Biography

Biography is the reading genre of a person’s life told as history. In the wiki it appears chiefly as a reading-list topic: two saved tweets ask for recommendations, and the anti-library collects the titles that came back.

• Andrew Wilkinson asked “What’s the best business biography you’ve read in the past 5 years?” (September 2020).
• Jonathon Barkl wrote that he had started reading more history and biography because when he read business or startup books his mind wandered to the company, and asked for favorites (March 2021).
• In The David Senra Interview: Use History as a Form of Leverage, the host of Founders describes spending 40 hours on the reading of a 40-year career, close to 400 biographies and autobiographies in, on the premise that human behavior rhymes.

Titles filed here

• Business and technology lives: The First Tycoon, Becoming Steve Jobs
• Statesmen and soldiers: Washington — A Life, Napoleon the Great, Alexander the Great (Philip Freeman), No Room for Small Dreams, Plutarch’s Lives
• Memoir and reportage: Eastern Approaches, With the Old Breed, Our Man
• Literary biography: The Quest for Corvo

Where this appears

• Tweets: I’ve Started Reading More History… (tweet), What’s the Best Business Biography… (tweet)
• Long-reads: The David Senra Interview: Use History as a Form of Leverage
• Books to read: Alexander the Great (Philip Freeman), Becoming Steve Jobs, Eastern Approaches, Napoleon the Great, No Room for Small Dreams, Our Man, Plutarch’s Lives, The First Tycoon, The Quest for Corvo, Washington — A Life, With the Old Breed