Your Hero and his/her biography

[FBM]

Gice me biographies, people! Wikipedia is to a story, like a roastbeef recipe is to a roastbeef!!

http://tenniselbow.org/scott/feyn_surely.pdf

[Clinton Huxley]

Also, what's your opinion of the Book of the Sword, it is actually the one I would like to know if it is worth?

Have to confess, have not read it, merely flicked through, but it looks pretty comprehensive. Believe was intended to be 2 volumes but only the first one was ever written.

[Beelzebub2]

Someone I'd like to know more about and would certainly qualify as a hero would be Alan Turing. I'd be typing in German now were it not for him, probably.

Such a shame he ended the way he did.


Hyperboloids of wondrous Light
Rolling for aye through Space and Time
Harbour those Waves which somehow Might
Play out God's holy pantomime

[Sisifo]

BUMP!

After this thread, I have read the recommended by FBM bio of feynman Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Ad ... 214&sr=1-4 Which I loved and laughed.

And again the Burton Bio Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: A Biography https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/03068 ... 15_product
Which once again I can't recommend strongly enough... Amazing!!!

I went again through I.Asimov: A Memoir http://www.amazon.com/I-Asimov-Memoir-I ... 573&sr=1-2

Talleyrand http://www.amazon.com/Talleyrand-Duff-C ... 788&sr=1-1

The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Ibn-Ba ... 408&sr=1-1

And I am desperately trying to get a Bio of Qi Jiguang in any language other than Chinese

Any more recommendation of Biographies of extraordinay characters of history?

[Bella Fortuna]

I never saw this thread first time 'round... I have tons of bios in the other room (where child is now sleeping) - I'll peruse tomorrow and make some recommendations of people I have found interesting.

[tryllevegg]

Yutaka Ozaki STORY (Book)

Yutaka Ozaki STORY (Manga)

I don't have any of these, but I want to read them some day in the future, when I actually understand what they are saying.

[hadespussercats]

I'm working on his (her?) biography as we speak.

Otherwise, I usually only read memoirs, not biographies-- I'd rather have the color of memory and the hazy truth of real experience than the factual trotting out of events in chronology that biographies so often become.

[orpheus]

Good old Sam.

The best (and only authorized) biography:
Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett

Also very fine:
Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist

Avoid this one - SB did not approve at all, and Bair got many things wrong:
Samuel Beckett: A Biography

[Elessarina]

Someone I'd like to know more about and would certainly qualify as a hero would be Alan Turing. I'd be typing in German now were it not for him, probably.

He's one of mine too.. such an amazing guy.

My hero is Nelson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Ne ... unt_Nelson

[MissingNo.]

Susan Sontag <3333333

She was a very private person so there is no biography about her but since her death, some of her diaries and notebooks have been published. So far only the early ones are available but it's a safe assumption that more will be published later.

[Ciazaera]

I'm a big fan of Peter Parker, but there are no comics solely about him. This annoying Spiderdude keeps turning up and making him take his clothes off.

[Epictetus]

Henry Louis Mencken (see his Chrestomathy and Minority Report). As for biography's, there's one called The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken by Terry Teachout (I have yet to read it myself). At any rate some of Mencken's criticisms of religion are very reminiscent of those of the "four horsemen." Here's a sample:

"One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. It is largely to blame, I suspect, for the slowness with which sound ideas are disseminated in the world. The minute a new one bobs up some faction or other of theologians falls upon it furiously, seeking to put it down. The most effective way to defend it, of course, would be to fall upon the theologians, for the only really useful defense is an all-out offensive. But the convention aforesaid protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to the great damage of common sense and common decency. That they should have this immunity is an outrage. There is nothing in religious ideas, as a class, to lift them above other ideas. On the contrary, they are always dubious and often quite silly. Nor is there any visible intellectual dignity in theologians. Few of them know anything that is worth knowing, and not many of them are even honest."

[Shaker]

Henry Louis Mencken (see his Chrestomathy and Minority Report). As for biography's, there's one called The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken by Terry Teachout (I have yet to read it myself).

Do; it's excellent