The making of an American conservative
Rob Henderson’s memoir Troubled paints a bleak picture of poverty in the US. Are liberal “luxury beliefs” to blame?
ByBiographies
Read all the latest reviews from New Statesman writers of biographies and memoirs.
Searching for Frantz Fanon
Was the elusive revolutionary thinker naive, or ahead of his time?
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The triumph of King Charles
Robert Hardman’s obsequious biography pays court to a monarch who is enjoying his power over a deferential nation.
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József Debreczeni’s letter from the land of the dead
A rediscovered memoir from an Auschwitz survivor offers powerful lessons for our own reckonings with the Holocaust.
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The visions of Werner Herzog
In creating wild and strange new worlds, the German film-maker reveals the truth of our own.
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Elon Musk’s death drive
The tech billionaire built a world that he could rule – then allowed it to destroy him.
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The lies we tell about Joan Didion
The late author may be the most misunderstood writer in the American canon.
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The madness of Burton and Taylor
Roger Lewis’s book about the lives of the married actors isn’t really a biography – it’s a fever dream.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lessons for losers
In his unlikely fourth act, the former movie star is a self-help guru who trades in the toughest of tough…
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Britney Spears’s American horror story
The singer’s memoir of her conservatorship is full of cartoonish villains and medieval misogyny. But this isn’t a fable – it’s…
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How the Barclay brothers built and wrecked an empire
The twins accrued hotels, newspapers and a fortress on their own island – then their fortune vanished.
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Why Britney Spears will never be free
The Woman in Me shows how trapped the singer has become.
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What Daniel Dennett gets wrong
Is consciousness an illusion? Only a philosopher could convince himself of something as implausible.
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John le Carré, the great deceiver
The duplicity that defined his spy novels also enabled his relentless pursuit of sexual pleasure.
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Ian Fleming, eternal adolescent
Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography reveals a boy more reminiscent of Peter Rabbit than James Bond.
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From Ben Lerner to Simon Heffer: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang and Stay True by Hua Hsu.
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From Clive Myrie to Danny Cipriani: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring The View From Down Here by Lucy Webster and So To Speak by Terrance Hayes.
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How to build a dictionary
A new book identifies the army of amateurs, eccentrics and criminals who created the Oxford English Dictionary.
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Catherine Taylor’s The Stirrings: a memoir of girlhood in a time of rebellion
These reflections of 1970s Sheffield are steeped in the Cold War and the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper.
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Cormac McCarthy’s art of war
In Blood Meridian the author reaches the dark heart of the American novel – where violence is timeless.
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