Is there a “Wirecutter” for best biographies?
March 27, 2023 9:57 AM Subscribe
I searched the web for “best biography of Emma Goldman.” The returns: much online verbiage of her life. Not what I’m looking for.
I seek what might, in writerly circles, be considered the BEST, most comprehensive biography of EG. (I have already read her autobiography,.)
I haven't discovered such a tool, but there is at least a Rotten Tomatoes for books, called Book Marks.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:40 AM on March 27, 2023
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:40 AM on March 27, 2023
Not to my knowledge, but there are a few tricks to doing a quick eval by looking at the book's Amazon page. Amazon, for all of its problems, is actually a pretty good way to find books - the pages often contain snippets of reviews.
1. When was it published? Newer isn't always better, but newer will more likely incorporate/build on the older scholarship, whereas an old book may be considered outdated (but not always!).
2. Did an academic press publish it? Or a top tier trade press? Even lower tier trade presses can publish some excellent books (and academic presses publish some real clunkers), so this isn't a hard and fast rule, but it does give you a sense of how much time/resources the author was able to spend on it - if they're a professor, the project was likely not rushed. Top tier trade presses will also give authors hefty advances.
3. Who blurbed it and what did they say?
From these methods, I'd say "Love, Anarchy, & Emma Goldman: A Biography" by Candace Falk, 1984 (but deemed worth re-issuing recently) looks solid, as does "Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life" by Vivian Gornick, Yale Press, 2013. Or the books from Alice Wexler. There is a newer book that sounds interesting "Emma Goldman, "Mother Earth," and the Anarchist Awakening" but not comprehensive. If you're really into a subject, I'd throw out the idea of finding a truly comprehensive work - I mean, there are instances - like the series on Lyndon Johnson - that are considered "definitive" but you don't usually find such projects outside of US Presidents.
posted by coffeecat at 10:40 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
1. When was it published? Newer isn't always better, but newer will more likely incorporate/build on the older scholarship, whereas an old book may be considered outdated (but not always!).
2. Did an academic press publish it? Or a top tier trade press? Even lower tier trade presses can publish some excellent books (and academic presses publish some real clunkers), so this isn't a hard and fast rule, but it does give you a sense of how much time/resources the author was able to spend on it - if they're a professor, the project was likely not rushed. Top tier trade presses will also give authors hefty advances.
3. Who blurbed it and what did they say?
From these methods, I'd say "Love, Anarchy, & Emma Goldman: A Biography" by Candace Falk, 1984 (but deemed worth re-issuing recently) looks solid, as does "Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life" by Vivian Gornick, Yale Press, 2013. Or the books from Alice Wexler. There is a newer book that sounds interesting "Emma Goldman, "Mother Earth," and the Anarchist Awakening" but not comprehensive. If you're really into a subject, I'd throw out the idea of finding a truly comprehensive work - I mean, there are instances - like the series on Lyndon Johnson - that are considered "definitive" but you don't usually find such projects outside of US Presidents.
posted by coffeecat at 10:40 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
The author of this podcast on Emma Goldman, Florian Duijsens, recommends these three biographies of her: by Vivian Gornick, Candace Falk, and Sharon Rudahl (last one is a graphic novel).
posted by 15L06 at 10:52 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by 15L06 at 10:52 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you're really into a subject, I'd throw out the idea of finding a truly comprehensive work - I mean, there are instances - like the series on Lyndon Johnson - that are considered "definitive" but you don't usually find such projects outside of US Presidents.
Oh, gosh, that isn't really true at all from my academic perspective. In grad school, one of our assignments was to choose an author and then find the "authoritative biography" on that person. We did that not by reading all the biographies, but by reading lots of reviews of the various biographies and reading what scholars had to say about each other's works.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:52 AM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, gosh, that isn't really true at all from my academic perspective. In grad school, one of our assignments was to choose an author and then find the "authoritative biography" on that person. We did that not by reading all the biographies, but by reading lots of reviews of the various biographies and reading what scholars had to say about each other's works.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:52 AM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
If you can find lengthy reviews of the most recent biography of a person – e.g. in the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, etc – then the reviewers often discuss any previous biographies and the pros and cons of them.
posted by fabius at 5:09 AM on March 28, 2023
posted by fabius at 5:09 AM on March 28, 2023
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I took a meandering little path that involved looking up reviews of the Candace Falk biography and found a 1984 review of two Goldman biographies in a 1986 American Historical Review (can't link because it's in proprietary databases). The author says that Richard Drinnon's Rebel in Paradise has been the standard reference (in addition to Goldman's autobiography), and Alice Wexler and Falk supplement but do not replace it. They were based on new information (and academics will often do that, fill in gaps, rather than rewrite). I can't copy the text over (it's a PDF), but it sounds like Drinnon gives a chronological span; Wexler covers til 1921. "But Candace Falk, while taking the reader through all the years of Goldman's life, gives a disproportionate amount of space (nine chapters of eighteen) to a romance that lasted a mere decade."
I saw there was a newer work by Vivian Gornick. I looked up one review that kinda panned it.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:33 AM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]