publishing, is navigating rough waters, writers keep producing a remarkably rich selection of works.

As TBC does twice a year, here is a discursive look at what is coming. A complete list is available here.

The first books to resonate with readers this fall are two September titles: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War, by Karen Abbott (Harper) and Tennessee Williams: Made Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr (Norton). Also getting some notice is The Poet and the Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature’s Greatest Monsters by Andrew McConnell Stott (Pegasus). One of the cast members of this prosopography is Mary Shelley, who will be the subject of Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon, coming out in February (Random House).

As usual, as the fall gets underway, political figures will be featured in a large share of the biographies. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns have put together The Roosevelts: An Intimate History as a tie-in to the seven-part documentary airing on PBS this fall, which follows the Roosevelts for more than a century, from Theodore’s birth in 1858 to Eleanor’s death in 1962. Continue Reading…

Fall 2014 Biographies

September 4th, 2014

The following list of biographies appearing between September 2014 and February 2015 was assembled using Edelweiss, a web-based interactive publisher catalog system widely used in the book industry. If we missed a title, please let us know at editortbc@biographersinternational.org

September

Life in the Writings of Storm Jameson: A Biography by Elizabeth Maslen (Northwestern University Press)

American Gandhi: A. J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century by Leilah Danielson (University of Pennsylvania Press)

Grace Kelly by Pierre-Henri Verlhac (Pavillion)

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott (Harper)

Siegfried Sassoon by John Stuart Roberts (John Blake)

Benedict Cumberbatch: The Biography by Justin Lewis (John Blake)

Blessed Assurance: The Life and Art of Horton Foote by Marion Castleberry (Mercer University Press)

La Belle Créole: The Cuban Countess Who Captivated Havana, Madrid, and Paris by Alina García-Lapuerta (Chicago Review Press)

Benedict Cumberbatch: The Biography by Nigel Goodall (Carlton Publishing Group)

David: The Divided Heart by David Wolpe (Yale University Press)

Leonard Bernstein: An American Musician by Allen Shawn (Yale University Press)

Brigitte Bardot: The Life, the Legend, the Movies by Ginette Vincendeau (Carlton Books)

 Adolf Hitler: Evolution of a Dictator by Luciano Garibaldi, Simonetta Garibald (White Star Publishers)

America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation by Grant Wacker (Belknap Press)

Cosby: His Life and Times by Mark Whitaker (Simon & Schuster)

Prince Harry: Brother, Soldier, Son by Penny Junor (Grand Central Publishing)

My Father, My President: A Personal Account of the Life of George H. W. Bush

by Doro Bush Koch (Grand Central Publishing)

A Cool and Lonely Courage: The Untold Story of Sister Spies in Occupied France by Susan Ottaway (Little, Brown and Company)

Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians by Justin Martin (Da Capo Press)

Bowie: The Biography by Wendy Leigh (Gallery Books)

Georgie and Elsa: Jorge Luis Borges and His Wife: The Untold Story by Norman Di Giovanni (The Friday Project)

The Roosevelts: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (Knopf)

Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangneth and  Ruth Martin (Knopf)

The Poet and the Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature’s Greatest Monsters

by Andrew McConnell Stott (Pegasus)

Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick (Random House)

Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz (Gotham)

The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News by Sheila Weller (Penguin)

Eisenhower: A Life by Paul Johnson (Viking)

Wilfred Owen: An Illustrated Life by Janet Potter (Bodleian Library)

Robert Morris’s Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder by Ryan K. Smith (Yale University Press)

The Daring Heart of David Livingstone: Exile, African Slavery, and the Publicity Stunt That Saved Millions by Jay Milbrandt (Thomas Nelson)

Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (Henry Holt)

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr (Norton)

How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair by Jonathan Beckman (Da Capo Press)

Not the Life It Seems: The True Lives of My Chemical Romance by Tom Bryant (Da Capo Press)

Croswell Bowen: A Writer’s Life, a Daughter’s Portrait by Betsy Connor Bowen (Potomac Books)
October

The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered by Laura Auricchio (Knopf)

Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography by Meryle Secrest (Knopf)

Alice and Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis by Alexis Coe (Pulp/Zest Books)

Charlie Chaplin: A Brief Life by Peter Ackroyd (Nan A. Talese)

Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kirstin Downey (Nan A. Talese)

Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen of the Middle Ages by Desmond Seward (Pegasus)

Goebbels: A Biography by Peter Longerich and Alan Bance (Random House)

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller by Richard Norton Smith (Random House)

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story by Rick Bragg (Harper)

Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity by David M. Friedman (Norton)

Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts by Robert M. Dowling (Yale University)

Limonov: The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia by Emmanuel Carrère and John Lambert (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice by Joan Biskupic (Sarah Crichton Books)

William Wells Brown: An African American Life by Ezra Greenspan (Norton)

John Marshall: The Chief Justice Who Saved the Nation by Harlow Giles Unger (Da Capo Press)

November

41: A Portrait of My Father by George W. Bush (Crown)

The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved by Christopher Andersen (Thorndike)

Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music by Barry Mazor (Chicago Review Press)

Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel by Anita Shapira (Yale University Press)

Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love by James Booth (Bloomsbury)

Making Sense of Marshall Ledbetter: Politics, Protest, and Madness in the Florida Capitol by Daniel M. Harrison (University Press of Florida)

The Political Career of W. Kerr Scott: The Squire from Haw River by Julian Pleasants

(University Press of Kentucky)

Rex Ingram: Visionary Director of the Silent Screen by Ruth Barton (University Press of Kentucky)

Free Trade’s First Missionary: Sir John Bowring in Europe and Asia by Philip Bowring (Hong Kong University Press)

Clausewitz: His Life and Work by Donald Stoker (Oxford University Press)

Max Starkloff and the Fight for Disability Rights by Charles E. Claggett Jr., and Richard H. Weiss (Missouri History Museum Press)

Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee by James Gavin (Atria)

Hope: Entertainer of the Century by Richard Zoglin (Simon & Shcuster)

Dispatches from the Front: The Life of Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War by David Halton (McClelland & Stewart)

Havel: A Life by Michael Zantovsky (Grove Press)

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts (Viking)

Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin (Penguin)

Grace: A Biography by Thilo Wydra (Skyhorse)

“Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions by Ian S. MacNiven (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope by Austen Ivereigh (Holt)

An American Cardinal: The Biography of Cardinal Timothy Dolan by Christina Boyle (St. Martin’s Press)

Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man by Marcus Baram (St. Martin’s Press)

Into the Black: The Inside Story of Metallica, 1991-2014 by Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood (Da Capo Press)

American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War “Belle of the North” and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal by John Oller (Da Capo Press)

December

No Ordinary Being: W. Starling Burgess (1878-1947), a Biography by Llewellyn Howland III  (David R. Godine)

She Can’t Stop: Miley Cyrus: The Biography by Sarah Oliver (John Blake)

To Make a Difference: A Biography of James T. McAfee, Jr. by Scott Walker (Mercer University Press)

Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance by Brent Phillips (University Press of Kentucky)

Ezra Pound: Poet: Volume II: The Epic Years by David Moody (Oxford)

Mayakovsky : A Biography by Bengt Jangfeldt and Harry D. Watson (University of Chicago Press)

Colonel House: A Biography of Woodrow Wilson’s Silent Partner by Charles E. Neu (Oxford)

Bulgakov: His Life And Work by Ellendea Proffer  (Overlook)

Becoming Richard Pryor by Scott Saul (Harper)

Hitler’s Warrior: The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper by Danny S. Parker (Da Capo Press)

January

Wolsey: The Life of King Henry VIII’s Cardinal by John Matusiak (History Press)

George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration by Carlos Kevin Blanton (Yale University Press)

Huck Finn’s America: Mark Twain and His Moment by Andrew Levy (Simon & Schuster)

Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant by Tracy Borman

(Atlantic Monthly Press)

Dalton Trumbo:  Blacklisted Hollywood Radical by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo (University Press of Kentucky)

The Last Stalinist: The Life of Santiago Carrillo by Paul Preston (William Collins)

A Man of Good Hope by Jonny Steinberg (Knopf)

The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink by Pamela Katz (Nan A. Talese)

Lives of the New York Intellectuals: A Group Portrait by Edward Mendelson (New York Review of Books)

 The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security by Bartholomew Sparrow (Public Affairs)

The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin (Palgrave)

Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged by William C. Davis (Da Capo Press)

February

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

Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy by Frank Close (Basic Books)

Gods and Kings:  The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano by Dana Thomas (Penguin)

Robbie Deans:  Red, Black and Gold by Matt McIlraith (Upstart Press)

Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World by Valerie Lester (David R. Godine)

Stranger than Fiction: The Life of Edgar Wallace, the Man Who Created King Kong by Neil Clark (History Press)

The Contender:  Andrew Cuomo, a Biography by Michael Shnayerson (Twelve)

Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli: A Strange Romance by Daisy Hay (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Eleanor Marx:  A Life by Rachel Holmes (Bloomsbury)

Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press by James McGrath Morris (Amistad/HarperCollins)

Waiting for the Man: The Life and Career of Lou Reed by Jeremy Reed (Overlook)

Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America by David O. Stewart (Simon & Schuster)

The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years by Joseph A. Califano (Touchstone)

General Jacob Devers: World War II’s Forgotten Four Star by John A. Adams (Indiana University Press)

Sex, Lies, and (No) Audiotape

September 1st, 2014

It’s rare when biographies and biographers make the front page of a national magazine — in this case it’s the September 5, 2014 issue of Newsweek. But don’t rush to celebrate just yet.  In a lengthy piece for the magazine, reporter David Cay Johnson  debunks the work of celebrity biographer C. David Heymann — author of juicy tell-alls on Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Liz Taylor, to name a few — finding that much of Heymann’s research turned out to be vapor trails.  It’s a cautionary tale of a “serial fabulist” and definitely worth a read.

Gottlieb Celebration

August 11th, 2014

To reserve your place at the Robert Gottlieb Celebration from 6:00-8:00 PM, Wednesday, December 3, 2014, at the New York Society Library, 53 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075, purchase a ticket by clicking on the button below.

Picture of a Life: Philip Short Explores the Biographer’s Craft

July 11th, 2014

As a newspaper journalist and BBC correspondent, Short reported from Moscow, China, and Washington D.C.

More than four decades ago, while working as a freelance journalist in Malawi, Philip Short received a letter from Penguin: Would he be interested in writing a biography of Malawian president Hastings Banda, for the publisher’s series Political Giants of the 20th Century? Short readily agreed, adding now, “I suspect they had no idea that I was then 23 years old!”

Continue Reading…

The Best Book May Not Win: Winner and Losers at Awards Time

July 11th, 2014

Continue Reading…

Leavell’s Marianne Moore Wins Second Annual Plutarch

June 15th, 2014

Linda Leavell’s Holding on Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) won the Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2013. The winner and the three finalists were revealed at a ceremony held at the closing of the fifth annual Compleat Biographer conference at UMass Boston on May 17.

Plutarch Award winner Linda Leavell poses with Barbara Lehman Smith, who served on the Plutarch Nomination Committee.

“I’m truly humbled by this award, and I’m also humbled by my company here, the fellow nominees,” Leavell said after Plutarch Nominating Committee member Vanda Krefft opened the sealed envelope that contained the name of the winner. Leavell was a charter member of BIO and attended the first conference, which was also held at UMass Boston five years ago. “It was amazing to me, as I was writing a biography in Oklahoma and Arkansas, to have the opportunity to be with other biographers and meet people and talk about the things that I was doing and the things that they were doing, so I’m very grateful to this organization.”

Named after the Ancient Greek biographer, the prize is the genre’s equivalent of the Oscar, in that Biographers International Organization (BIO) members chose the winner by secret ballot from nominees selected by a committee of distinguished members of the craft.

The finalists for the 2013 Plutarch Award were:

• Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (Knopf)
• Brian Jay Jones, Jim Henson: The Biography (Ballantine Books)
• Ray Monk, Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center (Random House)

This is the second year the Plutarch has been awarded. In 2013, the award was bestowed on Robert Caro for his The Passage of Power. 

A surprised and touched “Founding Father” receives his awards. To Morris’s left is BIO president Brian Jay Jones. To his right are BIO board member Barbara Burkhardt and Will Swift.

Prior to the Plutarch ceremonies, Board member Will Swift presented retiring President James McGrath Morris with the unique “Founding Father Award” for his role in “creating, supporting, and inspiring Biographers International Organization.” BIO’s Secretary Barbara Burkhardt followed by giving Morris a beautiful bound book of tributes from members of BIO.

The award and book were both a surprise to Morris, who gave a moist-eyed thank you to the crowd.Morris said, “I might have had the founding idea, but BIO is you and belongs to you.”  He is said to be currently hiding in Santa Fe, writing thank you notes.