The power of biography

If, in this wildly distracting and content-pervasive culture of ours, you struggle to expose yourself to a healthy dose of quality fictional writing as much as a steady supply of insightful non-fiction, I have a suggestion for you: Biography. In the biography (or autobiography) of a fascinating person, we satisfy both our ceaseless desire for story and the self-imposed rule that we ought to continue to learn, to pursue written works of educational value well beyond our formal education.

Many people, both well known figures and obscure historical personalities, have lived lives that rival any screenplay or novel for their suspense, empathetic draw and obedience to classical storytelling virtues. By studying the lives of Richard Nixon and Sir Winston Churchill, we satisfy our insatiable appetite for stories of falls from grace, corruption, betrayal, redemption and victory. We learn about the madness of the Watergate scandal and the absurdity yet importance of the second world war through the perspectives of those periods’ most influential, indeed, determining actors. These compelling stories give us our fix for a well spun tale, while quenching our thirst for knowledge of political history.

I’ve dabbled in the history of science not by taking night classes at a community college, but by reading the biographies of Darwin, Copernicus and Kepler. My business knowledge has been widely expanded by reading the biographies of Donald Trump, Bill Gates and John D. Rockefeller. (To a lesser extent, my appreciation for the history of social networking was widened by recently watching The Social Network (2010), a film at least true enough to facts to be considered a bio picture.) Like any good story, a biography entertains us, tugs at our emotions and tells us something about humanity. But unlike Toy Story 2 or Batman Returns, a biography is also educational.

The downside to fulfilling our lust for story through biography is, of course, that we know the ending in advance. Unless we’re disturbingly under-informed, we know in advance the unfortunate fate of Abraham Lincoln and have at least a vague appreciation for the stunning accomplishments of Sir Isaac Newton. It’s hard to build suspense when the career comeback of Steve Jobs is so documented and celebrated, the assassination of John Lennon so talked about and grieved. While the eventual fates of these iconic individuals is well known, what’s less known are the under-appreciated details of their lives and the casts of characters who supported and rivaled them. What early influences shaped Lennon’s musical style, let alone his political passions? What childhood experiences sharpened Jobs’s maniacal, driven nature? These details place the historical and contemporary luminaries whom we love and thought we understood in a more complex and human light.

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>Losing My Virginity, the autobiography of Sir Richard Branson
>Isaac Newton, the biography of Sir Isaac Newton
>iCon, the biography of Steve Jobs
>I Make My Own Rules, the autobiography of LL Cool J
>The Joker’s Wild, the biography of Jim Carrey