Epstein (former editor of American Scholar and author of Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit) brings an erudite gift for portraiture to the subjects of this volume’s 40 essays. Focused primarily on figures ...

As an experienced biographer, Hermione Lee knows a hungry audience. “Readers of biography are greedy readers, with an insatiable appetite for detail and story,” writes the British scholar, a professor ...

Thomas Carlyle popularised the theory that the history of the world was but the biography of great men and that it was their genius and skill that won great men power. Many disagreed, including ...