Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography

Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography
by David McCullough, Robert Caro

Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography
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Book Summary Information

Author: David McCullough, Robert Caro
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 1989-04
ISBN: 9999059503
Publisher: Olympic Marketing Corp

Book Reviews of Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography

Book Review: Help for the Biographer
Summary: 5 Stars

This book, based on a series of talks given at the New York Library, biographers Robert Caro, David McCullough, Paul C. Nagel, Richard B. Sewall, Ronald Steel and Jean Strouse explain how and why they went about writing biographies in the way that they did.

Each biographer explains well how the life of the biographer becomes intertwined with that of the person they are researching. In each case, they stress that biography writing is both intense and time-consuming.

Lyndon B. Johnson biographer, Robert Caro, recommends Francis Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" for two reasons. One, to show that the job of the historian is to try to write at the same level as the greatest novelists. Second, that the duty of the historian is to go to the locales of the events that will be described, and not to leave, no matter how long it takes...until the writer has done his or her best to understand the locales and their cultures and their people.

In the end, it means that the biographer must not only understand the person, but also needs to intimately know the area where the person grew up and lived.

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