biography

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LBJ Biographer Aims for Eternity
 LBJ Biographer 
 Aims for Eternity 
glossies

LBJ Biographer Aims for Eternity

Tireless writer published average of one book every ten years

(Newser) - Lyndon Johnson's biographer takes his work seriously—so much so, he didn't cover LBJ's presidency for 30 years, Newsweek reports. Rising from the tabloid world in the 1960s, Robert Caro first wrote a painstaking biography of New York mogul Robert Moses. Next came a volume on LBJ's youth; Caro even...

Told-On Buffett Cools Toward Tell-All Author

Billionaire not thrilled with messy details of warts-and-all bio

(Newser) - Billionaire Warren Buffett has canceled his annual public tête-à-tête with his biographer after the book they collaborated on left him with mixed feelings, reports the New York Times. For the past decade, the Oracle of Omaha has submitted to questions from Alice Schroeder during a huge dinner...

Black Berates Newser Founder From Jail
Black Berates Newser Founder From Jail
OPINION

Black Berates Newser Founder From Jail

News mogul attacks biography's depiction of rival Murdoch

(Newser) - Convicted felon Conrad Black has skipped time in the exercise yard to pen a review from prison of the new biography of his old rival Rupert Murdoch. Black complains that biographer Michael Wolff is at once too deferential and takes "extreme psychological liberties" in The Man Who Owns the ...

Need a Job? Write a Book About Lincoln
Need a Job? Write a Book About Lincoln
opinion

Need a Job? Write a Book About Lincoln

Honest Abe titles keep coming despite economic bust

(Newser) - Looking for a recession-proof job? Write a book about Abraham Lincoln, Joe Queenan advises in the Los Angeles Times. There are some 15,000 books about Lincoln already, and 50 more coming out next year. “As the very title Lincoln at Peoria suggests, there is literally no Lincoln-related subject...

Lennon Not a Nice Guy, New Bio Says
Lennon Not a Nice Guy, New Bio Says

Lennon Not a Nice Guy, New Bio Says

Tell-all portrays him as callous, abusive; Ono calls it 'too mean'

(Newser) - Not everything John Lennon could Imagine was so nice, the New York Post reports. The ex-Beatle callously cheated on his first wife, groped a girl in front of Yoko Ono, and upset Ono by treating her like a lay du jour when they first met, a new biography says. But...

Women Tower in Buffett's Biography
Women Tower
in Buffett's Biography

Women Tower in Buffett's Biography

Oracle of Omaha needed 'to be loved and never criticized'

(Newser) - Warren Buffett’s personal life is a lot messier than his balance sheet, according to a biography. In The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life, which hits stores Monday, the Oracle of Omaha for the first time cooperates with a biographer, producing a revealing look at the folksy...

Top-Secret Woodward Tome Gets a Name
Top-Secret Woodward Tome Gets a Name

Top-Secret Woodward Tome Gets a Name

White House braces for debut of Iraq-centric The War Within

(Newser) - Bob Woodward’s fourth book on the Bush White House, originally a mere 352 pages, has ballooned into 496 pages of inside dope and is due in stores Sept. 8, Politico reports. And the mystery-shrouded volume, which focuses on the Iraq conflict, officially has a name: The War Within: A ...

Porn Claim Riles Kafka Scholars
 Porn Claim Riles Kafka Scholars  

Porn Claim Riles Kafka Scholars

Experts have uneasy dreams about author's proclivities

(Newser) - Literary circles are in an uproar over a new biography of Franz Kafka that says the existentialist author had a penchant for porn, the Guardian reports. Kafka expert James Hawes, who says he unearthed some of the not-exactly-mainstream magazines the author enjoyed, makes the claim in a new book and...

Bro Dishes Dirt on Madonna in Tell-All

Alleges Gwyneth smooch, pill-popping, fighting dirty with Guy

(Newser) - Amid rumors of a crumbling marriage and an A-Rod affair, Madonna’s juicy past is now bubbling to the surface in a new biography written by her brother. At a boozy Hollywood party, the mega-star was dancing on a table when she pulled a surprised Gwyneth Paltrow up onto the...

Hef Had Family Foursome, Gay Tryst

Playboy founder green-lights a sex-filled biography

(Newser) - Hugh Hefner has signed off on a new biography that delves into the Playboy kingpin's sexual liberation, the New York Post reports. In "Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream," Steven Watts writes how the skin-mag magnate had a foursome with his first wife, his brother Keith...

Nixonland Gets 'Excellent' Prez Utterly Wrong
Nixonland Gets 'Excellent' Prez Utterly Wrong
Book review

Nixonland Gets 'Excellent' Prez Utterly Wrong

Conrad Black, author of rival bio, scorns hit job, recites strong points

(Newser) - The biography Nixonland is a hatchet job on an “excellent president,” media mogul Conrad Black (from behind bars) writes in the New York Sun, picking apart author Rick Perlstein’s slights—and reminding of the profound accomplishments of the 37th president. Beyond crediting Nixon with coarsening the political...

Spielberg to Shoot Lincoln Picture Next

He ducks rumor that Liam Neeson will portray prez

(Newser) - Once he wraps up Tintin, Steven Spielberg will make a long-awaited biopic about Abraham Lincoln, the Los Angeles Times reports. The director spilled the beans while promoting Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and said he wants to shoot the flick next year, Lincon's 200th anniversary—but...

Magic of 'This American Life' Returns to Small Screen

Second season debuts tonight

(Newser) - The stories on the small-screen version of “This American Life” start out small—a husband’s protest over the oppressive American trend of lawn-mowing, a young man living with spinal muscular atrophy—and become something universal, both dark and light, even a little magical, writes Heather Havrilesky on Salon....

Robocop Director Pens Shocking Jesus Bio

Claims Jesus' dad was a Roman rapist

(Newser) - Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, best known for directing films like Robocop, Basic Instinct, and Total Recall, is releasing a biography of Jesus which is bound to spark an angry response, reports AP. The book, which Verhoeven has been working on for 20 years, suggests that Jesus' father was a Roman...

Cracking the Steve Jobs Code
 Cracking the Steve Jobs Code 
book review

Cracking the Steve Jobs Code

Author peers into the brain of Apple's elusive guiding force

(Newser) - Though it’s near impossible to get an interview with Steve Jobs, author Leander Kahney’s book Inside Steve’s Brain gives a “fresh, noble perspective” on the Apple icon’s impenetrable mind, Jon Swartz writes in USA Today. Like most who try, Kahney couldn’t score facetime, but...

New Site Wants Your Wikipedia Rejected Bio

Biographicon invites the real average Joes to tell their tales

(Newser) - While Wikipedia may promote itself as an encyclopedia of, for, and by the people, anybody who's had his stint as autobiographer cut short by the infamous "notability" requirement knows the site to be otherwise. Or so hope the creators of startup Biographicon, a website that invites the nobodies of...

'Bossy? Aloof?' Index of Hillary Bio Is Way Off

Blogger dissects back pages of book on Dem hopeful

(Newser) - Readers looking for a crash course in everything Hillary can try the index of Carl Bernstein's A Woman in Charge, and find a laundry list of moody traits: "bossiness," "aloofness," "anger, temper and hurt" are only the A's and B's. But New York Times blogger...

Dewey Cox Rocks!
Dewey Cox Rocks!
NEW RELEASE

Dewey Cox Rocks!

Despite being a little uneven, Judd Apatow parody provides lots of laughs

(Newser) - Judd Apatow's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story "is less thoughtful satire and ... more the distant cousin of Airplane!," writes Brian Orndorf of OhMyNews.com. Starring John C. Reilly as a blues prodigy who ultimately experiences success, failure, and redemption, it plays like "an extended riff on...

Wharton Letter Bolsters Suicide Theory

Heroine Lily Bart overdosed deliberately, note implies

(Newser) - A recently-discovered letter by Edith Wharton provides new evidence in The House of Mirth's lingering literary mystery, suggesting that heroine Lily Bart does, in fact, intend to kill herself at the book's end, the New York Times reports. Though the ambiguous text has led many to believe she died of...

Young Stalin Follows His Rise From Street Thug

Seminary dropout used 160 aliases as criminal

(Newser) - Drawing on previously classified material, Simon Sebag Montefiore's new biography, Young Stalin, follows the despot through his formative years, from Georgian street tough to the Bolshevik revolution. In a "morbidly fascinating" account, he describes how the young Josef Djugashvili dropped out of a seminary, assumed 160 aliases, robbed stagecoaches,...

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