biography

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• 4/14/19
  

  Ilhan Omar is a Reconstruction Reformer

  by William Horne

  The failure to hold the race-baiting press, politicians, and vigilantes responsible during Reconstruction undermined any semblance of equality for more than 100 years. We can't make the same mistake. 

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• SOURCE: Times Literary Supplement
  3/19/19
  

  The self-made man

  by Manisha Sinha

  Manisha Sinha on the long and eventful life of Frederick Douglass.

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• 1/30/19
  

  Bold Experimenter FDR Was Born 137 Years Ago

  by Joseph A. Esposito

  Unquestionably, Roosevelt is the most consequential American president since Abraham Lincoln.

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• SOURCE: Truthdig
  6-2-17
  

  Historians have underestimated Sidney Blumenthal's achievement in his biography of Lincoln

  Steven Hahn and other historians who seemed to be searching for reasons to belittle Blumenthal’s achievement must now dispel their doubts.

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• SOURCE: Special to HNN
  7-31-13
  

  Ron Briley: Review of Ruth Barton's "Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film" (Kentucky, 2012)

  Described as “the most beautiful woman in the world” during her Hollywood film career from the late 1930s to the 1950s, Hedy Lamarr is less well known today among film fans, with the exception of viewers who enjoy Turner Classic Movies. Nevertheless, Lamarr is the subject of three recent biographical studies, perhaps due to her long overlooked status as an inventor. 

• SOURCE: NYT
  3-31-13
  

  Jonathan Freedland: Review of Jonathan Sperber's "Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life"

  Jonathan Freedland is an editorial page columnist for The Guardian of London.The Karl Marx depicted in Jonathan Sperber’s absorbing, meticulously researched biography will be unnervingly familiar to anyone who has had even the most fleeting acquaintance with radical politics. Here is a man never more passionate than when attacking his own side, saddled with perennial money problems and still reliant on his parents for cash, constantly plotting new, world-changing ventures yet having trouble with both deadlines and personal hygiene, living in rooms that some might call bohemian, others plain “slummy,” and who can be maddeningly inconsistent when not lapsing into elaborate flights of theory and unintelligible abstraction.

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• President Barack Obama: The First Draft of History

  by Kathryn Moore

  The following is excerpted from The American President by Kathryn Moore, published by Barnes & Noble Books in 2013 (678 pages, $19.95).  It covers the life of Barack H. Obama and his presidency through his election to a second term in 2012.  For more information, go to: TheAmericanPresident.US. President Barack Obama on December 6, 2012. Credit: Wiki Commons.Table of Contents•Childhood •Hawaii •College •Community Organizing in Chicago •Africa •Harvard •Marriage •Launch of Political Career •State Politics •Senator •Campaign for the Presidency

• SOURCE: NYT
  2-14-13
  

  2 Female Biographers ‘Find’ 2 Female Historians

  Nineteenth-century female historians with minimal formal education but ambition and numerous servants documented world events in ways that are still admired and quoted.Two new biographies cover female antiquarians who invented themselves and became famous but maddeningly did not preserve their own archives.Sarah Losh, a historian and self-taught architect in a northern English village, traveled around Europe taking notes about streetscapes and rituals. She designed clusters of school and religious buildings near her home in Wreay, partly based on ancient and medieval ruins that she visited. She destroyed much of her writings, but her brilliance was recorded in the remembrances of friends and relatives....