best elizabeth taylor biography book

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Your subscription makes our work possible.

We want to bridge divides to reach everyone.

Elizabeth Taylor: 5 best biographies

Much talent, many marriages, and great beauty. such is the legend of elizabeth taylor , who died today at the age of 79. taylor – indisputably one of the great actresses of hollywood's golden era – attracted prodigious amounts of press coverage throughout her lengthy career. here are a handful of the best books that chronicle her life., 1. elizabeth: the life of elizabeth taylor, by alexander walker.

March 23, 2011

• By Monitor staff

For an overall look at the life of Elizabeth Taylor – particularly her early years – this biography by British film critic Alexander Walker makes a good starting point. Walker tackles everything from Taylor's strong-willed mother to her Hollywood triumphs to her many husbands to her drug and alcohol abuse.

Help fund Monitor journalism for $11/ month

Already a subscriber? Login

Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.

Our work isn't possible without your support.

Unlimited digital access $11/month.

Digital subscription includes:

• Unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
• CSMonitor.com archive.
• The Monitor Daily email.
• No advertising.
• Cancel anytime.

Subscription expired

Your subscription to The Christian Science Monitor has expired. You can renew your subscription or continue to use the site without a subscription.

Return to the free version of the site

If you have questions about your account, please contact customer service or call us at 1-617-450-2300 .

This message will appear once per week unless you renew or log out.

Session expired

Your session to The Christian Science Monitor has expired. We logged you out.

No subscription

You don’t have a Christian Science Monitor subscription yet.

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

Six books you need to read about elizabeth taylor.

THR highlights the must-read records--including the two she wrote herself--on the life of the one-time highest paid actress in Hollywood who made international headlines with her torrid affairs.

By Andy Lewis

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

From her iconic onscreen roles, to her infamous offscreen love affairs, Elizabeth Taylor ‘s life provided more than enough material for the book publishing world. The following five tomes–with one on the way–give the best accounts of the legendary screen star’s tumultuous and fascinating life. The life story : Elizabeth by J. Randy Taraborrelli (Grand Central, 2006) The most recent biography, this is a well written and sympathetic account of Taylor’s life from her childhood stardom through her turbulent  marriages to her later AIDS activism. A good starting point to learn about Taylor.  

Elizabeth Taylor’s life in pictures 

The love affair that fascinated the world : Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger (Harper, 2010) No Hollywood romance has ever been so passionate, so turbulent, or so interesting as the one between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  This is one of the best books written about the “romance of the century.”  

PHOTOS: Elizabeth Taylor’s greatest romances

The movie star: How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood by William J. Mann (Houghton Mifflin, 2009) A must read for anyone who wants to understand today’s celebrity culture through a look at its true queen.  It focuses on the heyday of her career when she was the highest paid actress ever, an Oscar winner, and a tabloid sensation for her torrid love affairs.  But the book also steps back to look at the studio system, the tabloid culture of the day, and mid-century America to show how fame became celebrity.    

The Bestseller-in-waiting: Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend: 1932-2011 by David Bret, (Mainstream Publishing) According to UK-based Bookseller magazine, Mainstream Publishing has had this book ready for five years but held off publication until Taylor’s death for fears of being sued over the scandalous details. (Link: In her own words:  Elizabeth Taylor never wrote a real autobiography (a quickie in the 60s was panned as superficial) but she did pen two books later in life, one about dieting an one about jewelry, that show who she was in her own words. Elizabeth Takes Off: On Weight Gain, Weight Loss, Self-Image, and Self-Esteem  by Elizabeth Taylor (Putnam 1988, still available on Amazon) Here Taylor mixed the story of her much publicized weight gain (and subsequent loss) in the 70s and 80s with advice about getting the right mindset for dieting.  She also shares her own workouts, meal plan, and recipes.  A diet book that serves as a fascinating snapshot of a woman at the low ebb of her celebrity. Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair with Jewelry by Elizabeth Taylor (Simon & Schuster, 2002.  Sadly out of print): This is the closest we ever came to an autobiography: 200+ photographs of Taylor’s favorite jewelry interspersed with personal anecdotes about the pieces and what they meant to her‹a diamond necklace from Mike Todd, the Krupp diamond from Richard Burton, a charm bracelet celebrating her children.  A rare and intimate look at Taylor in her own words.

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Johnny depp-directed movie ‘modi’ to premiere at san sebastian film festival, elia suleiman on being a palestinian director in a post-oct. 7 world, thai blockbuster ‘how to make millions before grandma dies’ scores theatrical releases in north america, china and europe, ‘reservoir dogs’ actor michael madsen arrested on domestic violence charge, ‘alien: romulus’ director fede álvarez on that surprise character: “it was unfair that the likeness was never used again”, where to stream summer blockbuster ‘twisters’ online.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Pop Culture Happy Hour

• Performing Arts
• Pop Culture

Books To Help You Remember The Great Elizabeth Taylor

Rachel Syme

Books Featured In This Story

Elizabeth Taylor

Buy featured book.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?

• Independent Bookstores

How to Be a Movie Star

Furious Love

We should have been more prepared for this moment — Elizabeth Taylor had been ill for some time (she even outlived the man who wrote her obituary in the New York Times , which the paper assigned over six years ago). But it is still shocking to lose a woman who, besides being outlandishly gorgeous, was the very template for American celebrity as we understand it today. There will be many ways to grieve this loss — you can cry, you can rage at the moon, you watch some of her best on-screen moments, like her cackling "Angry, Baby" monologue in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf from 1966. Or, if you're like me, you can turn to books.

There have been many books written about Taylor (she even wrote three herself), so I have sifted through them to find the three that I think are most worth reading if you want to remember her talent, beauty, and drive.

1) Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century, by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

This soapy, delicious and highly literary double biography, which came out in hardcover last year (and which I hear is now being rushed to paperback by May), was excerpted for a Vanity Fair cover story along with some of the most striking pictures I have ever seen of the couple at the height of their romance. Kashner and Schoenberger make the convincing argument that to understand the complete Elizabeth Taylor story, one must understand the Taylor-Burton story: the couple never truly fell out of love with each other, and continued to circle around each other like exotic birds until Burton's sudden death in 1984. Taylor kept the last letter that Burton ever gave her by her bedside until her own death, and it is so poignant to read pieces of it now (excerpted from the book) after she has passed: "We are such doomed fools. Unfortunately, we know it. So I have decided that, for a second or two, the precious potential of you in the next room is the only thing in the world worth living for. After your death there shall only be one other and that will be mine. Or I possibly think, vice versa. Ravaged love ... Rich."

Furious Love is the kind of book that you want to read about Taylor right now — it packs in all the glamour of the apex of her career ( Cleopatra, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Virginia Woolf ), and traces the pair from country to country as they became the most famous lovers in the world. They were more than just the original Brangelina — they re-invented the very concept of Hollywood power couple and the way the media absorbed and devoured their every move. I think one of the book's most moving passages describes a poem that Burton had scrawled on the back of an iconic photograph of Taylor running towards him: "She is like the tide, she comes and she goes, she runs to me as in this stupendous photographic image. In my poor and tormented youth, I had always dreamed of this woman. And now when this dream occasionally returns, I extend my arm and she is here... by my side. If you have not met or known her, you have lost much in life."

2) How To Be A Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, by William Mann

Though her later years of activism and Michael Jackson friendship are fascinating, the Taylor that most people want to remember is the young ingenue who took Hollywood by storm and redefined the way stars were born in the 1950s and 60s — and Mann's book covers just that. As Publisher's Weekly wrote of the book when it came out in 2009, "Mann relishes depicting Taylor's larger-than-life appetites, whether for men, jewels or food, and marvels at her ability to arouse and sidestep scandal, as well as to demonstrate continually a singular devotion to her acting craft."

In fact, it was Taylor's devotion to her craft that really made her a movie star as opposed to just a headline, and Mann shows how fastidious she really was about her work. In an interview, Mann said that before he took on his project, he felt that no one had really examined the way that Taylor approached her celebrity status and carefully managed her own image: "Everyone from Madonna to Britney to Miley Cyrus is taking a page from her book," Mann argues, and in his book, he explains why.

3) My Love Affair With Jewelry, by Elizabeth Taylor

If you don't have Elizabeth Taylor's campy, frothy tribute to her bauble collection on your coffee table, you are really missing out. The book has become infamous among Taylor fans for its self-indulgent and rambling tone, and the fact that it is really more about men than it is about jewels. Taylor goes through her sparkly collection piece by piece, explaining the stories behind her earrings and rings and pendants. She includes the Belle Epoque diamond necklace, diamond girandole earrings, and a diamond tiara from her other great love, producer Mike Todd, and, of course, there is the famous 33-carat Krupp Diamond from Burton that made headlines when he gave it to her in 1968.

This is Elizabeth Taylor in her own words — and even though she may be more comfortable talking about her ornaments than herself, reading it gives one a real sense of what was important to her, in love and in life.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes

Elizabeth Taylor gets her first-ever authorized biography: See the cover

The movie star is Earth Mother, and we are all flops.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

No one was better at being a movie star than Elizabeth Taylor .

Rising from child star to respected actress and a key figure in the rise of celebrity culture as audiences lapped up her off-screen romances, Taylor was a star like no other. Her longevity and dedication to philanthropy only furthered that image. Her career spanned from actor to activist and so much in between.

But in spite of all that, Taylor has never been the subject of an authorized biography. Until now.

EW can exclusively debut the cover for Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon by Kate Andersen Brower.

Coming to bookshelves Dec. 6, the biography is the first to tell Taylor's story with the full cooperation of the Trustees of her estate: Barbara Berkowitz, Tim Mendelson, and Quinn Tivey.

"We are proud to announce the first-ever, authorized written biography about Elizabeth," said the estate in a statement. "Because she was the most famous woman in the world, everyone thinks they know her. We can assure you that they don't. Kate Andersen Brower will lean into her journalistic background and curiosity to delight readers and introduce them to an Elizabeth only those closest to her knew."

The biography will tell the story of Taylor's life using rare archival materials, never-before-seen love letters, unpublished photographs, and interviews with many close friends and family who have never spoken about Taylor publicly before. Brower's work will explore Taylor's indelible influence on pop culture and the concept of modern-day celebrity.

"I'm honored to be the first biographer granted access to the private archives of Elizabeth Taylor who is unmatched as the most famous celebrity and influencer of her time," Brower said in a statement. "I hope that reading Elizabeth's own words describing her many loves and losses, and her own revelations about what it takes to survive Hollywood will give the reader insight into who she really was and the nature of global celebrity. Her close friend the actor Colin Farrell said it well when he told me: 'She was honest and raw and brutal and grotesque and feminine and delicate and aggressive and soft and tender and warm and acerbic. She was limitless .'"

Brower, a CNN contributor and author of The Residence, First Women, and Team of Five, brings plenty of biographical experience to bear. "This is a perfect match of author to subject," said HarperCollins VP, Executive Editor Gail Winston in a statement. "A best-selling highly acclaimed author of intriguing biographical subject matter, Kate will bring grace, wonderful writing, empathy and style to a new consideration of this remarkable woman."

The biography is just one of a slew of projects about Taylor's life that the estate has in the works. There's also Elizabeth the First, a podcast about Taylor narrated by Katy Perry coming this fall, and a film, A Special Relationship , starring Rachel Weisz as Taylor.

See the cover to Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of an Icon above.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly 's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Elizabeth Taylor: 11 Roles for the Ages
• Rachel Weisz to play Elizabeth Taylor in AIDS activism-focused biopic
• Read a delicious excerpt from Nora Ephron: A Biography

Elizabeth Taylor's First Authorized Biography: 'She Said Her Entire Life Was a Fight'

Author Kate Andersen Brower had access to 7,358 personal letters, and conducted over 250 interviews, for Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon

The first time author Kate Andersen Brower encountered Elizabeth Taylor , it wasn't in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Cleopatra . It was in the supermarket.

The New York Times bestselling author remembers going to the store with her mother growing up in the '80s, and seeing Taylor's face on tabloids — with ex-husband Larry Fortensky, with Michael Jackson , and often critiqued for her weight. That's how Brower was introduced to the Academy Award winner. And as she reveals in the authorized biography Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon (out Dec. 6 via HarperCollins), she was much more than just those fragments of her life. She was human.

"I had this kind of image of her — the punchline, someone who was out of control," Brower tells PEOPLE of her childhood memories of Taylor, who died in March 2011 at the age of 79.

"Getting to go through her life, to see her inner thoughts and how she was working through things psychologically all the time. And also how empathetic she was to other people, how she struggled being a working mother of four kids, struggled to find true love… I just think there was so much more to her than we could see."

For the biography, which is three years in the making and marks the first-ever authorized story of the icon's life, Brower dives into the "more."

With the go-ahead to explore the family and estate's archives (including 7,358 letters and personal notes) and interviews with 250 of Taylor's closest loved ones and other acquaintances, the author took on the "tremendous responsibility" to document Taylor's life, in her own words, and in the words of those who knew her best.

Brower spoke to notable names like Demi Moore , Carol Burnett, and Colin Farrell for the book, the actress' four children, and even some of Liz's former loves — including George Hamilton, Robert Wagner , and her last surviving husband Senator John Warner, who initially gave Bower the green light to write the book before he died in 2021.

With their help, and the help of Taylor's archives, she was able to tell the story of not just a woman who was an iconic actress, who was struggling with addiction, who was a victim of abuse, or who was a champion for those with AIDS in the '80s — but as someone who considered herself a "full-fledged human being, as she liked to say."

"She said her entire life was a fight," Brower shares. "The resilience is the refusing to be a victim. Her father did beat her up. And he beat her because he felt intimidated that his 12-year-old was making more money [as a child star] than he was. And they had a reconciliation when she was in her 20s. But I mean, the fact that she wouldn't let herself be victimized even though she was on paper, a victim. I think that's terrible that he did that. But she got up again, like she almost died in her 20s when she had pneumonia, and she kept going and going. It was the never giving up."

Addiction is a heavy topic in The Grit & Glamour of an Icon , as Taylor opened up in personal letters about the struggles she faced being addicted to drugs.

At one point, her son Chris told Brower about a specific incident that took place in the '70s, which prompted him to move away. Chris, in the book, recalled how his mother asked him to give her an injection of Demerol in her knee sometime when she put her skirt around her hips and handed him a needle to do it himself.

He couldn't bring himself to do it, Brower says.

"And he walked out of the room and left Washington, DC because she was just so unhappy there," she says. "He said she had this dead behind-the-eyes look on her face handing him the syringe. It's just like 'God, you think she has everything.' But really, there was always a void as she was trying to fill."

In the book, the author makes note of instances of abuse that Taylor suffered at the hands of her loved ones. The actress was married eight times to seven husbands throughout her life, and Brower writes of one moment where Eddie Fisher, Taylor's fourth husband, held a gun to her head in 60s and said "Don't worry, you're too beautiful to kill."

RELATED VIDEO: Kathy Ireland Says Elizabeth Taylor Friendship 'Forever Changed My Life': She 'Became Family'

"She said being married to him was a slow suicide," Brower explains. "So she needed to leave. So she got out of these situations that she was in that were abusive. But I think that the thing about her too, is that she always thought that she was her best when she was married. But if you just look at it, the period of time when she was the most impactful and was when she was single."

Some of the letters Taylor wrote were never even sent, including ones she penned to Richard Burton and close friend Michael Jackson after they died.

As for those who knew Taylor well and are still remembering her legacy today, Brower says the family was happy with the book, after finally being "ready" to tell Taylor's story for the first time.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

"I got a call from her son, Chris, who had read it and said that it was hard for him to read sometimes, but that it brought back all of these memories about his mom," she says.

"But that there were things that he learned in reading it because her life was so big, no one person was there for all of it. She was always surrounded by an entourage of people. But in the long run, the family is happy with it, because they were ready."

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

Related Articles

A starry-eyed Elizabeth Taylor biography misses a golden opportunity

• Copy Link URL Copied!

Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon

By Kate Andersen Brower Harper: 513 pages, $33 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

I love reading biographies. I sink into an overstuffed chair and prepare two bookmarks — one for the main text and one for the source notes at the end — so I can flip back and forth between the two.

This is because a good biography is distinguished by two things: a unique take or thesis that structures the story and endnotes that explain where specific facts or quotes originated. As a critic and author of nonfiction, I confess that I swoon over endnotes. They provide ballast, reassurance and intimacy with the subject, even when the biography itself deserves skepticism. For all the qualms I had about the speculation in Benjamin Moser ’s controversial Susan Sontag biography, I fell in love with his endnotes, some of which exceeded a page in length.

I mention this because when I sat down with Kate Andersen Brower’s “ Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon ,” I expected to read a biography — a book that would offer both argument and documentation. But I was hard pressed to find any organizing principle beyond chronology and bursts of indiscriminate admiration, and what passed for endnotes dismayed me. They did not reference specific pages. Each chapter was noted with a jumble of interviewees and books, but no precise attribution.

Indeed, this 512-page object appears to have been miscategorized. Brower is obviously not Robert Caro . She does excel, however, as a fangirl, which is not terrible. “Elizabeth Taylor” is a rambling commemorative, the sort of tribute album that you get at a memorial service (with a dash of drug use thrown in for plausibility). And this too is not criminal.

I admire Dame Elizabeth — especially her late-in-life AIDS philanthropy — and (full disclosure) I wrote a book that dealt with the feminist themes of many of her iconic roles: In “ National Velvet ,” a movie she starred in at 12, her character challenges gender discrimination in horse racing; her next milestone, “A Place in the Sun,” is an abortion-rights movie; and even “ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ” for which Taylor won an Academy Award, can be read as a second-wave feminist parable. In other words, I’m happy to see her applauded, especially for her roles.

How Paul Newman’s revealing new memoir came out years after his death

“The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man” draws on reams of interview transcripts rediscovered after Paul Newman’s death. Here’s how it came together.

Oct. 16, 2022

And yet I can’t help wondering what might have been. Brower had a huge advantage over Taylor’s many previous biographers: the cooperation of Taylor’s family and access to the documents they guarded. Yet she also faced a challenge (in addition to requiring the estate’s approval) that Taylor’s earlier biographers did not. Young people often have no idea how the mechanism of stardom worked before social media and the internet. To describe Taylor’s “mythic” place in the old Hollywood ecosystem, Brower has to explain how it works.

Brower also faced a structural obstacle in telling Taylor’s life. Once established in the firmament, the star followed different paths at different times. First she was essentially the studio property of MGM, then a free agent earning a record $1 million for starring in “ Cleopatra .” Her later career abounds in twists and contradictions that make the reader alternately cheer and cringe: the pursuit of independence and money; the renunciation of U.S. citizenship to avoid back taxes; the commercials; the husbands; the drugs. In her many guises she is like Caro’s grand subject, Lyndon B. Johnson . But Caro gave each phase in Johnson’s life its own book.

In contrast, Brower tries to shove Taylor’s many identities — child star, substance-abuser, serial marrier, multimillionaire, mistreated political wife, tax exile — into a single volume. This doesn’t work. It leads to flatly descriptive narration ( and-then-and-then-and-then-and-then ) that doesn’t do justice to the extremes in Taylor’s life.

This studied neutrality also lulls readers into skimming, but I advise against that. Brower casually drops bombshells that a more salacious biographer would underscore: For instance, while married to her second husband, Michael Wilding, Taylor had an affair with Frank Sinatra, who impregnated her and forced her to have an abortion.

Elizabeth Taylor dies at 79; legendary actress

March 23, 2011

If there is a big reveal in the book, it is that despite Taylor’s high-profile stays at the Betty Ford Center, she remained addicted to painkillers. Brower also theorizes that Taylor hired Chen Sam, who was by profession a pharmacist, to accompany her as a “publicist” to assist Taylor in getting drugs.

I learned some new things from the book. I knew Taylor’s mother, Sara, was a Christian Scientist. But I did not know how ardent — or apparently effective — her prayers had been. When Taylor was born in 1932, her face was “covered with black fuzz.” Sara prayed and the fur went away. She proceeded to pray through her stage mother years as well, with as much success.

I learned new words, like “grog blossoms,” for the burst blood vessels in a drinker’s face, which enticed Taylor when she first met actor Richard Burton , with whom she would conduct a scandalous affair before marrying him for the first of two times, in 1964.

The glamour and the underbelly of the hippest party house in 1960s L.A.

April 26, 2022

I was worried the book’s dedication to Sen. John Warner, Taylor’s seventh husband, might preclude an accurate portrait of their marriage. But Brower exposes his cruelty. After Taylor gains weight, Warner calls her his “little heifer.” He also discredits her impulsive offer in 1977 to trade places with Jewish hostages held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, suggesting her “judgment” was way off.

Although the book’s star-flecked cover is as sparkly as the jewels Taylor collected, it leaves the reader feeling sad. In part, this has to do with its painful revelations, especially from Chris Wilding, Taylor’s son, whom Brower credits with the gift of access and cooperation. Wilding shows us what it means to be harassed as a famous person’s kid: A paparazzo follows him as a child to an ice rink, records a humiliating fall — and taunts him years later with photos. More horribly, we look over his shoulder as he watches his unsteady mother plunge a syringe of Demerol into her thigh.

Yet my sadness encompassed more than the book’s grimmer passages. “ The Richard Burton Diaries ,” published a decade ago, feature lots of Taylor and even more alcoholic despair. But Chris Williams’ introduction and detailed notes gave me hope: The diaries aren’t just voyeuristic; they are a resource for future scholars.

I wish Brower had been more respectful of the access she was given — not through lavish thanks or wide-eyed praise, but by approaching her project and her sourcing with more verve and rigor.

Nothing is sadder, after all, than a missed opportunity.

Lord, author of “The Accidental Feminist,” is the host of “Blood, Sweat & Rockets,” a new podcast from LAist Studios.

Sign up for our Book Club newsletter

Get the latest news, events and more from the Los Angeles Times Book Club, and help us get L.A. reading and talking.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

World & Nation

A Girl Scout troop for young migrants offers a haven in a chaotic city

Zero tolerance at UC campuses in new order banning encampments, masking, blocking paths

Aug. 19, 2024

California auto insurance rates are skyrocketing: Here’s why and how to save

Aug. 17, 2024

This must be West Adams

Aug. 16, 2024

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to 500)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• Investing Books
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST NOVELS 2024
• BEST FICTION 2023
• New Literary Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2023
• Best Kids' Books of 2023
• Political Novels
• New History Books
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Make Your Own List

Nonfiction Books » Best Biographies

The best biographies of 2023: the national book critics circle shortlist, recommended by elizabeth taylor.

Winner of the 2023 NBCC biography prize

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

Talented biographers examine the interplay between individual qualities and greater social forces, explains Elizabeth Taylor —chair of the judges for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Here, she offers us an overview of their five-book shortlist, including a garlanded account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover and a group biography of post-war female philosophers.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge

Mr. B: George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century by Jennifer Homans

Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill & Rachael Wiseman

Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs

1 G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

2 the grimkés: the legacy of slavery in an american family by kerri k. greenidge, 3 mr. b: george balanchine’s twentieth century by jennifer homans, 4 metaphysical animals: how four women brought philosophy back to life by clare mac cumhaill & rachael wiseman, 5 up from the depths: herman melville, lewis mumford, and rediscovery in dark times by aaron sachs.

I t’s a pleasure to have you back , Elizabeth—this time to discuss the National Book Critics Circle’s 2023 biography shortlist. You’ve been chair of the judging panel for a while, so you’re in a great position to tell us whether it has been a good year for biography.

That comes through in the shortlist, I think. There’s a real range here. I think any reader is bound to find something to appeal to their tastes.

Shaping a shortlist seems quite like arranging a bouquet. A clutch of peony, begonia, or orchid stems…each may be lovely, an exemplar in its own way. We aspire to assemble a glorious arrangement—a quintet of blooms that reflect the wildly varied human experiences represented in the verdant garden of biography.

Let’s talk about G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century first, then, shall we? It is your 2023 winner of the NBCC’s prize for best biography; it also won a Pulitzer Prize . It’s also, and correct me if I’m wrong, the most traditional of the biographies that made the list.

G-Man is traditional in as much as Beverly Gage captures the full sweep of Hoover’s life, cradle to grave: 1895 to 1972. In that way, structurally G-Man sits aside the epics of David McCullough ( Truman , John Adams ) and Ron Chernow ( Grant , Alexander Hamilton ).

Unlike those valorized national leaders, Hoover answered to no voters. The quintessential ‘Government Man,’ a counselor and advisor to eight U.S. presidents , of both political parties, he was one of the most powerful, unelected government officials in history. He reigned over the Federal Bureau of Investigations from 1924 to 1972. Hoover began as a young reformer and—as he accrued power—was simultaneously loathed and admired. Through Hoover, Gage skilfully guides readers through the full arc of 20th-century America, and contends: “We cannot know our own story without understanding his.”

In G-Man , Yale University professor Gage untangles the contradictions in Hoover’s aspirations and cruelty, and locates the paradoxical American story of tensions and anxieties over security, masculinity, and race.

“This year, many biographies were deeply rooted in American soil that required years of research to till”

Hoover lived his entire life in Washington D.C., and Gage entwines his story in the city’s evolution into a global power center and delves deeply into the dark childhood that led him to remain there for college. Critical to understanding Hoover, Gage demonstrates, was his embrace of the Kappa Alpha fraternity; its worldview was informed by Robert E. Lee and the ‘Lost Cause’ of the South , in which racial equality was unacceptable. He shaped the F.B.I. in his image and recruited Kappa Alpha men to the Bureau.

For Hoover, Gage writes, Kappa Alpha was a way to measure character, political sympathies, and, of course, loyalty. One of those men was Clyde Tolson, and Gage documents their trips to nightclubs, the racetrack, vacations, and White House receptions. Hoover did not acknowledge that he and Tolson were a couple, but in the end their separate burial plots were a few yards from one another.

While Hoover feels very much alive on the page, Gage captures the full sweep of American history, chronicling events from the hyper-nationalism of the early part of the century, moving into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., making use of newly unclassified documents. When Hoover’s F.B.I. targeted Nazis and gangsters, there was clarity about good guys and bad guys. But by the mid-century, as the nation began to fracture, he regarded calls for peace and justice as threats to national security. Among the abuses of power committed by Hoover’s F.B.I., for instance, was the wiretapping and harassment of King.

Beyond Hoover’s malfeasance, Gage emphasizes that Hoover was no maverick. He tapped into a dark part of the national psyche and had public opinion on his side. Through Hoover, Americans could see themselves, and, as Gage argues, “what we valued and refused to see.”

A biography like this does make you realize how deeply world events might be impacted or even partially predicted by the family background or the personalities of a small number of key individuals.

We should step through the rest of the books on your 2023 biography shortlist. Let’s start with Kerri K. Greenidge’s The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family , which is the story not only of the Grimké Sisters Sarah and Angelina, two well-known abolitionists, but Black members of their family as well.

I was eager to read The Grimkés as I had admired Greenidge’s earlier biography, Black Radical , about Boston civil rights leader and abolitionist newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter. Greenidge, a professor at Tufts University, brings her unique, perceptive eye to African American civil rights in the North.

Now Greenidge’s The Grimkés sits on my bookshelf next to The Hemingses of Monticello , the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Annette Gordon-Reed who exposed the contradictions of one of the most venerated figures in American history, Thomas Jefferson. In the Grimke family, Greenidge has found a gnarled family tree, deeply rooted in generations of trauma.

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke have been exalted as brave heroines who defied antebellum Southern piety and headed northward to embrace abolition. Greenridge makes the powerful case that, in clinging to this mythology, a more troubling story is obscured. In the North, as the Grimké sisters lived comfortably and agitated for change, they enjoyed the financial benefits of their slaveholding family in South Carolina.

Get the weekly Five Books newsletter

After the Civil War, they learned that their brute of a brother had fathered at least two sons with a woman whom he had enslaved. The sisters provided some financial assistance in the education of these two young men, one attended Harvard Law School and the other Princeton Divinity School—and did not let their nephews forget it.

Not only does Greenidge provide a revisionist history of the Grimke sisters, but she also takes account of the full Grimké family and extends their story beyond the 19th century. She delves into the dynamics of racial subordination and how free white men who conceive children — whether from rape or a relationship spanning decades with enslaved women—destroy families. Generations of children are haunted by this history.  Poignantly, Greenidge evokes the life and work of the sisters’ grandniece Angelina (‘Nana’) Weld Grimké , a talented—and troubled—queer playwright and poet, who carried the heavy weight of the generational trauma she inherited.

This sounds like a family saga of the kind you might be more likely to find in fiction.

Let’s turn to Mr B . : George Balanchine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans, the story of the noted choreographer. Why did this make your shortlist of the best biographies of 2023?

The perfect match of biographer and subject! A dancer who trained with Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in New York and is now dance critic for The New Yorker, Homans has written a biography of the man known as ‘the Shakespeare of Dance.’ In felicitous prose, Homans channels the dancer’s experience onto the page, from the body movements that can produce such beauty to the aching tendons and ligaments. Training is transformation, Homan writes, and working with Balanchine was a kind of metamorphosis tangled with pain. She evokes the dances so vividly that one can almost hear the music.

“At the heart of biography is the quest to understand the interplay between individual and social forces”

Homans captures Balanchine in a constant state of reinvention, tracing his life from Czarist Russia to Weimar Berlin , finally making his way to post-war New York where he revitalized the world of ballet by embracing modernish, founding New York City Ballet in 1948. Balanchine was genius whose personal history shape-shifted over the years. Homans grounds Mr. B in more than a hundred interviews, and draws from archives around the world.

Homans captures Balanchine’s charisma and cultural importance, but Mr. B. is no hagiography. Homans grasps the knot of sex and power over women used in his work. He married four times, always to dancers. They were all the same kind of swan-necked, long-waisted, long-limbed women, and although Homans does not write this, his company often sounds more like a cult than art.

And, of course, there is the matter of weight, which Homans dealt with directly, as did Balanchine. He posted a sign: ‘BEFORE YOU GET YOUR PAY—YOU MUST WEIGH.’

I don’t think I’ve ever considered reading a ballet biography before, but it sounds fascinating.

The next book on the NBCC’s 2023 biography shortlist brings us to Oxford, England. This is Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman.

At the outset of World War II , a quartet of young women, Oxford students—Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley—were “bored of listening to men talk about books by men about men,” as Mac Cumhaill, a Durham University professor, and Wiseman, a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, write. In their marvelous group biography, MacCumhaill and Wiseman vivify how the friendships of these women congealed to bring “philosophy back to life.”

As their male counterparts departed for the front lines, this brilliant group of women came together in their dining halls and shared lodging quarters to challenge the thinking of their male colleagues. In the shadows of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, these friends rejected the logical positivists who favoured empirical scientific questions. They didn’t really create a distinct philosophical approach as much as they shared an interest in the metaphysics of morals.

Brilliant. A book that is ostensibly ‘improving’ but which turns out to be absolutely chock-full of gossip sounds perfect to me. Let’s move on to the fourth book on the NBCC’s 2023 biography shortlist, which is Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs.

A biography about writing biography ! Very meta, and very much in the interdisciplinary tradition of American Studies. In his gorgeous braid of cultural history, Cornell University professor Sachs   entwines the lives and work of poet and fiction writer Herman Melville (1819-1891) and the philosopher and literary critic Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), illuminating their coextending concerns about their worlds in crisis.

While Melville is now firmly ensconced in the American canon, most appreciation and respect for him was posthumous. The 20th-century Melville revival was largely sparked by a now overlooked Mumford, once so prominent that he appeared on a 1936 Time  magazine cover.

Sachs brilliantly provides the connective tissue between Melville and his biographer Mumford so that these writers seem to be in conversation with one another, both deeply affected by their dark times.

Support Five Books

Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount .

As Mumford grappled with tragedies wrought by World War I, the 1918 flu pandemic and urban decay, Melville had dealt with the bloody Civil War , slavery , and industrialization. In a certain way, this book is about the art of biography itself, two writers wrestling with modernity in a bleak world. In delving into Melville’s angst, Mumford was thrust into great turmoil. Sachs evokes so clearly and painfully this bond that almost did Mumford in, and writes that “Melville, it turns out, was Mumford’s white whale.”

There’s a real sense of range in this shortlist. But do you get a sense of there being certain trends in biography as a genre in 2023?

In many ways, this is a golden era for biography. There are fewer dull but worthy books, more capacious and improvisational ones. More series of short biographies that pack a big punch. We see more group biographies and illustrated biographies. But just as figures and groups once considered marginal are being centered, records that document those lives are vanishing.

The crisis in local news and the homogenization of national and international news will soon be a crisis for biographers and historians. Where would historians be without the ‘slave narratives’ from the Federal Writers Project , or the Federal Theatre Project ? Reconstruction of public events—federal elections, national tragedies, and so on—may be possible, but we lose that wide spectrum of human experience. We need to preserve these artifacts and responses to events as they happen. Biographies are time-consuming labors of love and passion, and are often expensive to produce. We need to ensure that we are generating and saving the emails, the records, the to-do lists of ordinary life.

The affluent among us will always be able to commission histories of their companies or families, but are those the only ones that will endure?

June 30, 2023

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor is a co-author of American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley; His Battle for Chicago and the Nation with Adam Cohen, with whom she also cofounded The National Book Review. She has chaired four Pulitzer Prize juries, served as president of the National Book Critics Circle, and presided over the Harold Washington Literary Award selection committee three times. Former Time magazine correspondent in New York and Chicago and long-time literary editor of the Chicago Tribune, she is working on a biography of women in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras for Liveright/W.W. Norton.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

• Biographies & Memoirs
• Community & Culture

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Elizabeth Taylor Book: The Biography of Elizabeth Taylor Paperback – December 4, 2022

• Print length 53 pages
• Language English
• Publication date December 4, 2022
• Dimensions 5 x 0.14 x 8 inches
• ISBN-13 979-8366857086
• See all details

Products related to this item

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BNV3LX92
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (December 4, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 53 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8366857086
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.14 x 8 inches
• #2,530 in Rich & Famous Biographies
• #9,701 in Women's Biographies

About the author

University press.

Join our growing band of fellow travelers on this dusty road to wisdom and virtue.

(1) Follow us on Amazon. Click the "+Follow" button above.

(2) Join our Reviewers Club. Join the Club and get a FREE Kindle Book in your inbox every week. freebooks.universitypresspublishing.com/free

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 43% 18% 10% 12% 17% 43%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 43% 18% 10% 12% 17% 18%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 43% 18% 10% 12% 17% 10%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 43% 18% 10% 12% 17% 12%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 43% 18% 10% 12% 17% 17%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices