(no subject)

[which_chick]

Note to self: Do not watch heartwarming family movies in front of other people. Endless sniffles and bawling over things like Finding Neverland (Can I claim I'm hard-wired to find dying of tuberculosis tearjerking? I blame La Boheme.) would really ruin my image. Good thing nobody knows I do stuff like that, eh?

Also went shopping on teh intarweb today -- picked up a copy of HP 2 and 3 in the language I can't read while I was also (finally) ordering the last volume and the backstory volume of the ybp thing that I read. I would have bought some PoT CDs while I was there, ordering in foreign, but there were too many options. There were five screens of PoT audio CDs. That's too many to sift through without a for dummies guide to them.

Now if I can just get my ass together and order shit from regular amazon.com ... does anyone have any good, historical (politics is good) biographies for my grandmother, who adored the damn Alexander Hamilton (by Chernow) that I got her for xmas but who is now done with that and in dire need of something else to read? She likes biographies and despises fiction. Suggestions welcome.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

No suggestions offhand, but if you know of an especially good Jefferson, do tell. I'm in the mood.

[insidian.livejournal.com]

Patrick O'Brian did two elegant biographies, one of Picasso and one of Sir Joseph Banks. PO'B! He's not just for tall ships anymore!

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Sir Joseph! Must have.

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

I assume she's read the Benjamin Franklin by Isaacson. If not, that's supposed to be extremely good.

If she likes history generally, there's McCullough's 1776, which is also supposed to be extremely good.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

I recommend A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. It's a history of the fourteenth century (Black Plague, Agincourt, all that fun stuff) as depicted in the lifetime of a French nobleman named Enguerrand de Coucy. It's not so much a biography as a history, but it definitely follows Coucy's life.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

I haven't read them, but there's a bunch of books on Gouverneur Morris, including one on his stretch as minister to France during the Red Terror (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1574887874/qid=1122980653/sr=8-4/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_4/102-1506443-6189768?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), that sounds like it might be your grandmother's sort of thing. I saw the author give a presentation on C-SPAN Book Notes that was pretty interesting. But you know me - most of what I read in the way of non-fiction has something to do with the Civil War. The only biography I've read recently was Cozzens' life of John Pope.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

A bit of casual research indicates that the best one-volume Jefferson is
Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970). There is also a six-volume definitive Jefferson by someone named Dumas Malone but that's probably more than normal people want to know about the guy.

The level of detail in Chernow's Hamilton was about right. She enjoyed that book rather a lot.

other Chernow

[agoucher.livejournal.com]

I've read some of Chernow's other books and they are also good. If she has not read them yet you could try Titan (Rockefellor), House of Morgan (Morgan Bank) or the Warburgs.

While not by Chernow, I found Herbet Bix's Hirohito good as well.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

YBP? Searching my acronym base. It's not HnT, PoT, HnG, Saiyuki, or anything else I can think of offhand. I'm stumped.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

YBP: Yaoi Bondage Porn. This should immediately bring to mind HnT, which of course it is. I can understand the confusion because it's been a while since I mentioned that in a buying frame of mind. For a while now, I've been thinking that I should go amazon.co.jp and pick up the ultimate volume of the official series and the additional backstory (originally doujinshi) that she finally got published commercially because the shelf life of YBP isn't that damn long and I'm quite, quite fond of her stuff.

The reason I referred to it as YBP is that I sent my aunt a link to this blog the other day and I was trying to avoid another iteration of the yaoi bondage porn discussion. (It's at times like these that I wonder if the internet has truly enriched our lives. In a more genteel age, I'd keep my (black-and-white, german) bondage porn in the bottom drawer of my roll-top desk where I would not have to explain it to anyone and it could wait silently for any impressionable ten year olds minds who happened upon it while looking for, er, porn. I'm just sayin'...)

Re: other Chernow

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I'd actually be interested in reading those. I'm not sure Grandma is interested in finance and industry (the Rockefellers made their money in Standard Oil), but I like that sort of thing rather a lot. Just in case, though, I'll ask her next time I see her, which will be to drop off the Jefferson book and Isaacson's Franklin. (Those were what she said she wanted to read next out of the short list I gave her. I think Jefferson is interesting for her right now because she just finished up the Hamilton and he's a contemporary sort of dude.)