The more biographies and historical books you read, the better you get at picking the good ones and part of picking the good ones is a quick look at the book, including a dip into the bibliography.
When I pick up a biography to consider it’s purchase, I will often do three things. They really only take a couple of minutes, but they will save you purchase money and reading time if you do them while you are in the store or library.
If I don’t already know the author, I head to the inside back flap (Hardcover) or inside back pages (Softcover) to read the author bio. Is this person a writer or a historian? Are any previous books they have written along the same vein, within the same time period or are they all over the place with previous topics? In general, I look for qualified historians who have spent dedicated time in the field. Their stories may not be as well told, but they are likely to be more precise. I would hold Robert Remini up as a fine example of a great historian who primarily stuck to his period (Jackson, Clay, Webster) and who was also a phenomenal writer.
There are a handful of “writer-first” historians who are clearly better at writing history than is common. David McCullough, Shelby Foote, Ron Chernow, Jon Meacham, etc., but these writers are clearly in a category all their own. They know how to tell a story, but they don’t skimp on research. Often, you’ll see a tremendous list of people and associations in the acknowledgements (another place to look for depth). These writers aren’t skimping on truth for the sake of the story. They are excellent communicators and complex thinkers.
Next, I skim the Notes, Bibliography and Index. After spending quite a bit of time in Presidential biographies, I have found that I can spend fascinating hours in the endnotes. Looking at the bibliography, I am searching for the breadth of material used for research.
Mark my words, the most important thing you can do before reading a biography is to review the bibliography and notes. The truth really is in the bibliography. The text of the book is the surface. The heart of it is the source material. It was the core of the real work of the biographer, not the writing. Good writing is vital, but not if the text is built on marshmallow fluff.
There are certain biographies which primarily use key source materials, such as Grant’s papers and letters. This would be different than a biography based on both Grant’s papers and letters and previous Grant biographies. After a while, you start to pre-judge the book’s merits based upon the quality of the source materials. It can actually cause you to save much time on reading particular authors. In fact, as you read biographies, you may come to the point where you realize you’ve read most of the source material, so this particular book isn’t going to give you much more than you already know. If you know NOTHING about the topic, simply look at the size of the endnotes. Are there 50-200 pages of endnotes or are there 10 or none at all? In old biographies, it will be common to have footnotes instead of endnotes. In that case, are you seeing footnotes on many or most pages?
Last, I read a few pages. Style can be important to enjoying a biography. One evening, sitting in my reading chair, I glanced over at my shelf to find two competing Mark Twain bios.
Several pages into the first one I picked up, I realized that the gentleman was going to lose me in his verbosity and affected sentence structure. He had also clearly picked a “thesis” for his assessment of Twain — one that was going to hold no interest for me. I enjoy biographies where the stories unfold effortlessly, with simplicity and where opinion is less forced. Stephen Ambrose’s writing is a good example of journalistic historical authorship that won’t make you feel like you are caught in the middle of an academic boxing match.
So…that’s what I do to assess. Next time you’re looking for a good historical read, I encourage you to look to the bibliography!
americanbibliography.com 