New biographies 2021
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LIST: Our 10 Best Biographies of
1. Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age by Debby Applegate (Doubleday)
There were other madams in Manhattan, but none had the charisma and brains that made Adler the “proprietress of Manhattan’s most renowned bordello,” writes Applegate, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. Her deliciously readable biography of Adler has been built on deep, wide-ranging archival research and Applegate’s instinct for revelatory details of the era. She captures the full scope of Adler’s life, from her childhood in a small Russian shtetl and her arrival alone in America, to ambitiously making her way out of a Massachusetts corset factory to Manhattan, where her “intoxicating playground” revealed the outsize role of illicit sex in business and politics. “Polly was hailed as a symbol of a decadent, long-gone era,” Applegate writes. “But she preferred to cas
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“De Gaulle,” by Julian Jackson
New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
This superb biography of the former French leader brilliantly explores how he managed to dominate his country’s political life for decades. Jackson’s account of De Gaulle’s youth and conservative milieu only enhances one’s respect for De Gaulle’s stand, in , against the Vichy government, and his account of De Gaulle’s war years in London makes clear why Churchill and Roosevelt found him almost impossible to deal with. The second half of the book—which deals with De Gaulle’s return to power during the conflict in Algeria, and his somewhat autocratic presidency—is even more compelling; together the two halves form as good an argument as one can make for believing that a single individual can alter the course of history. But Jackson, with sublime prose and a sure grasp of the politics and personalities of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics, never allows that argument to overs
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Rules & Eligibility
The Goodreads Choice Awards have two rounds of voting open to all registered Goodreads members. Winners will be announced December 09,
Opening Round: Nov 16 - 28
In the first round there are 20 books in each of the 15 categories, and members can vote for one book in each category.
Final Round: Nov 30 - Dec 05
The field narrows to the top 10 books in each category, and members have one last chance to vote!
Books published in the United States in English, including works in translation and other significant rereleases, between November 18, , and November 16, , are eligible for the Goodreads Choice Awards. Books published between November 17, , and November 15, , will be eligible for the awards.
We analyze statistics from the millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads to nominate 20 books in each category. For the Audiobook category, nominations are based on the millions of titles added, rated, and reviewed both on Goodreads and A