I used to think people read biographies of those who appealed one way or another, or because the subjects were famous or interesting or brilliant at whatever it was they did. (Ruling, writing, composing, building, painting, making money, doing good, making justice, inventing, discovering...) Many read about people who make history and/or waves but I discovered some time ago that I’m willing to read just about any biography so long as it is well written. Case in point: Anne De Courcy’s gripping biography of Diana Mosley whose fascist politics and anti-Semitic notions revolt me. 

I was surprised to learn I could enjoy biographies of subjects I don’t like, or hadn’t heard of, or had been only vaguely aware of. My ongoing affair with biography has shown I’ll read about almost anyone. What matters is not the subject so much as the blend of subject and writer. It takes a particular combination of brilliant researcher and fetching writer to pen a powerful and compelling biography and that’s what you’ll find on this list:

• Reflected Glory: The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman by Sally Bedell Smith
What a gal with a survival instinct — from a limply genteel family in England she eventually married Churchill’s son for a brief time, then engaged in a series of high-profile affairs (including Edward R. Murrow, one of The Rothschilds and even the Aga Khan among, um, many others). After that, she crossed the Pond to see what she could do for the U.S., where she married first Leland Hayward (Dennis Hopper briefly was her son-in-law), then Averell Harriman. We also have Mrs. Harriman to thank, in part, for the presidency of Bill Clinton which is how she got to be U.S. ambassador to France. I was wholly consumed by this book.

• The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of ‘Joe’ Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water by Kate Summerscale
Never heard of  Marion ‘Joe’ Carstairs until I read a review of this biography which sent me pell-mell to the book. And, what a fine story it is — lorry driver in WWI, auto mechanic, champion speed-boat racer, luscious lesbian and much more. Oh yeah, for example, she was heir to the Standard Oil fortune which goes some way toward explaining how she came to be Queen of her own Caribbean island. Tasty.

• Simone de Beauvior: A Biography by Deirdre Bair
Funny things happen sometimes when you read biography. I went into this one, as did the author, adoring de Beauvoir ... and came out of it with an entirely different view, as did the author, which is what makes this biography particularly special and especially involving. There have been more biographies since Bair’s but none with such penetrating insight and none so interesting.

• Malraux: A Biography by Axel Madsen
So I have a penchant for French intellectuals of the 20th centunry; one could do worse. I came to this biography by way of Malraux’s fiction which quite captured me, especially Man’s Fate and Man’s Hope. Malraux was a wild-man intellectual who witnessed much of the turbulent history of the 20th century: the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese Revolution, the Indochina (that’s French for Vietnam) War in the 1950s. He was an anti-fascist and news columnist during WWII. In an earlier incarnation during the interregnum between the wars he was a successful art smuggler bringing ancient treasure from the east to the west. Oh, and lots more.

• Diana Mosley: Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler’s Angel by Anne De Courcy
I never expected to like this book. I was propelled to read it because I’ve a fetish for the Mitfords who, after all, are undeniably fascinating. Diana was one of two fascist Mitford sisters (as was their mother); she married Sir Oswald Mosely who founded the British fascist party in the period before WWII.  Terrific biography which successfully relates the history of what made this woman tick. And, some of her ticks.

• The House of Mitford by Jonathan Guinness and Catherine Guinness
Speaking of the Mitfords, this is an excellent collective biography of that amazing clan (although Jessica [Decca] gets short shrift). Delightful, and an interesting stroll through the 20th century. Perhaps a bit biased (see Decca’s short-shriftedness) since it is penned by père and fille Guinness: he Diana’s eldest son, she his daughter.

• American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson by Peter Kurth
Pioneering woman journalist, one of few, in the early to mid 20th century. She was the first U.S. journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany. Her second husband was Sinclair Lewis — they were married 14 years when she divorced him in 1942. In that time she was as famous as he was but today Dorothy Thompson is less known, which is a pity because she’s sterling.

• Paul Robeson by Martin Bauml Duberman
Robeson long has been one of my personal heroes but I’d not know all that much about him. This book fixed that, to be sure, and did it with grace and well-melded history and insight. Robeson was, indeed, a towering player in modern U.S. history and culture. 

• Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Middlebrook
This brilliant biography is stunning. Sexton, certainly, provides ample fodder and much genius; Middlebrook supplies the cogent brilliance.

• Straight on Till Morning: A Biography of Beryl Markham by Mary S. Lovell
Oh just read it as soon as you can get your hands on it. Hemingway envied her writing and Lovell does her up finest kind. This is an especially luscious biography.

• Gore Vidal by Fred Kaplan
In the end, Vidal disassociated himself from this biography which he had initially authorized. This means Kaplan had access to Vidal, his history and his friends for as long as it mattered. Kaplan is an excellent biographer and a terrific writer and there are few biographies as entertainingly delicious as this one. Then, too, there are few subjects half as entertaining as Vidal. Just a wee taste from the Kaplan book: Vidal is quoted saying “the last time I saw Truman, I mistook him for an ottoman.”

• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
Gleick is the perfect pen for Feynman’s biography — both have wit aplenty and brilliance aplenty and it all shows herein. I loved this book and don’t even know all my multiplication tables. Who knew I could love a physicist?