Biography Archive

“Daily Rituals: How Artists Work” and “Daily Rituals: Women at Work” - These books are more relevant today than when they were published, and for the simplest of reasons --- artists don't go to offices. Since 2020, that's been true of many

Akira Kurosawa: Something Like An Autobiography - You love so many of his movies. Star Wars, of course. The Magnificent Seven. That first great Clint Eastwood western, A Fistful of Dollars. And, most recently, A Bug's Life.

American Lady: The Life of Susan Mary Alsop - Susan Mary Alsop (1918-2004) was a society beauty who morphed into a great saloniste and hostess, but the best reason I found to read this 193-page biography is that it

Bob Dylan - Two hundred and twenty reviews into this venture, and not one about Bob Dylan. What does that tell you? It might suggest that the proprietor of HeadButler.com either needs a lot of warm-up

Bob Dylan On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day - “Eve and Mac McKenzie took me in an’ they were beautiful… I lived with them…and they fed me…and I stayed out all hours an’ came back in and went to

Branch Rickey - Major League Baseball is racially integrated now: In 2022, 38% of the players were men of color. Before we tip our caps to a racially diverse sport, consider this: For

Broken: A Love Story - It's two for one in "Broken: A Love Story" --- biography and autobiography merge in the dusty horse corrals of Wyoming's Wind River Reservation. Take one student, give her one

Bunker Spreckels: Surfing’s Divine Prince of Decadence - When it comes to books as gifts, I vote for anything about surfing. For one thing, it's a perverse choice. You can be pretty much assured that the recipient has

Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin - Everybody knows about Janis Joplin. She had that raspy Texas voice and those hippie clothes and she drank and swore like a guy. She was famous for being

Camus, A Romance - On January 4, 1960 --- exactly fifty years ago --- Albert Camus had a train ticket to Paris in his pocket. But he chose to travel with a friend who

Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge - DISCLOSURE: In the mid-1970s, before “Star Wars” put her in a more stellar orbit, Carrie Fisher and I were friends. At one point, she wanted to audit my screenwriting course

Charlatan -

Churchill - A new meme equates Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, with Winston Churchill. As wartime leaders, it's apt. In every other way, it couldn't be more inaccurate. Zelensky, a successful entertainer,

Darker Than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake - Friends said that Nick Drake's music “brushes the ear.” That his songs were like “butterflies chained to anchors.” That his “breathy beige voice” was ideally suited to a message of “gentle doom.” That,

Diane Arbus - We reeled out of the Diana Arbus show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art into the blissful order of the Renaissance art rooms. You would have too. Because, among other photographs,

Dora Lives: The Authorized Story of Miki Dora - Miki Dora was born in Budapest in 1934. His parents moved to Los Angeles just a few years after a public road to Malibu was opened and movie stars started

Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain - Since Anthony Bourdain died on June 8, 2018, he has been Googled ten million times. There have been five million searches about his death, three million about his suicide. Those are

Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story - Zelda Fitzgerald, after a painful life, suffered a terrible death --- she was a patient at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, and the building caught fire, and because

First: Sandra Day O’Connor - GUEST BUTLER JILL SWITZER has been a member of the State Bar of California for 40 years and now is a full-time mediator. She writes a weekly column for Above

Forty Ways to Look at JFK - Who does this sound like? He was an indifferent student. When he had to write a senior thesis in college, he hired a secretary and five stenographers. His father got him