new biographies out

The Best New Biographies of 2023

CJ Connor is a cozy mystery and romance writer whose main goal in life is to make their dog proud. They are a Pitch Wars alumnus and an Author Mentor Match R9 mentor. Their debut mystery novel BOARD TO DEATH is forthcoming from Kensington Books. Twitter: @cjconnorwrites | cjconnorwrites.com

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Read on to discover nine of the best biographies published within the last year. Included are life stories of singular people, including celebrated artists and significant historical figures, as well as collective biographies.

The books included in this list have all been released as of writing, but biography lovers still have plenty to look forward to before the year is out. A few to keep your eye out for in the coming months:

The World According to Joan Didion by Evelyn McDonnell (HarperOne, September 26)
Einstein in Time and Space by Samuel Graydon (Scribner, November 14)
Overlooked: A Celebration of Remarkable, Underappreciated People Who Broke the Rules and Changed the World by Amisha Padnani (Penguin Random House, November 14).

Without further ado, here are the best biographies of 2023 so far!

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo

Ellen and William Craft were a Black married couple who freed themselves from slavery in 1848 by disguising themselves as a traveling white man and an enslaved person. Author Ilyon Woo recounts their thousand-mile journey to seek safety in the North and their escape from the United States in the months following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

Written over a period of 11 years with exclusive journalistic access to the subject, author Michael Finkel explores the motivations, heists, and repercussions faced by the notorious and prolific art thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Of special focus is his relationship with his girlfriend and accomplice, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus.

King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

While recently published, King: A Life is already considered to be the most well-researched biography of Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. published in decades. New York Times bestselling journalist Jonathan Eig explores the life and legacy of Dr. King through thousands of historical records, including recently declassified FBI documents.

Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters by Lynnée Denise

This biography is part of the Why Music Matters series from the University of Texas. It reflects on the legendary blues singer’s life through an essay collection in which the author (also an accomplished musician) seeks to recreate the feeling of browsing through a box of records.

Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power by Leah Redmond Chang

Historian Leah Redmond Chang’s latest book release focuses on three aristocratic women in Renaissance Europe: Catherine de’ Medici, Elizabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots. As a specific focus, she examines the juxtaposition between the immense power they wielded and yet the ways they remained vulnerable to the patriarchal, misogynistic societies in which they existed.

Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang

Anna May Wong was a 20th-century actress who found great acclaim while still facing discrimination and typecasting as a Chinese woman. University of California professor Yunte Huang explores her life and impact on the American film industry and challenges racist depictions of her in accounts of Hollywood history in this thought-provoking biography.

Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century by Jasmine Brown

Written by Rhodes Scholar and University of Pennsylvania medical student Jasmine Brown, this collective biography shares the experiences and accomplishments of nine Black women physicians in U.S. history — including Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first Black American woman to earn a medical degree in the 1860s, and Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.

Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty

Two years after the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s death, this biography presents a comprehensive history of Larry McMurtry’s life and legacy as one of the most acclaimed Western writers of all time.

The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. by Leta McCollough Seletzky

Journalist Leta McCollough Seletzky examines her father, Marrell “Mac” McCollough’s complicated legacy as a Black undercover cop and later a member of the CIA. In particular, she shares his account as a witness of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel.

Are you a history buff looking for more recommendations? Try these.

Best History Books by Era
Books for a More Inclusive Look at American History
Fascinating Food History Books

8 Genre-Blending Nonfiction Books You Need To Read

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Australia edition
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The best autobiographies and memoirs of 2021.

Best biographies and memoirs of 2021

Brian Cox is punchy, David Harewood candid and Miriam Margolyes raucously indiscreet

In a bonanza year for memoirs, Ruth Coker Burks got us off to a strong start with All the Young Men (Trapeze), a clear-eyed and poignant account of her years spent looking after Aids patients in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1980s. While visiting a friend in hospital, Burks witnessed a group of nurses drawing straws over who should enter a room labelled “Biohazard”, the ward for men with “that gay disease”. And so she took it upon herself to sit with the dying and bury them when their families wouldn’t. Later, as the scale of fear and prejudice became apparent, she helped patients with food, transport, social security and housing, often at enormous personal cost. Her book, written with Kevin Carr O’Leary, finds light in the darkness as it reveals the love and camaraderie of a hidden community fighting for its life.

Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl (Penguin), an exuberant account of Paris Lees’s tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where “the streets are paved wi’ dog shit”. Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders’ institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter.

Miriam Margolyes’s This Much Is True (John Murray) traces her path from cherished child of an Oxford GP to Bafta-winning actor to chat-show sofa staple, in a raucously indiscreet memoir replete with fruity tales of sexual experimentation, tricky co-stars and Olympic-level farting. And Bob Mortimer’s winningly heartfelt And Away… (Gallery) reveals the brilliant highs and terrible lows of his childhood as the “irritating runt” of four brothers, his initial career as a solicitor and subsequent reinvention as a celebrated comic alongside his partner in crime, Vic Reeves.

Themes of identity and belonging underpin Beautiful Country (Viking), Qian Julie Wang’s elegantly affecting account of her move from China to New York where she lived undocumented and under threat of deportation, and Nadia Owusu’s powerful Aftershocks (Sceptre), in which the author recalls a peripatetic childhood as the daughter of a volatile Armenian-American mother and a Ghanaian father, a United Nations official who died when she was 13. Both books tell remarkable stories of displacement, heartache and resilience.

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (Bodley Head) is another tale of extraordinary resilience, as the artist Ai Weiwei vividly reflects on his own life and that of his father, who was a poet. Both men fell foul of the Chinese authorities: Ai’s father, Ai Qing, was exiled to a place nicknamed “Little Siberia”, where he lived with his young son in a dug-out pit with a roof made from mud and branches, while Ai himself was imprisoned in 2011 for 11 weeks on spurious tax charges. Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Penguin) is a beautifully written account of life under a crumbling Stalinist system in Albania and the shock and chaos of what came next. In telling her story and examining the political systems in which she was raised, the author and LSE professor asks tough questions about the nature of freedom.

In Maybe I Don’t Belong Here (Bluebird), the actor David Harewood lays bare his struggles with racial injustice and mental illness, and shows how these things are connected. Harewood’s childhood was punctuated by racist abuse; later, as he tried to get his career off the ground, he was bullied by colleagues and critics. At 23, he had a psychotic breakdown during which it took six police officers to restrain him, and was dispatched to a psychiatric ward where, he learns from his hospital records, he was described as a “large black man” and administered drugs at four times the recommended dose. His recollections of his unravelling, treatment and recovery are acutely drawn.

Both/And: A Life in Many World Huma Abedin

Huma Abedin’s electrifying memoir Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds (Simon & Schuster) grapples with her multiple identities as a woman with Indian parents, who was born in Michigan and raised in Saudi Arabia. It is also a brave and unflinching account of her job as aide to Hillary Clinton and her years as the wife of Anthony Weiner , the congressman at the centre of a sexting scandal that landed him in prison, prompted an investigation by child services and ultimately derailed Clinton’s presidential campaign. Of the night Abedin learned her work emails had been discovered on her husband’s laptop, which would lead to the FBI reopening its investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, she recalls: “I wrote one line in my notebook. ‘I do not know how I am going to survive this. Help me God.’”

The actor Brian Cox lost his father to pancreatic cancer when he was eight years old, his mother battled with mental illness and his childhood was one of almost Dickensian poverty. But you won’t find self-pity in his meandering but amusingly irreverent memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat (Quercus). Instead, we get a whistlestop tour of his working life, during which he takes entertaining pot-shots at Johnny Depp (“overrated”), Steven Seagal (“ludicrous”) and Edward Norton (“a pain in the arse”).

Frances Wilson Burning Man- The Ascent of DH Lawrence

Finally, two terrific biographies. Frances Wilson’s smart and scholarly Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence (Bloomsbury) paints a vivid picture of a brilliant writer who was “censored and worshipped” in his lifetime, and remained furious at the world and at those not sufficiently cognisant of his genius.

And Paula Byrne’s The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (William Collins), about the British postwar novelist whom Philip Larkin compared to Jane Austen, is a touching and revealing portrait of a flawed romantic and a free spirit.

Autobiography and memoir
Best books of 2021
Best books of the year
Biography books

Best Biographies

The best biographies of 2023: the national book critics circle shortlist, recommended by elizabeth taylor.

Winner of the 2023 NBCC biography prize

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

Talented biographers examine the interplay between individual qualities and greater social forces, explains Elizabeth Taylor —chair of the judges for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Here, she offers us an overview of their five-book shortlist, including a garlanded account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover and a group biography of post-war female philosophers.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge

Mr. B: George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century by Jennifer Homans

The Best Biographies of 2023: The National Book Critics Circle Shortlist - Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill & Rachael Wiseman

Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill & Rachael Wiseman

The Best Biographies of 2023: The National Book Critics Circle Shortlist - Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs

Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs

The Best Biographies of 2023: The National Book Critics Circle Shortlist - G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

1 G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

2 the grimkés: the legacy of slavery in an american family by kerri k. greenidge, 3 mr. b: george balanchine’s twentieth century by jennifer homans, 4 metaphysical animals: how four women brought philosophy back to life by clare mac cumhaill & rachael wiseman, 5 up from the depths: herman melville, lewis mumford, and rediscovery in dark times by aaron sachs.

I t’s a pleasure to have you back , Elizabeth—this time to discuss the National Book Critics Circle’s 2023 biography shortlist. You’ve been chair of the judging panel for a while, so you’re in a great position to tell us whether it has been a good year for biography.

That comes through in the shortlist, I think. There’s a real range here. I think any reader is bound to find something to appeal to their tastes.

Shaping a shortlist seems quite like arranging a bouquet. A clutch of peony, begonia, or orchid stems…each may be lovely, an exemplar in its own way. We aspire to assemble a glorious arrangement—a quintet of blooms that reflect the wildly varied human experiences represented in the verdant garden of biography.

Let’s talk about G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century first, then, shall we? It is your 2023 winner of the NBCC’s prize for best biography; it also won a Pulitzer Prize . It’s also, and correct me if I’m wrong, the most traditional of the biographies that made the list.

G-Man is traditional in as much as Beverly Gage captures the full sweep of Hoover’s life, cradle to grave: 1895 to 1972. In that way, structurally G-Man sits aside the epics of David McCullough ( Truman , John Adams ) and Ron Chernow ( Grant , Alexander Hamilton ).

Unlike those valorized national leaders, Hoover answered to no voters. The quintessential ‘Government Man,’ a counselor and advisor to eight U.S. presidents , of both political parties, he was one of the most powerful, unelected government officials in history. He reigned over the Federal Bureau of Investigations from 1924 to 1972. Hoover began as a young reformer and—as he accrued power—was simultaneously loathed and admired. Through Hoover, Gage skilfully guides readers through the full arc of 20th-century America, and contends: “We cannot know our own story without understanding his.”

In G-Man , Yale University professor Gage untangles the contradictions in Hoover’s aspirations and cruelty, and locates the paradoxical American story of tensions and anxieties over security, masculinity, and race.

“This year, many biographies were deeply rooted in American soil that required years of research to till”

Hoover lived his entire life in Washington D.C., and Gage entwines his story in the city’s evolution into a global power center and delves deeply into the dark childhood that led him to remain there for college. Critical to understanding Hoover, Gage demonstrates, was his embrace of the Kappa Alpha fraternity; its worldview was informed by Robert E. Lee and the ‘Lost Cause’ of the South , in which racial equality was unacceptable. He shaped the F.B.I. in his image and recruited Kappa Alpha men to the Bureau.

For Hoover, Gage writes, Kappa Alpha was a way to measure character, political sympathies, and, of course, loyalty. One of those men was Clyde Tolson, and Gage documents their trips to nightclubs, the racetrack, vacations, and White House receptions. Hoover did not acknowledge that he and Tolson were a couple, but in the end their separate burial plots were a few yards from one another.

While Hoover feels very much alive on the page, Gage captures the full sweep of American history, chronicling events from the hyper-nationalism of the early part of the century, moving into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., making use of newly unclassified documents. When Hoover’s F.B.I. targeted Nazis and gangsters, there was clarity about good guys and bad guys. But by the mid-century, as the nation began to fracture, he regarded calls for peace and justice as threats to national security. Among the abuses of power committed by Hoover’s F.B.I., for instance, was the wiretapping and harassment of King.

Beyond Hoover’s malfeasance, Gage emphasizes that Hoover was no maverick. He tapped into a dark part of the national psyche and had public opinion on his side. Through Hoover, Americans could see themselves, and, as Gage argues, “what we valued and refused to see.”

A biography like this does make you realize how deeply world events might be impacted or even partially predicted by the family background or the personalities of a small number of key individuals.

We should step through the rest of the books on your 2023 biography shortlist. Let’s start with Kerri K. Greenidge’s The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family , which is the story not only of the Grimké Sisters Sarah and Angelina, two well-known abolitionists, but Black members of their family as well.

I was eager to read The Grimkés as I had admired Greenidge’s earlier biography, Black Radical , about Boston civil rights leader and abolitionist newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter. Greenidge, a professor at Tufts University, brings her unique, perceptive eye to African American civil rights in the North.

Now Greenidge’s The Grimkés sits on my bookshelf next to The Hemingses of Monticello , the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Annette Gordon-Reed who exposed the contradictions of one of the most venerated figures in American history, Thomas Jefferson. In the Grimke family, Greenidge has found a gnarled family tree, deeply rooted in generations of trauma.

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke have been exalted as brave heroines who defied antebellum Southern piety and headed northward to embrace abolition. Greenridge makes the powerful case that, in clinging to this mythology, a more troubling story is obscured. In the North, as the Grimké sisters lived comfortably and agitated for change, they enjoyed the financial benefits of their slaveholding family in South Carolina.

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After the Civil War, they learned that their brute of a brother had fathered at least two sons with a woman whom he had enslaved. The sisters provided some financial assistance in the education of these two young men, one attended Harvard Law School and the other Princeton Divinity School—and did not let their nephews forget it.

Not only does Greenidge provide a revisionist history of the Grimke sisters, but she also takes account of the full Grimké family and extends their story beyond the 19th century. She delves into the dynamics of racial subordination and how free white men who conceive children — whether from rape or a relationship spanning decades with enslaved women—destroy families. Generations of children are haunted by this history. Poignantly, Greenidge evokes the life and work of the sisters’ grandniece Angelina (‘Nana’) Weld Grimké , a talented—and troubled—queer playwright and poet, who carried the heavy weight of the generational trauma she inherited.

This sounds like a family saga of the kind you might be more likely to find in fiction.

Let’s turn to Mr B . : George Balanchine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans, the story of the noted choreographer. Why did this make your shortlist of the best biographies of 2023?

The perfect match of biographer and subject! A dancer who trained with Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in New York and is now dance critic for The New Yorker, Homans has written a biography of the man known as ‘the Shakespeare of Dance.’ In felicitous prose, Homans channels the dancer’s experience onto the page, from the body movements that can produce such beauty to the aching tendons and ligaments. Training is transformation, Homan writes, and working with Balanchine was a kind of metamorphosis tangled with pain. She evokes the dances so vividly that one can almost hear the music.

“At the heart of biography is the quest to understand the interplay between individual and social forces”

Homans captures Balanchine in a constant state of reinvention, tracing his life from Czarist Russia to Weimar Berlin , finally making his way to post-war New York where he revitalized the world of ballet by embracing modernish, founding New York City Ballet in 1948. Balanchine was genius whose personal history shape-shifted over the years. Homans grounds Mr. B in more than a hundred interviews, and draws from archives around the world.

Homans captures Balanchine’s charisma and cultural importance, but Mr. B. is no hagiography. Homans grasps the knot of sex and power over women used in his work. He married four times, always to dancers. They were all the same kind of swan-necked, long-waisted, long-limbed women, and although Homans does not write this, his company often sounds more like a cult than art.

And, of course, there is the matter of weight, which Homans dealt with directly, as did Balanchine. He posted a sign: ‘BEFORE YOU GET YOUR PAY—YOU MUST WEIGH.’

I don’t think I’ve ever considered reading a ballet biography before, but it sounds fascinating.

The next book on the NBCC’s 2023 biography shortlist brings us to Oxford, England. This is Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman.

At the outset of World War II , a quartet of young women, Oxford students—Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley—were “bored of listening to men talk about books by men about men,” as Mac Cumhaill, a Durham University professor, and Wiseman, a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, write. In their marvelous group biography, MacCumhaill and Wiseman vivify how the friendships of these women congealed to bring “philosophy back to life.”

As their male counterparts departed for the front lines, this brilliant group of women came together in their dining halls and shared lodging quarters to challenge the thinking of their male colleagues. In the shadows of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, these friends rejected the logical positivists who favoured empirical scientific questions. They didn’t really create a distinct philosophical approach as much as they shared an interest in the metaphysics of morals.

Brilliant. A book that is ostensibly ‘improving’ but which turns out to be absolutely chock-full of gossip sounds perfect to me. Let’s move on to the fourth book on the NBCC’s 2023 biography shortlist, which is Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs.

A biography about writing biography ! Very meta, and very much in the interdisciplinary tradition of American Studies. In his gorgeous braid of cultural history, Cornell University professor Sachs entwines the lives and work of poet and fiction writer Herman Melville (1819-1891) and the philosopher and literary critic Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), illuminating their coextending concerns about their worlds in crisis.

While Melville is now firmly ensconced in the American canon, most appreciation and respect for him was posthumous. The 20th-century Melville revival was largely sparked by a now overlooked Mumford, once so prominent that he appeared on a 1936 Time magazine cover.

Sachs brilliantly provides the connective tissue between Melville and his biographer Mumford so that these writers seem to be in conversation with one another, both deeply affected by their dark times.

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As Mumford grappled with tragedies wrought by World War I, the 1918 flu pandemic and urban decay, Melville had dealt with the bloody Civil War , slavery , and industrialization. In a certain way, this book is about the art of biography itself, two writers wrestling with modernity in a bleak world. In delving into Melville’s angst, Mumford was thrust into great turmoil. Sachs evokes so clearly and painfully this bond that almost did Mumford in, and writes that “Melville, it turns out, was Mumford’s white whale.”

There’s a real sense of range in this shortlist. But do you get a sense of there being certain trends in biography as a genre in 2023?

In many ways, this is a golden era for biography. There are fewer dull but worthy books, more capacious and improvisational ones. More series of short biographies that pack a big punch. We see more group biographies and illustrated biographies. But just as figures and groups once considered marginal are being centered, records that document those lives are vanishing.

The crisis in local news and the homogenization of national and international news will soon be a crisis for biographers and historians. Where would historians be without the ‘slave narratives’ from the Federal Writers Project , or the Federal Theatre Project ? Reconstruction of public events—federal elections, national tragedies, and so on—may be possible, but we lose that wide spectrum of human experience. We need to preserve these artifacts and responses to events as they happen. Biographies are time-consuming labors of love and passion, and are often expensive to produce. We need to ensure that we are generating and saving the emails, the records, the to-do lists of ordinary life.

The affluent among us will always be able to commission histories of their companies or families, but are those the only ones that will endure?

June 30, 2023

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Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor is a co-author of American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley; His Battle for Chicago and the Nation with Adam Cohen, with whom she also cofounded The National Book Review. She has chaired four Pulitzer Prize juries, served as president of the National Book Critics Circle, and presided over the Harold Washington Literary Award selection committee three times. Former Time magazine correspondent in New York and Chicago and long-time literary editor of the Chicago Tribune, she is working on a biography of women in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras for Liveright/W.W. Norton.

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The Best Memoirs of 2023

These ten books explore what it means to be a person..

The beauty of memoir is its resistance to confinement: We contain multitudes, so our methods of introspection must, too. This year’s best memoirs perfectly showcase such variety. Some are sparse, slippery — whole lives pieced together through fragmented memories, letters to loved ones, recipes, mythology, scripture. Some tease the boundary between truth and fiction. Others elevate straightforward narratives by incorporating political theory, philosophy, and history. The authors of each understand that one’s life — and more significantly, one’s self — can’t be contained in facts. After all, the facts as we remember them aren’t really facts. It’s their openness and experimentation that allow, at once, intimacy and universality, provoking some of our biggest questions: How does a person become who they are? What makes up an identity? What are the stories we tell ourselves, and why do they matter? These books might not spell out the answers for you, but they’ll certainly push you toward them.

10. Hijab Butch Blues , by Lamya H

NYC-based organizer Lamya H (a pseudonym) has described her memoir as “unapologetically queer and unapologetically Muslim .” What this looks like is a book that isn’t so much grappling with or reconciling two conflicting identities, but rather lovingly examining the ways each has supported and strengthened the other. Lamya provides close, queer readings of the Quran, drawing connections between its stories and her own experiences of persecution as a brown girl growing up in an (unnamed) Arab country with strict colorist hierarchies. Beginning with her study of the prophet Maryam — whose virgin pregnancy and general rejection of men brings a confused 14-year-old Lamya real relief during Quran class — Lamya draws on various religious figures to track her political, spiritual, and sexual coming of age, jumping back and forth in time as she grows from a struggling child into a vital artist and activist.

9. Better Living Through Birding , by Christian Cooper

On May 25, 2020, birder Christian Cooper was walking the Central Park Ramble when he asked a white woman on the same path to leash her dog. She refused, he started recording, and after both he and his sister posted the video on social media , the whole world saw her call 911 and falsely claim that an African American man was threatening both her and her dog. Cooper quickly found himself at the center of an urgent conversation about weaponized whiteness and police brutality against Black men in the U.S., amplified by another devastating video circulating that same day: George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. Many will pick up Cooper’s memoir for his account of the interaction that captured international attention and forever changed his life — and it is a powerful, damning examination — but it is far from the main event. By the time it shows up, Cooper has already given us poignant recollections of growing up Black and gay (and in the closet) in 1970s Long Island, a loving analysis of science fiction, a behind-the-scenes look at the comic-book industry as it broke through to the mainstream, and most significantly, an impassioned ode to and accessible education on recreational birding. (The audiobook comes with interstitial birdsong!) Recalling his time at Harvard, Cooper turns repeatedly to his love of his English classes, and this background comes through in his masterful writing. An already prolific writer in the comic-book space, his memoir marks his first (and hopefully not last) foray into the long-form territory.

8. Love and Sex, Death and Money , by McKenzie Wark

McKenzie Wark is one of the sharpest, most exciting voices writing at the intersections of capitalism, community, gender, and sex — more broadly, everything in this title — and she is also criminally underread. In her epistolary memoir Love and Sex … , she looks at a lifetime of transitions — journeys not only through her gender, but also politics, art, relationships, and aging — and reflects on all the ways she has become the woman she is today, in letters to the people who helped shape her. Wark’s first letter is, fittingly, directed to her younger self. She acknowledges their infinite possible futures and that, in this way, this younger Wark on the brink of independence is the one most responsible for setting her on the path to this specific future. In theory, it’s a letter to offer clarity, even guidance, to this younger self, but really it’s a means of listening to and learning from her. Her letters to mothers, lovers, and others are as much, if not more, about Wark as they are about the recipients, but that self-reflection doubles as a testament to the recipients’ power. What comes across most strongly is Wark’s belief in ongoing evolution and education, and it’s hard not to leave inspired by that possibility.

7. A Man of Two Faces , by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen’s memoir maintains the singular voice of his fiction: audacious, poetic, self-aware. Written in nonlinear second-person stream of consciousness — its disjointedness represented on the page by paragraphs volleying from left to right alignment across the page — A Man of Two Faces recounts his life as a Vietnamese refugee in the U.S. When his family moves from wartime Vietnam to San Jose, California, 4-year-old Nguyen is placed in a different sponsor home than the rest of his family. The separation is brief, but it sets a tone of alienation that continues throughout his life — both from his parents, who left their home in pursuit of safety but landed in a place with its own brand of violence, and from his new home. As he describes his journey into adulthood and academia, Nguyen incorporates literary and cultural criticism, penetrating analyses of political history and propaganda, and poignant insights about memory and trauma.

6. Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere , by Maria Bamford

It’s safe to say alt-comedian Maria Bamford’s voice isn’t for everyone. Those who get her anti-stand-up stand-up get it and those who don’t, don’t. Her absurdist, meta series Lady Dynamite revealed the work of a woman learning to recognize and love her brilliant weirdness, and in Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult , she channels that weirdness into a disarmingly earnest, more accessible account of both fame and mental illness. Centered on Bamford’s desperate pursuit of belonging, and the many, often questionable places it’s led her — church, the comedy scene, self-actualization conferences, 12-step groups, each of which she puts under the umbrella of the titular “cults” — Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult is egoless, eye-opening, uncomfortable, and laugh-out-loud funny. These are among the best qualities — maybe even prerequisites — of an effective mental-illness memoir, and Bamford’s has earned its keep in the top tier. If you’re thinking of skipping it because you haven’t connected with Bamford’s work before: don’t.

5. In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation , by Isabel Zapata

In Isabel Zapata’s intimate, entrancing memoir In Vitro , the Mexican poet brazenly breaks what she calls “the first rule of in vitro fertilization”: never talk about it. Originally published in Spanish in 2021, and with original drawings woven throughout, In Vitro is a slim collection of short, discrete pieces. Its fragments not only describe the invasive process and its effects on her mind and body, but also contextualize its lineage, locating the deep-seated draw of motherhood and conception, analyzing the inheritances of womanhood, and speaking directly to her potential child. All together, it becomes something expansive — an insightful personal history but also a brilliant philosophical text about the very nature of sacrifice and autonomy.

4. The Night Parade , by Jami Nakamura Lin

When Jami Nakamura Lin was 17 years old, she checked herself into a psych ward and was diagnosed bipolar. After years experiencing disorienting periods of rage, the diagnosis offers validation — especially for her historically dismissive parents — but it doesn’t provide the closure that mainstream depictions of mental illness promise. In The Night Parade , intriguingly categorized as a speculative memoir, Lin explains that if a story is good, it “collapses time”; in other words, it has no beginning or end. Chasing this idea, Lin turns to the stories of her Japanese, Taiwanese, and Okinawan heritage, using their demons, spirits, and monsters to challenge ideas of recovery and resituate her feelings of otherness. Intertwined in this pursuit is her grappling with the young death of her father and the birth of her daughter after a traumatic miscarriage. Extensively researched — citing not only folklore but also scholars of history, literary, and mythology — and elevated by her sister Cori Nakamura Lin’s lush illustrations, The Night Parade is both an entirely new perspective on bipolar disorder and a fascinating education in mythology by an expert who so clearly loves the material. It might be Lin’s first book, but it possesses the self-assurance, courage, and mastery of a seasoned writer.

3. Doppelganger , by Naomi Klein

After the onset of the COVID pandemic, as the U.S. devolved into frenzied factions, sociopolitical analyst Naomi Klein found herself in the middle of her own bewildering drama: A substantial population, especially online, began to either confuse or merge her with Naomi Wolf, a writer who’d gone from feminist intellectual to anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist. Klein’s initial bemusement becomes real concern verging on obsession as she fixates on her sort-of doppelgänger and starts questioning the stability of her identity. Klein becomes entangled in the world of her opposite, tracing the possible pipelines from leftism to alt-right and poking at the cracks in our convictions. Throughout, she nails the uncanniness of our digital existence, the ways constant performance of life both splinters and constrains the self. What happens when we sacrifice our humanity in the pursuit of a cohesive personal brand? And when we’re this far gone, is there any turning back?

2. The Woman in Me , by Britney Spears

Throughout the yearslong campaign to release Britney Spears from a predatory conservatorship , the lingering conspiracy theories questioning its success , and the ongoing cultural discourse about the ways public scrutiny has harmed her, what has largely been missing is Spears’s own voice. In her highly anticipated memoir, she lays it all out: her upbringing in a family grappling with multiple generations of abuse, the promise and betrayal of stardom, her exploitation and manipulation by loved ones, and the harrowing, dehumanizing realities of her conservatorship . These revelations are tempered by moments of genuine joy she’s found in love, motherhood, and singing, though it’s impossible to read these recollections without anticipating the loss — or at least the complication — of these joys. Most touching are her descriptions of her relationships with her sons; her tone is conversational, but it resonates with deep, undying devotion. It’s an intimate story, and one that forces questions about our treatment of mental illness, the ethics of psychiatric practices, the relationships between public figures and their fans, and the effects of fame — especially on young women. Justice for Britney, forever.

1. Pulling the Chariot of the Sun , by Shane McCrae

When Shane McCrae was 3 years old, his white maternal grandparents told his Black father they were taking Shane on a camping trip. It wasn’t the first time they’d done so, but this time, they never returned. What followed was a life full of instability, abuse, and manipulation, while his grandparents — including a grandfather who had, more than once, trawled cities for Black men to attack — convinced McCrae his father had abandoned him and that his Blackness was a handicap. It’s clear McCrae is first and foremost a poet; the rhythm of his prose and his hypnotic evocation of sensory memory reveals the way a lifetime of lies affected his grasp on his past. Maybe he can’t trust the facts of his past, but he certainly knows what it felt like, what it looked like. As he excavates and untangles muddied memories, contends with ambivalent feelings about his grandmother and mother, and ultimately comes to terms with their unforgivable robbery of a relationship with both his father and his true, full self, McCrae’s pain bleeds through his words — but so too does a gentle sense of acceptance. We are lucky to bear witness.

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celebrity memoirs
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maria bamford
year in culture
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The 14 fall 2023 pop culture memoirs and biographies we're most excited to read

From Barbra to Peloton instructors, there's no shortage of great pop culture reads this fall.

Here at EW, we're pop culture junkies.

If there's a behind-the-scenes story or a personal hot take from a celeb, we are here for it. Chances are, if you're reading this you are too. And this fall, there is no shortage of engrossing, juicy new memoirs and biographies shedding light on all corners of the entertainment industry.

From Old Hollywood (Charlie Chaplin, Lena Horne, Greta Grabo) to the music industry (Barbra Streisand, Britney Spears, Geddy Lee) to the virtual gym (Cody Rigsby), pop culture figures across the gamut are telling their stories (or receiving new evaluation) in a slew of new titles hitting shelves this season.

Here are the 14 pop culture memoirs and biographies we're most excited about in fall 2023.

Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo by Lois W. Banner

Historian and biographer Lois Banner ( Marilyn: The Passion and The Paradox ) takes one of Hollywood's most enigmatic figures as her latest subject. Drawing on over a decade of research in archives across Sweden, Germany, France, and the United States, Banner examines the shadowy personal life of the woman most famous for stating, "I want to be alone." While Garbo captivated audiences with her beauty and mysterious persona, this book offers an insightful portrait of her private life, interrogating her feminism, sexuality, mental health, and more. Garbo rose to fame on the silent screen, but this new biography gives voice to her life in unparalleled fashion. (Sept. 5) — Maureen Lee Lenker

XOXO, Cody by Cody Rigsby

With XOXO Cody , the beloved Peloton instructor shows he has range. His memoir aims to make readers laugh and tear up in equal measure. He delivers his hot takes and humorous advice about living life right while also diving into the difficult moments in his life that shaped the adult he is. As he delves into growing up gay and his issues with his parents, Rigsby provides an opportunity for folks to get to know him better. XOXO Cody is inspiring and raw, but also a great reminder that laughing our way through something is a solid option. (Sept. 12) — Alamin Yohannes

Leslie F*cking Jones by Leslie Jones

Saturday Night Live alum Leslie Jones is known for her disarming frankness, and in her new memoir, Leslie F*cking Jones , the comic invites readers even deeper inside her brutally honest thoughts. Jones' sense of humor is intact even as she opens up about her experiences with childhood sexual abuse, abortion, and family tragedy, as well as the racism and sexism she's fought in stand-up comedy and from online trolls who made her life hell after she was cast in the women-led Ghostbusters . SNL fans will be especially interested in her tales from the show, including who she did and did not get along with, and hilarious details of an unaired sketch about killing Whoopi Goldberg . (Sept. 19) —Jillian Sederholm

Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy by Stephen M. Silverman

Stephen Sondheim may have died in 2021, but his spirit lives on among the Broadway faithful. This month alone marks the premiere of the third Sondheim revival since his passing, as well as the premiere of Here We Are , a posthumous presentation of the Luis Buñuel-inspired musical he was working on until the end. Somewhere between a biography and a coffee-table book, Stephen M. Silverman's new title makes a perfect companion to our current age of Sondheim remembrance. The master of the modern musical is chronicled with textual highlights of his life story (with Sondheim's sardonic wit on display in frequent direct quotes), but also helpfully accompanied by many, many photos of his legendary Broadway career — and the actors, artists, and celebrities he crossed paths with along the way. (Sept. 19) — Christian Holub

Thicker Than Water by Kerry Washington

In her memoir, Kerry Washington bares it all. After a long-kept family secret is revealed, the actress and producer looks back at her life to share what she has overcome and learned over the years. From past traumas to wisdom she's received through her roles, Washington is bringing fans into her world like never before. Through these stories, she tells readers of her fight to redevelop her own understanding of family as she started her own. Thicker Than Water is a poignant and captivating exploration of how she became the woman she is today. (Sept. 26) — A.Y.

Worthy by Jada Pinkett Smith

Though Jada Pinkett Smith has spent the last couple of years peeling back the layers on Red Table Talk , she still feels like people misunderstand her. In Worthy, she attempts to tell her story, her way. From Baltimore to Hollywood, and through suicidal ideation to self-acceptance and healing, Pinkett Smith recounts her journey to reflection and healing. (Oct. 4) — Yolanda Machado

Thank You: Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin by Sly Stone

In the late '60s, Sly Stone was the embodiment of cool, an impossibly stylish funk master and preternatural hitmaker. He was also a man who carted around a violin case filled with cocaine wherever he'd go. If his drug use could conjure magic in the studio, it also destroyed the Sly and the Family Stone frontman's relationships, wiped out his earnings, and made him a recluse. Now 80 years old and sober, the living legend is finally releasing his memoir, a cautionary tale and the story of one of rock's true great visionaries. (Oct. 17) — Jason Lamphier

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

Britney Spears is finally ready to tell her story the way she's never been able to before. One of the world's biggest and most misunderstood pop icons is releasing her memoir, The Woman In Me , a little over two years after revealing harrowing details in open court about how her life wasn't her own under the conservatorship of her father for over 13 years. Now that the court-ordered conservatorship has been dissolved, Spears' chronicles her "brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope," allowing her fans to finally see the woman behind the music. (Oct. 24) — Sydney Bucksbaum

Being Henry: The Fonz...and Beyond by Henry Winkler

The guy who played one of the coolest characters ever on-screen is also known as one of the nicest ever off it. So how exactly did mild mannered Henry Winkler transform himself into the Fonz? The Emmy-winning actor takes us inside his original Happy Days audition as part of a memoir that goes through Winkler's entire career — from The Lords of Flatbush through Barry . And yes, he explains in full detail why in the world he jumped that damn shark. (Oct. 31) —Dalton Ross

Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed by Donald Bogle

Donald Bogle, revered historian of Black Hollywood, tackles one of the most iconic Black Golden Age stars — Lena Horne. Using a combination of interviews, press accounts, studio archives, and historical research, Bogle offers up a lush portrait of Horne, from her professional triumphs and bitter disappointments to her activism and role in breaking barriers for Black performers and Black women throughout her career. Bogle tells Horne's story accompanied by stunning photographs in this coffee table-style book that allows for never-before-published images of Horne to shine. (Oct. 31) — M.L.L.

Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman

While Charlie Chaplin's life has been chronicled many times, biographer Scott Eyman ( John Wayne: The Life and Legend; Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise ) drills down on Chaplin's fall from grace and exile from America in the back half of the Little Tramp's career. In the wake of the Red Scare and Chaplin's own sexual scandals, he was denied re-entry into the United States in 1952 following a trip to Europe. Eyman examines the events leading to this exile, the political turmoil at play, and Chaplin's years making his final two films in London. It's both a fascinating historical study and a cautionary tale about the perils of hysteria and extremism pervading government practices. (Oct. 31) — M.L.L.

My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

For years now, Barbra Streisand has spoken of her long-gestating memoir, and it's finally here. In her inimitable way, Streisand tells the story of her life, from her childhood in Brooklyn to her legendary Broadway breakout in Funny Girl to her success in Hollywood as an actress and director. Full of her signature frankness and dry humor, the memoir gives fans an unprecedented look at Streisand's life, from her personal struggles to her professional triumphs, all with a reminder that through the decades, nobody was going to rain on her parade. (Nov. 7) — M.L.L.

My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee

Living in the limelight may be the universal dream for some, but for Rush frontman Geddy Lee, it's simply another chapter in his effin' excellent life. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer — who played bass, keyboards, and sang on the progressive rock band's biggest hits — holds nothing back in his highly-anticipated memoir. From being named after his grandfather who was murdered during the Holocaust to sharing intimate tales of life on the road with bandmates Alex Lifeson and the late Neil Peart, Lee puts aside the alienation and gets on with the fascination surrounding his extraordinary life in an honest, hilarious, and heartfelt way all his own. (Nov. 14) — Emlyn Travis

The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story by Sam Wasson

If he had only made The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola would already be remembered as one of the most successful American directors of all time. But his ambitions always went far beyond that, and the filmmaker promises he has one more masterpiece on the way in the form of the mysterious utopian magnum opus Megalopolis . This new book by Sam Wasson (who already proved himself one of the great modern chroniclers of the New Hollywood era with the Chinatown making-of story The Big Goodbye ) chronicles the road to heaven Coppola trod after descending to Hell with Apocalypse Now. The Vietnam War epic is already the subject of much reporting, but Wasson boasts unprecedented access to Coppola's personal archive — as well as a first-hand look at the making of a movie we can't wait to see. (Nov. 28) — C.H.

Spring 2024 Adult Preview: Memoirs & Biographies

Among the season’s most anticipated biographies and memoirs are experimental works from familiar names, personal histories that reframe the American past, and debut memoirs from Christine Blasey Ford, Leslie Jamison, and RuPaul.

All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians

Phil Elwood. Holt, June 25 ($28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-32157-2)

Elwood, a former PR professional in Washington, D.C., pulls back the curtain on his work for the Qatari government, Muammar Gaddafi, and other clients.

Alphabetical Diaries

Sheila Heti. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Feb. 6 ($27, ISBN 978-0-374-61078-4)

Heti follows up Pure Colour with a formal experiment in which she rearranges sentences from 10 years’ worth of personal journal entries in alphabetical order.

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

Kara Swisher. Simon & Schuster, Feb. 27 ($30, ISBN 978-1-982163-89-1)

Swisher recounts her career reporting on the tech industry, from covering the rise of Silicon Valley in the early 1990s to sit-downs with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and other titans who’ve shaped the 21st century, for better and worse.

The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir

RuPaul. Dey Street, Mar. 5 ($29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-326390-1)

The trailblazing drag performer and television host chronicles his turbulent San Diego, Calif., childhood, early days in the Atlanta and New York City punk scenes, and unlikely ascent to stardom.

Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People

Tiya Miles. Penguin Press, June 18 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-49116-4)

National Book Award winner Miles seeks to render the larger-than-life abolitionist on a human scale by focusing on Tubman’s relationships with the natural world and other enslaved women.

Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong

Katie Gee Salisbury. Dutton, Mar. 12 ($32, ISBN 978-0-593-18398-4)

Salisbury debuts with a biography of actor Wong, who in the 1920s became the first Asian American star of a major motion picture.

One Way Back: A Memoir

Christine Blasey Ford. St. Martin’s, Mar. 19 ($29, ISBN 978-1-250-28965-0)

Blasey Ford documents her life before, during, and after she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault at his 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

What Have We Here? Portraits of a Life

Billy Dee Williams. Knopf, Feb. 13 ($32, ISBN 978-0-593-31860-7)

The Star Wars star chronicles his Harlem childhood, early theater career, and onscreen achievements.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story

Leslie Jamison. Little, Brown, Feb. 20 ($29, ISBN 978-0-316-37488-0)

For her debut memoir, the author of The Empathy Exams takes a microscope to her fraying marriage, comparing it to her parents’ own bond and examining her feelings about motherhood in the process.

Whiskey Tender: A Memoir

Deborah Taffa. Harper, Feb. 27 ($32, ISBN 978-0-06-328851-5)

Taffa interweaves an account of growing up on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico in the 1970s and ’80s with reflections on major events in the history of Native relations with America’s European settlers and their descendants.

Memoirs & Biographies longlist

Abrams Press

Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir by Zoë Bossiere (Apr. 17, $27, ISBN 978-1-4197-7318-1) recounts how the author began living as a boy after moving with their family to an Arizona trailer park as an 11-year-old, before arriving at a more complicated gender identity as they grew older.

Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer by Joyce Carol Oates, edited by Greg Johnson (Mar. 5, $28.95, ISBN 978-1-63614-116-9), collects Oates’s correspondence with writer Johnson, covering the details of her writing practice, private travels, and musings on art and culture.

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon (Feb. 20, $29, ISBN 978-1-64375-349-2) weaves more than 20 recipes into Nguon’s account of her family’s experiences during the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s.

The Moment: Thoughts on the Race Reckoning That Wasn’t and How We All Can Move Forward Now by Bakari Sellers (Apr. 23, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-308502-2). The CNN commentator and former South Carolina state representative recounts his reaction to the 2020 police killing of George Floyd and reflects on subjects from voting rights to policing.

The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America by Sara B. Franklin (May 28, $30, ISBN 978-1- 982134-34-1). In the first biography of Jones, Franklin examines the Knopf editor’s work on such classics as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and The Art of French Cooking , pulling from interviews with her colleagues and previously unseen personal papers.

Dancing on the Edge: A Journey of Living, Loving, and Tumbling Through Hollywood by Russ Tamblyn and Sarah Tomlinson (Apr. 9, $28.99, ISBN 979-8-212-27331-2). Tamblyn discusses his life as a teen actor in the 1950s and ’60s, sharing anecdotes about his friendship with Neil Young, his 1958 Academy Award nomination, and the breakdown of his marriage.

I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv by Illia Ponomarenko (May 7, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-63973-387-3) sees the Ukrainian war correspondent providing a firsthand account of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico by Noé Álvarez (May 28, $26, ISBN 978-1-64622-089-2). In his second memoir, Álvarez writes of traversing the U.S. with his accordion in an attempt to better understand his late Mexican grandfather, who was also an accordion player.

Counterpoint

Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqwsˇəblu LaPointe (Mar. 5, $27, ISBN 978-1-64009-635-6) delves into the author’s Indigenous heritage, interweaving autobiography with anthropological research and reflections on art and music.

Outofshapeworthlessloser: A Memoir of Figure Skating, F*cking Up, and Figuring It Out by Gracie Gold (Feb. 6, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-593-44404-7). 2014 Olympic bronze medalist Gold reveals the private struggles with bulimia and suicidal ideation that accompanied her ascent in the public eye.

Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers (May 14, $35, ISBN 978-0-06-246372-2). NPR music critic Powers delivers a wide-ranging volume on the singer-songwriter that combines the author’s reflections and interviews with Mitchell’s contemporaries.

The Yankee Way: The Untold Inside Story of the Brian Cashman Era by Andy Martino (May 21, $30, ISBN 978-0-385-54999-8) draws from two years’ worth of interviews with Yankees general manager Cashman to deliver an inside look at the team’s 1998 and 2000 World Series victories, ego clashes, and more.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna (May 14, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-282523-0). The Bikini Kill frontwoman reflects on her adolescence in Washington State, the formation of the band, and her friendships with famous musicians including Kurt Cobain and Joan Jett.

A Darker Shade of Blue: A Police Officer’s Memoir by Keith Merith (Mar. 26, $21.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77041-679-6) chronicles the author’s years as a Black man working for Canada’s York Regional Police and shares strategies for police reform.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr (Mar. 19, $30, ISBN 978-1-250-06635-0). In the first full biography of Warhol superstar Darling, Carr documents the artist’s Long Island childhood, celebrity connections, and untimely death in 1974.

Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life: Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life by Joseph Epstein (Apr. 16, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-66800-963-5). The former American Scholar editor discusses his early life in Chicago, U.S. Army service, and exploits in New York City’s literary scene.

Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World by Rae Wynn-Grant (Apr. 2, $28, ISBN 978-1-63893-040-2) traces Grant’s trajectory from her childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area to becoming a prominent ecologist, cataloging the trials and triumphs of being a Black woman scientist.

Grand Central

Make It Count: My Fight to Become the First Transgender Olympic Runner by CeCé Telfer (June 18, $30, ISBN 978-1-5387-5624-9). Jamaica-born athlete Telfer discusses her coming-of-age, her coming out, and her path to becoming the first openly trans woman to win an NCAA championship.

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. by Manni Coe, illus. by Reuben Coe (May 7, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-77840-144-2), focuses on Manni’s removal of his brother, Reuben, who has Down syndrome, from a dreary English care home so the two could live together in a farm cottage.

My Mama, Cass: A Memoir by Owen Elliot-Kugell (May 7, $30, ISBN 978-0-306-83064-8) details the artistic and personal achievements of the author’s mother, musician Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas.

Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch (Mar. 5, $37.50, ISBN 978-0-06-269826-1). Biographer Gooch draws on new research from the late artist’s archives to delve into Haring’s life, work, and 1980s New York City milieu.

Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World by Craig Foster (Apr. 17, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-328902-4). The star and subject of the documentary My Octopus Teacher discusses his return to the Cape of Good Hope, where he was born, to conduct oceanic research.

Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew by Patti Davis (Feb. 6, $21.99, ISBN 978-1-324-09348-0) mixes anecdotes from Davis’s personal life with reflections on the thorny legacies of her parents, Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

On a Move: Philadelphia’s Notorious Bombing and a Native Son’s Lifelong Battle for Justice by Mike Africa Jr. (July 9, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-06-331887-8). Africa, whose parents were members of the Black liberation group MOVE, writes of being born in jail and being raised by his grandmother, and recounts the 1985 bombing of his parents’ commune by Philadelphia police.

Gri ef Is for People by Sloane Crosley (Feb. 27, $27, ISBN 978-0-374-60984-9). The essayist portrays her grief and confusion after her best friend died by suicide.

Melville House

Death Row Welcomes You: Visiting Hours in the Shadow of the Execution Chamber by Steven Hale (Mar. 19, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-61219-928-3). Journalist Hale collects his reporting on Tennessee’s death row inmates after the state resumed executions in 2018, including his experiences befriending some of the prisoners.

Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food by Michelle T. King (May 14, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-324-02128-5) braids together a biography of Taiwanese chef Fu, who helped popularize Chinese cooking with her television appearances in the mid-20th century, and stories from King’s own childhood in a food-centric Chinese American household.

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell (Apr. 9, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-66800-797-6) follows up Montell’s Cultish with a blend of memoir and cultural criticism that takes aim at the information age’s assistance of distorted thinking.

Beckett’s Children: A Literary Memoir by Michael Coffey (July 30, $17.95, ISBN 978-1-68219-608-3). The former co-editorial director of PW draws on his experiences as an adoptee and a father to examine the works of Samuel Beckett and poet Susan Howe, in light of unsubstantiated rumors that Beckett was her father.

Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Queer Histories by Diarmuid Hester (Feb. 6, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-63936-555-5) delves into lesser-known periods in the lives of notable queer artists, including James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, E.M. Forster, and Derek Jarman.

Penn State Univ.

With Darkness Came Stars by Audrey Flack (Feb. 27, $37.50, ISBN 978-0-271-09674-2) contains the groundbreaking photorealistic painter’s musings on her contemporaries, art practice, legacy, and motherhood.

PublicAffairs

In True Face: A Woman’s Life in the CIA, Unmasked by Jonna Mendez (Mar. 5, $30, ISBN 978-1-5417-0312-4) follows the author’s career arc from secretary to spy, recounting some of her most treacherous tours of duty and culminating in her promotion to the CIA’s chief of disguise.

Random House

How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone by Cameron Russell (Mar. 19, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-59548-0). The supermodel recounts her entry into the modeling industry at 16, subsequent disillusionment, and eventual resolution to organize for labor rights with her fellow models.

Feh by Shalom Auslander (July 23, $29, ISBN 978-0-7352-1326-5). The novelist delivers his first work of nonfiction since 2007’s Foreskin’s Lament , a memoir about his struggle to shake off generational guilt.

Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines by Carol Kino (Mar. 5, $29, ISBN 978-1-9821-1304-9). This dual biography covers the lives and careers of Frances and Kathryn McLaughlin, twin New York City magazine photographers in the 1930s and ’40s who acquired success before women were nudged back toward domestic duties in the ’50s.

Seven Stories

Breaking the Curse: A Memoir About Trauma, Healing, and Italian Witchcraft by Alex Difrancesco (June 4, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64421-384-1) swirls together self-help and memoir as the author reflects on the ways alternate spirituality helped bring them peace after addiction and transphobic attacks.

St. Martin’s

Rise of a Killah by Ghostface Killah (May 14, $35, ISBN 978-1-250-27427-4) takes an illustrated look at the life of the rapper and Wu-Tang Clan cofounder.

The Story Game by Shze-Hui Tjoa (May 21, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-959030-75-1). Singaporean writer Tjoa excavates memories lost to PTSD in this memoir of her childhood that’s structured as a mystery.

Union Square

Inconceivable: Super Sperm Donors, Off-the-Grid Insemination, and Unconventional Family Planning by Valerie Bauman (Apr. 16, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-4549-5143-8) describes the author’s plunge into an underground community of off-book sperm donors as she sought to become a single mother.

Ghosted: An American Story by Nancy French (Apr. 16, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-310-36744-4). French delivers a memoir about her difficult childhood in Appalachia, which she escaped by marrying a stranger and moving to New York City, where she started ghostwriting memoirs for conservative politicians.

This article has been updated with further information.

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Best biographies of all time to add to your 2024 reading list

Biographies are a surprisingly controversial endeavour due to their posthumous nature.

While the family’s estate controls the intellectual property of their loved ones after their passing, it’s not exactly possible to get express permission from the likes of George Washington or The Brontë Sisters before conducting a deep dive into their personal lives.

Vastly different to autobiographies, whereby the author seeks to recollect their own personal history, biographies are written by a third party who, through years of academic study, has become a veritable expert in the field.

Thomas Hardy had his second wife, Florence, write his biography before anyone else could. Any remnants of Hardy’s journals and personal notes which hadn’t been destroyed, Florence promptly burned following his death. Poet and author Phillip Larkin followed suit and had his diaries destroyed by a shredder. Sylvia Plath’s diary was burned by Ted Hughes.

Henry James famously deplored the concept of biographers. He destroyed all personal documents to “frustrate as utterly as possible the post-mortem exploiter,” according to Blake Morrison.

Biographies are often deemed by fiction lovers to be tired and obtrusively factual, but it was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s casual picking-up of a copy of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow which led him to create the award-winning, zeitgeist-shifting musical Hamilton between 2008 and 2015.

More recently, Christopher Nolan’s record-breaking Oppenheimer was based on the biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin which was published back in 2005.

While the moral conundrum of biographies endures, the creative and intellectual possibilities are endless. Unauthorised biographies, well, they’re an entirely different kettle of fish.

We’ve curated a selection of the best biographies of all time. Who knows, you might be reading the inspiration behind the next biggest Oscar winner.

American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

The inspiration behind Nolan’s Oscar-snagging film, American Prometheus delves into the psyche of physicist and polymath J. Robert Oppenheimer in a manner remarkably comparable to a Stephen King novel. The page-turning thriller is a meticulous account of the life and career of the man who invented the atomic bomb. As Christopher Nolan puts it, the 600-page feat is “a riveting account of one of history's most essential and paradoxical figures.”

Buy now £9.09, Amazon

The Dead Are Arising – The Life of Malcom X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Malcolm X biography is considered by many to be the best biography ever written. The Dead Are Arising is the product of an almost thirty-year mission conducted by journalist Les Payne to interview anyone and everyone who knew the historical figure – from family and friends to classmates, cellmates, FBI moles, police and global political leaders.

From his birth in 1925 to his assassination forty years later, Payne was determined to cover it all. This intricately woven and intimate biography was finished by Payne’s daughter and primary research partner, Tamara Payne, following her father’s death in 2018.

Buy now £7.53, Amazon

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

An exploration of the scientific discoveries and artistic feats which defined the end of the 18th century, Richard Holmes writes of how academic disciplines were united under one mutual concept: wonderment. Biographer of both Shelley and Coleridge, Holmes’ The Age of Wonder is an ambitious group biography of the generation’s thinkers and changemakers from Wordsworth to Keats and more.

Buy now £13.25, Amazon

Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann

Think of Ellmann’s celebrated biography as a distinct reanimation of the spirit of Oscar Wilde. Yet another Pulitzer Prize-winning account, the distinguished teacher and critic sails through the controversial and wildly talented life of Wilde with revelatory insights and immense pathos. A writer who turned Victorian society on its head, Ellmann’s biography covers everything from Wilde’s meteoric rise to his eventual imprisonment and death in exile.

Buy now £3.38, Amazon

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk

It’s incredibly rare to embark on a journey of higher education without coming across the work of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Whether you’re a linguist, historian, mathematician, literary critic or scientist, Wittgensteinianism has permeated the academic world, from his theory of atomic propositions to the philosophy of private language. Ray Monk’s celebrated biography embodies Wittgensteinian philosophy at its heart while crafting an enthralling picture of the influential figure.

Buy now £14.29, Amazon

The Brontë Myth, by Lucasta Miller

In this brilliant biography, Lucasta Miller seeks to dispel the myths which have emerged over the decades regarding Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Miller weaves in her personal experiences as a writer and journalist in order to reveal the innate paradox at the heart of biography writing, all the while teaching us about the lives of the Brontë sisters. Indeed, it’s no wonder her work has been described as a ‘metabiography’.

Buy now £11.35, Amazon

The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius

Considered to be the first biography ever written, The Twelve Caesars is a collection of biographies about Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of Rome. An incredibly significant primary source on Roman history to this day, it was written by the Roman historian Suetonius in AD 121 during the reign of Hadrian.

Buy now £10.11, Amazon

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

This touching biography by Sylvia Nasar covers the life of mathematician John Nash who, at 31 years old, was diagnosed with Schizophrenia following a devastating breakdown. Celebrated for his fundamental contributions to game theory, real algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential equations, Nash went on to win a Nobel Prize despite his illness.

Buy now £12.79, Amazon

Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. tackles the struggles of the Black Lives Matter movement in the 21st century by drawing insight from the writings of James Baldwin. Despite the horrifying feeling that history continues to repeat, Glaude Jr. delves into the life and career of the ‘poet of the revolution’ to reveal the devastating truth about race in America while calling for justice amidst disillusionment.

Buy now £9.19, Amazon

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Lin-Manuel Miranda famously spoke of how he thought Alexander Hamilton’s rags-to-riches story “out-Dickensed Dickens”. Indeed, Hamilton was an illegitimate self-taught orphan hailing from the Caribbean who somehow found his way to becoming George Washington's aide-de-camp and the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Though this biography is an eye-watering 832 pages, you’ll race through the awe-inspiring life of the soldier, politician, husband and father quicker than any Netflix drama.

Buy now £14.35, Amazon

Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave by Zora Neale Hurston

Anthropologist and author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston travelled to Alabama in August of 1931 to hear the story of 90-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Over three months, Cudjo told Hurston the story of his enslavement fifty years after slavery was outlawed in America. From his childhood in Africa to his imprisonment in Ouidah barracoons, Hurston delivers this gut-wrenching tale in penetrating detail.

Buy now £9.16, Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave by Zora Neale Hurston

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

There’s a reason that Walter Isaacson’s biography of the who changed the landscape of modern technology as we know it is a cut above the rest. It is based on over forty interviews with Steve Jobs himself, which were conducted over just two years. Isaacson also interviewed friends, family, adversaries, colleagues and more to deliver this panoramic view of Jobs’ life and work.

Buy now £11.95, Amazon

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Life & Arts

New biography of Capt. Cook finds vilification flawed

Capt. James Cook’s voyages in the South Pacific in the late 1700s exemplify the law of unintended consequences. He set out to find a westward ocean passage from Europe to Asia but instead, with the maps he created and his reports, Cook revealed the Pacific islands and their people to the world.

In recent decades, Cook has been vilified by some scholars and cultural revisionists for bringing European diseases, guns and colonization.

But Hampton Sides’ new book, “The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook,” details that Polynesian island life and cultures were not always idyllic.

Priests sometimes made human sacrifices. Warriors mutilated enemy corpses. People defeated in battle sometimes were enslaved.

Even King Kamehameha, a revered figure in Hawaii, unified the Hawaiian Islands in 1810 at a cost of thousands of fellow warriors’ lives.

Sides’ book is sure to rile some Indigenous groups in Hawaii and elsewhere in the Pacific Islands, who contend Cook ushered in the destruction of Pacific Island cultures.

An obelisk in Hawaii marking where Cook was killed in 1779 had been doused with red paint when Sides visited as part of his research for this book. Over Cook’s name was written “You are on native land.”

But Cook, Sides argues, didn’t come to conquer.

Sides draws deeply from Cook’s and other crew members’ diaries and supplements that with his own reporting in the South Pacific.

Cook emerges from the book as an excellent mariner and decent human being, inspiring the crew to want to sail with him. However, on the voyage of the late 1770s, crew members noted that Cook seemed agitated, not his usual self.

What may have ailed Cook on that final voyage we probably never will know, but we do know that his voyages opened the Pacific islands to the world, and as new arrivals always do, life is changed forever.

Was Cook a villain for his explorations?

Sides make a persuasive case in 387 pages of diligent, riveting reporting that Cook came as a navigator and mapmaker and in dramatically opening what was known about our world, made us all richer in knowledge.

When his journals and maps reached England after his death, it was electrifying news. No, an ocean passage across North America to the Pacific did not exist, but Europeans now knew that islands in the Pacific were populated by myriad cultures; Sides’ reporting is clear that Cook treated them all with respect.

He and his fellow British mariners, though, did lack one skill that would seem vital for sailors and would have better connected the British sailors to the peoples of the Pacific, whose cultures and livelihoods were closely connected to the ocean: Neither Cook nor any of his fellow officers could swim.

Nobel laureate hits a sour note in latest book

Fair yet blunt evaluation of ap’s wwii coverage, navalny memoir due oct. 22, james patterson’s prolific output churns out an easy one, novel’s heroine enjoys a ‘no-holds-barred’ fling with ‘the tree doctor’, what's for dinner, shrimp tacos with mango salsa, better living 2023, veterans day 2023, chamber business directory 2023, town guide 2022, celebrating downtown 2023, latest news, today’s edition, huskies’ edwards selected 6th by washington, torrington oks new police social worker, health matters spring 2023, health matters spring 2024, readers choice 2023.

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Morning Rundown: House Speaker outlines Israel aid plan in wake of Iran attack, 'freak show' described outside Trump trial, man kills Uber driver after both targeted in scam

O.J. Simpson, NFL star whose murder trial gripped the nation, dies of cancer at 76

O.J. Simpson , the former NFL star who was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her friend in a televised trial that gripped the nation, has died of cancer, according to his family.

"He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren," the family said in a statement posted on X . "During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace."

Reports circulated in February that Simpson had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was in hospice care as he underwent chemotherapy. He denied that he was in hospice in a video posted on X, but did not address whether he'd been diagnosed with cancer.

“Hospice? Hospice? You talking ‘bout hospice?” he said in the video with a laugh, adding that he doesn’t know who started the rumors.

Orenthal James Simpson played 11 seasons in the National Football League and was known as "The Juice" to his fans, but his sports legacy was tarnished forever in the 1990s after his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were killed.

O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills breaks away from Steeler tacklers in 1975.

Brown Simpson, 35, and Goldman, 25, were found stabbed to death outside her Los Angeles home in 1994.

On June 13, 1994, Goldman was returning sunglasses that the mother of Brown Simpson had left at a restaurant where he worked. The two were stabbed and slashed dozens of times, and their bodies were found the next day.

When Los Angeles police officers went to Simpson's home to speak to him about the slayings, Simpson did not answer the door but officers noticed a trail of blood leading to his car, as well as blood on his car.

Once a revered athlete, Simpson went from a Hall of Fame icon to a murder suspect.

Days later, officials charged Simpson with the murders and he attempted to evade arrest, resulting in an infamous hourslong police chase along Southern California's highways in his white Ford Bronco .

Simpson's case went to trial in 1995 and was broadcast to millions of viewers across the nation. The court case was dubbed the "trial of the century" as it dragged on for months and transformed into a public spectacle.

Feelings over the trial have remained mixed over the years, with many accusing the Los Angeles Police Department of racism in its handling of the case. Others believe that Simpson's ability to retain high-powered attorneys allowed him to get away with murder.

A white Ford Bronco, driven by Al Cowlings and carrying O.J. Simpson, is trailed by police cars as it travels on a southern California freeway in Los Angeles on June 17, 1994.

The trial made prosecutors Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark household names, in addition to Simpson's defense attorneys Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz and Robert Kardashian.

He was acquitted of both murders in a controversial verdict. Two years later, he was found civilly liable for wrongful death in the double homicide case.

Despite his acquittal in the criminal trial, many still believed Simpson was guilty, a belief bolstered by a jury ordering him to pay $33 million to Goldman's family in the civil case — damages that were never paid in full.

O.J. Simpson holds up his hands before the jury after putting on a new pair of gloves similar to the infamous bloody gloves during his double-murder trial in Los Angeles on June 21, 1995.

Goldman's father, Fred Goldman, spoke to NBC News by phone Thursday and described Simpson's death as "no great loss."

“The only thing I have to say is it’s just further reminder of Ron being gone all these years," he said. "It’s no great loss to the world. It’s a further reminder of Ron’s being gone.”

Bob Costas, the sports broadcaster who worked with Simpson for years at NBC Sports covering the NFL, said Simpson leaves behind “a complicated legacy, to put it mildly.”

“I can’t think of anyone historical or someone that we may have known where the first chapter and the second chapter of their lives are such a stark contrast … revered and then reviled,” Costas said on NBC’s “TODAY” show Friday.

In 2007, Simpson led an armed robbery attempt of a sports memorabilia dealer in Las Vegas. He argued in court that he was recovering his own stolen items, but his defense failed to sway the jury.

O.J. Simpson sits during a break on the second day of an evidentiary hearing in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas on May 14, 2013.

He was convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison, of which he served only nine before he was released on parole .

Simpson spoke to The Associated Press by phone in 2019 , telling them that he was healthy and happy living in Las Vegas. He maintained that he believed his robbery conviction was unfair, but said: “I believe in the legal system and I honored it. I served my time.”

The Simpson murder trial was re-enacted and relitigated decades later in FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” an installment of the network’s popular “American Crime Story” series in 2016. Released that same year was the Academy Award-winning documentary "O.J.: Made in America," detailing Simpson's rise and fall.

Simpson was born in San Francisco and raised in public housing, going to a local community college before transferring to the University of Southern California. He was part of the school's national championship in 1967 and earned the Heisman Trophy the next year.

He was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in 1969 as a No. 1 overall pick.

According to NBC Sports , Simpson was the first player in the league to rush for 2,000 or more yards in a season and is considered the best running back of his era.

Simpson had three children from his first marriage to Marguerite Whitley, one of whom died in a drowning accident as a toddler.

He also shared two children with Brown Simpson.

Following her murder and his acquittal, Simpson won custody of their shared children and moved to Miami with them. His custody fight with his former-in-laws also drew headlines as the children's grandparents took him to court in a bitter legal battle.

Doha Madani is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News. Pronouns: she/her.

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The Life of O.J. Simpson: A Timeline

He was a football star, actor, commercial pitchman, and a defendant in a gruesome double murder whose trial gripped the nation.

Share full article

By Victor Mather

O.J. Simpson, who died on Wednesday at 76 , lived a life that made him one of the most famous people in America, as well as, at various times, the most celebrated and most reviled.

A Heisman Trophy winner when he played football at the University of Southern California, he reached superstar status as a running back with the Buffalo Bills. As a commercial pitchman and a Hollywood actor, he became a household name across much of America.

But fame turned to infamy when he was charged in the 1994 double murder of his former wife and her friend. He was acquitted after a trial that riveted the nation.

Here is a look at a man who never seemed to stop making news, for good and ill.

Heisman Trophy Winner

Mr. Simpson, who was born in San Francisco in 1947, first came to the attention of many Americans as a football star at the University of Southern California. In his two years playing for the Trojans, he was the game’s best running back, and tallied 33 touchdowns.

As a junior in 1967, he was the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy as the college game’s best player, then won the award in 1968, his second and final year at U.S.C.

Professional Stardom

Mr. Simpson was drafted first overall by the Buffalo Bills in 1969, and by his fourth season he was a superstar. In 1973, he ran for 2,003 yards , which stood as a record for more than a decade, and won the N.F.L.’s Most Valuable Player Award; he was in the Top 5 in M.V.P. voting three other times as well.

He became known as the Juice, and his talent and likability propelled him to even greater notoriety. His on-field accomplishments and fame were all the more impressive given that he seldom played for good teams; his only playoff game, a loss, came in 1974.

He retired in 1979 after playing his final two seasons for the San Francisco 49ers.

Even those who knew little about football got to know the Juice as he began appearing in television advertisements, notably a series of ads for Hertz starting in 1975, in which he dashed through airports on his way to get his rental car. “Nobody has more of what it takes to rent you a Fairmont, Mustang, LTD or other fine car faster,” he said in one ad .

He also tried his hand at announcing, including a stretch from 1983 to 1985 on “Monday Night Football.”

Hollywood Calls

Mr. Simpson began appearing in television and movie roles even as his football career continued, including some big budget projects like “The Towering Inferno” in 1974, in which he played the building’s chief of security, and the blockbuster mini-series “Roots” in 1977.

His biggest success, though, came in the three “Naked Gun” films, in which he played Detective Nordberg. In a running series of gags, Nordberg was continuously injured, often in scenes played for broad laughs. In one particularly memorable scene , at the end of the first film, Nordberg is seen flying down stadium steps in a wheelchair before being catapulted off a ledge and flipping into the air.

Divorce and Reports of Abuse

The prosecution in Mr. Simpson’s murder trial said he abused his second wife , Nicole Brown Simpson, whom he married in 1985, throughout their relationship.

The abuse left Ms. Simpson bruised and terrified, but the police rarely took substantive action. After one call to the authorities, on New Year’s Day, 1989, officers found her badly beaten and half-naked, hiding in the bushes outside their home. “He’s going to kill me!” she sobbed. Mr. Simpson pleaded no contest to a charge of spousal abuse ; he was sentenced to probation and community service, and was ordered to pay a fine.

The confrontations continued after the couple divorced in 1992. On Oct. 25, 1993, Ms. Simpson called the police again. “He’s back,” she told a 911 operator, and officers once more intervened.

June 12, 1994

Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman Are Murdered

Ms. Simpson and her friend Ronald L Goldman, were stabbed to death at her home in Los Angeles on June 12, 1994.

Mr. Simpson was questioned and charged with murder. But he did not turn himself in initially. Instead, five days after the killings, he led the police on a bizarre, hourslong low-speed chase in a white 1993 Ford Bronco driven by his friend and former teammate Al Cowlings. The chase was shown live on nearly every television network, even pre-empting the N.B.A. Finals.

‘The Trial of the Century’

Mr. Simpson’s trial lasted for nine months and gripped the nation for all that time. Multiple television networks broadcast the trial every day, and minor figures, like Kato Kaelin, who was staying in Mr. Simpson’s guesthouse at the time of the killings, became celebrities.

In one of the most riveting moments, Mr. Simpson was asked to try on bloody gloves found at the crime scene. Mr. Simpson claimed the gloves were too tight; his lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. alluded to this in his closing argument, saying, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

The verdict, despite significant DNA and other evidence, was not guilty on both counts. The result divided Americans: A majority felt it was a miscarriage of justice and continued to assume that Mr. Simpson was guilty, while some, including many Black Americans, believed the verdict to be justified.

Civil Judgment

After the acquittal, the parents of Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Mr. Simpson. The jury found Mr. Simpson liable and ordered him to pay more than $30 million.

But Mr. Simpson said that his no longer having acting and endorsement work meant he was broke. The families ultimately received only a small fraction of the judgment.

Theft Charges and Prison

Mr. Simpson and several other men entered a hotel room in Las Vegas in 2007; Mr. Simpson claimed they were seeking sports memorabilia that had been stolen from him. A gun was brandished.

Mr. Simpson was arrested and in 2008 and was found guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping. He was released on parole in 2017 after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence.

Release and Later Life

Upon his release from prison in 2017, Mr. Simpson settled in Florida and led what was, for him, a relatively low-key life. He played a lot of golf and posted videos regularly on Twitter, generally opening with “It’s me, yours truly,” offering thoughts on professional sports and frequently urging his 800,000 followers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

In his final post , on Feb. 11, Mr. Simpson, as usual looking relaxed, spoke optimistically about his health and incorrectly predicted that the 49ers would win the Super Bowl.

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article referred incorrectly to a glove that was an important piece of evidence in Mr. Simpson’s murder trial. It was not a golf glove.

How we handle corrections

Victor Mather covers sports as well as breaking news for The Times. More about Victor Mather

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Browse. Coming Soon: Biography & Memoir. 146 Results. The Best Minds. Jonathan Rosen. The Light We Carry. Michelle Obama. The Last Doctor. Jean Marmoreo and Johanna Schneller.
Biographies & Autobiographies
The author of Maurice and Maralyn talks about the incredible true story of romance and adventure at the heart of her new book. Browse our range of biography and autobiography books with Free UK Delivery on Orders Over £25. From celebrity stories, music memoirs and sporting tales to political and literary biographies.
New biography of Capt. Cook finds vilification flawed
Capt. James Cook's voyages in the South Pacific in the late 1700s exemplify the law of unintended consequences. He set out to find a westward ocean passage from Europe to Asia but instead, with ...
100 Notable Books of 2023
100 Notable Books of 2023. Each year, we pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the standouts, selected ...
New Releases in Biographies & Memoirs
1 offer from $14.99. #3. The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. Hampton Sides. Kindle Edition. 1 offer from $14.99. #4. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War. Erik Larson.
O.J. Simpson dies of cancer at 76 after storied NFL career and
O.J. Simpson, the former NFL star who was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her friend in a televised trial that gripped the nation, has died of cancer, according to his family. He was 76 ...
Wakeley church stabbing: Who is Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel?
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed along with several worshippers in the middle of a service in Wakeley on Monday night. The attack occurred at Christ The Good Shepherd Church. The graphic scene ...
The Life of O.J. Simpson: A Timeline
Joseph R. Villarin/Associated Press. Mr. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and a friend, Ronald L. Goldman, were stabbed to death at her home in Los Angeles on June 12, 1994. Mr. Simpson ...