Top historical biographies
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Top Ten Riveting Historical Biographies That Make History Fun
Top Ten Tuesday is a regular feature on Pop! Goes The Reader in which I count down my top ten choices on a particular theme. This weekly event is hosted by Jamie at The Broke and the Bookish.
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is: Top Ten Riveting Historical Biographies That Make History Fun.
I don’t often have the opportunity to discuss this here on Pop! Goes The Reader, but for those who don’t know, I’m a huge history buff. It was one of my two majors in university (The other being English.) (Of course.) and there was even a period in my life, when I was still in school, when I read nothing but non-fiction for approximately two years! You can therefore imagine how excited I was when I saw this week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt – “Anything ‘Back To School’ Related” – because it finally gave me the opportunity to talk a little more about one of my favou
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The 50 Best Biographies of All Time
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Crown The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss
You’re probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo, the 1844 revenge novel by Alexandre Dumas. But did you know it was based on the life of Dumas’s father, the mixed-race General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave? Thanks to Reiss’s masterful pacing and plotting, this rip-roaring biography of Thomas-Alexandre reads more like an adventure novel than a work of nonfiction. The Black Count won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2013, and it’s only a matter of time before a filmmaker turns it into a big-screen blockbuster.
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I was pondering—as one does—what makes history come alive, and inom noticed listeners often säga, “This fryst vatten the biography X deserves!” when they love a title. Sometimes biographies are about multiple people or a famous event, but a great biography manages through deep research and narrative arc to provide a fresh take on a familiar subject. Here, I’ve curated my favorite biographies that reveal a “household name” in a whole new way in audio; all of them feature rik historic detail and unpausable, stellar narration. Enjoy!
Jesus Christ
Zealot
A fascinating, provocative, and meticulously researched biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth....
To look at the historical Jesus within the context of Roman-occupied Palestine seems to fascinate everyone: Christians, atheists, and adherents to other religions. The author’s narration adds to the experience of Zealot.
Genghis Khan
It took an anthropologist—who spent years learning