This is what biography ought to be - know the details and write the signifance.
591285
I have never been more impressed by a biography and liken it to works about Truman and John Paul Vann.  The problem is that waiting for the second part is really difficult.  I keep tabs on it.
2533718
Despite the errors that others have indicated, this slim volume is a balanced look at JFK warts and all.  Matthews does not soft pedal the sexual infidelities, but he does not judge them either.  He calls his book a "biography," but it is not.  Too much is left out.  It is a portrait and as such, it makes a good read. For a more thorough treatment, the reader should check out Arthur Schlesinger.  For a detailed analysis of the 1960 election, Theodore White's book is the standard by which others are judged.
318715
A good one-volume biography of our greatest president. At times it seems competent and workmanlike--rarely really rising to the poetry of Carl Sandburg or the exhaustiveness of Michael Burlingame. But it is no small task to fit all that has been said about Abraham Lincoln (and all that he said and wrote himself) into a manageable book of 600 or so pages that can be read and enjoyed by a wide variety of readers. We can all be grateful that David Herbert Donald was up to it.
1315668
I have written before of the importance of good Christian biography as part of spiritual growth. (And by good, I mean actually biography, not hagiography, that looks at an honest portrayal of the real person.)

Karen Swallow Prior has written a very good, immentantly readable biography of Hannah More. A woman from history that I had never heard of before Priors work.

Hannah More lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She was a poet, playwright, devotional writer and activist. Her colleagues, William Wilberforce and John Newton are much better known, but More played an active role in bringing attention to slavery and helping to move public opinion toward abolition. She died just months before England outlawed the slave trade, but she deserves credit for her active role in abolition.

In addition to her work on abolition she helped start schools for the poor, and was behind low cost reading material that gave the poor reading materials that they could afford. She was against animal creuelty and helped start womens societies (that eventually moved toward womens voting.)

And as much as it seems old fashioned today, her and Wilberforce were behind a movement that encouraged moral behavior. More, has been referred to as one of the first Victorians. That seems condesending now, but that entire movement of moral behavior was at root a movement to popularize human rights and the value of indivdiuals. Without the Victorians, we would not have public schools or womens rights or widespread care of the poor.

More was still a person of her time, for all of her interest in reform. The schools that she started taught their students to read (in large part for evangelism) but did not teach them to write, because that was above the station of the poor. In many ways she was a proto-feminist, but still believed in womens roles in a way that few would agree with today. And many of her moral stands would be considered odd to our ears.

This is not a long biography, only 250 pages of main content. But it is a biography that I think is worth widespread reading. More, and many of her contemporaries, were starting to understand that evangelism was important after the Catholic/Protestant fights of the early reformation. And it was not long before the interest in evangelism and foreign missions necessarily grew to include local missions, poverty alleviation, abolition, and other social causes. More did not see social ministries as competative with evangelism, but a necessary partner with evangelism.

After reading Priors earlier literary memoir Booked, I have become online friends with her and have come to deeply respect her work. This biography far outshines Metaxas biography of Wilberforce and I hope encourages other good biographies to be written. (Metaxas wrote the forward for this Fierce Convictions.)

I also want to note, I hope in a positive way, that this is the first good biography I have read from Thomas Nelson in a while. After a string of bad biographies from Thomas Nelson I had intentionally been avoiding the publisher. If it had not been for the fact that Prior was writing it, I probably would have skipped this one too. I am glad I did not.
_______
The publisher provided me a PDF copy of the book for purposes of review.
320972
The biographies are informative both as regards the composer's personal lives and their compositions.  It is also a very readable book.
2220930
It should be a great reference book by a well respected writer.  It was cited as a reference in a book I read recently.
1591454
This is the definitive biography. It concentrates on the essential facts and bypasses the less important but often covered gossip. Differing recollections add a great dimension of authenticity.
1765954
I like the documentation and the standard of evidence used by the author. He is some what direct on certain issues; education, gender, sex, which will always stir feathers but I like this book.
3412926
If you don't already know too much about Axl Rose and Guns 'n' Roses, this is a very informative read.  On the other hand, there's nothing here that's really new.  Most, if not all, of the information is from secondary sources (published articles and interviews, website posts, etc.) rather than original research. It's as much a biography of the original members of Guns 'n' Roses as about W. Axl Rose.  Their stories are inextricably interwoven--it's only to be expected that a bio of Axl will cover a lot of GNR territory; however, as the title promises a bio of Axl, I was expecting a little more than I got.  It's tempting to compare this book with the recently published biography of ex-GNR guitarist Slash, but I won't, because Slash was cool enough to give us a window into his own life in the writing of that book and was completely on board with its content, while this bio of Axl is, as the title says, unauthorized.

It does cumulate to some degree the timeline of Axl's *still* unreleased CD Chinese Democracy, and I came away with a slighly better understanding of the mystery behind its perpetual delay.  Writer Mick Wall also covers the known facts of Axl's seclusion and the emotional and legal entanglements of the years following the disintegration of the original Guns 'n' Roses, the evolution of the "new" Guns 'n' Roses, and the persistent striving toward perfection that seems to inform (and torment) every choice made by Axl Rose.

While this is a worthwhile read for anyone who wants to know something about the provocative frontman to one of the world's biggest rock bands and how it all went down, as a biography W.A.R. fails to meet its own challenge.  True biography requires much more in-depth research into the biographer's subject, with input from the primary players in the life of the subject, from the subject him/herself when possible, and it requires a willingness to delve in a balanced, serious way into the influences and motivations of the subject in order to see the large framework of a life and its influence, and what that life can contribute to our understanding of ourselves and the world we inhabit.  Axl and his raw genius deserve as much.  Hopefully his story will one day be told with the honesty it deserves.
1002312
If you want to know how to present information in a clear and functional format that actually contributes to the readers understanding - read this book.
2070558
Schmidt has written an excellent bio from start to finish.  His writing is organized, clear, and easy to read.  This is a pleasure as so many biographies lack many of these qualities.  A nice selection of photographs.  And most important, a well researched effort with logical and reasonable insight offered and no gossip.

Her story is simply as sad and tragic as they come.  I didn't realize just how tragic until I read this.
2848726
Full of great biographical detail that manages to acknowledge the significance of Freire's work and life without falling into the cult of personality mythos created by American critical pedagogy writers trying to 'own' the work. It falls short on engagement with current developments and models, but this is underway elsewhere. It's just refreshing to read a genuine piece of primary work on Freire.
419023
The writer understands Ingersoll. You will never read a biography with a better capacity to convey exactly who we are talking about. I read this in school in the 1950s and experienced tangible delight at the writer's capacity to present his subject warts and all. It is hard to do anything but repeat this. It is the key to the book. Just read it. Like a few other great reads it is lost to us until it gets on Kindle. I assume that will happen. When it does joy will spread. Were he alive today he would say the same things and leave the world scratching its head. Agnosticism never had a better friend.
2868102
A very good autobiography of the renowned author. Goes into details. Clear writing style makes it easy to read.
857810
The book is in accordance with other reviewer's write-up. So the content of the book was what it I assumed it would be. The author provided the necessary information
307052
Wonderful biography. Should be a mandatory read for every School Superinendent  and School Board member.  Arts education is an important part in the development of a well-rounded person.
950595
Doug West did an excellent job at a biography of Galileo. It's full of important information and reads very well. Every line is information, no going on and on, all wordy and such. From his birth to his death, and all the important in between.