The FBI, Being Deep Throat, and the Struggle for Honor in Washington
by Mark Flet and John O'Connor
The biography of Felt who was the FBI agent in charge of the Watergate investigation og also the fabled "Deep Throat".
The book is not bad but it could have contained more information on e.g. Watergate and Hoover. It does, however, manage to balance the view on Hoover (Felt being a Hoover acolyte).
A great part of the book revolves around Felt's career and personal life.
An ok read.
Adventures in a new world
by Alan Greenspan
Greenspan's autobiography. However, it is even more about the last 50 years of macro economics.
Some things are in restrospect quite fun to read:
Today, nearly fifty years later, the ratio of household debt to income is still rising, and critics are still wringing their hands. In fact, I do not recall a decade free of surges in angst about the mounting debt of households and businesses. Such fears ignore a fundamental fact of modem life: in a market economy, rising debt goes hand in hand with progress. To put it more formally, debt will almost always rise relative to incomes so long as we have an ever-increasing division of labor and specialization of tasks, increasing productivity, and a consequent rise in both assets and liabilities as a percentage of income. Thus, a rising ratio of debt to income for households, or of total nonfinancial debt to GDP, is not in itself a measure of stress.
The Economist wrote:
... intelligent in a way that few popular books on economics manage or even try to be ... An enjoyable read.
Recommended.
En PET- og politikrønike
af Hans Jørgen Bonnichsen
Bonnichsens erindringer fra dreng over rejseholdet til chef for PET.
Bogen er hovedsagelig en række politihistorier, og som sådan ikke noget særligt. Kun den sidste del om hans tid i PET hæver sig i væsentlighed over det almindelige.
Men Bonnichsen er sympatisk, og der er enkelte interessant ting i den.
En ok bog.
fortalt til Lars Vestergaard
B. S. Christiansens selvbiografi.
Jeg kom til at bladre i bogen hos én, hvorefter han gav den til mig: "Jeg vil ikke se på den mere!"
Efter at have læst den forstår jeg det godt. Mit problem er, at jeg ikke rigtig ved, om jeg vil være bekendt at give den til nogen.
Hvis du har lagt al din tillid i planen og forsøgt at få kontrol over situationen på den måde, er der stor risiko for, at du mister overblikket.
Masser af lommefilosofi og militærhistorier, men ikke meget andet.
The Autobiography of the Man Wo Started the Computer Revolution
by Steve Wozniak with Gina Smith
Wozniak's story.
I was actually looking forward to reading it but I think you have to be an engineer to really think this is particularly interesting.
An ok read anyhow.
Forstå mig ret
fortalt til Brian Askvig
Jesper Skibby fortæller om sin cykelkarriere, doping, sin afhængighed af valium og om den anden side af den morsomme mand.
Jo, der er mange galninge og enspændere i cykelsporten. Og jeg har kørt med dem alle sammen. Brian Holm plejer at sige, at gode cykelryttere har lig i lasten. At der er noget, der brænder i dem og bare skal ud. De har på en eller anden måde fået nogle ar på sjælen. Det er derfor de er gode cykelryttere. Fordi de har noget indebrændt raseri, de kun kan få ud ved at eksplodere på cyklen.
Let læst.
Egentlig en udmærket bog.
Historien om Friedrich Nietzsche
af Peter Thielst
En Nietzsche-biografi med kort introduktion til Nietzsches filosofi. Som udgangpunkt vil jeg dog foretrække Ivo Frenzels Nietzsche-biografi.
En ok bog.
by A.E. Hotchner
A. E. Hotchner was a friend of Hemingway's with whom he for the last 14 years of Hemingway's life travelled regularly.
The book contains a wealth of colourful anecdotes - mostly told by Hemingway to Hotchner. So it is a book about the myth of Hemingway - including the story of Hemingway liberating Paris.
It is entertaining, though, and paints an interesting portrait of an aging and in the end mentally disintegrating Hemingway.
He finally said, ‘Don’t do what you sincerely don’t want to do. Never confuse movement with action.
An ok read.
The Spirit of Solitude
by Ray Monk
The first volume of Monk's definitive biography of Bertrand Russell covering the periode up to 1921.
Well written and researched. Describing Russell's intellectual achievements, his political life as well as his loneliness and his tortured emotional life.
One by one hopes die, and the kingdom of the Past receives them; but still their spectres inhabit our wintry world. There are words we dare not utter, places we dare not see, books we dare not read, lest we summon the pale army of memories, and the imprison us in the dungeon of despair, lest, for a moment of terror, we live once more the life of pain.
Recommended.
The Ghost of Madness 1920-1970
by Ray Monk
The second part of Monk monumental biography of Bertrand Russell.
It is quite brilliant, but the later, political Russell is far from being as interesting as early, philosophical Russell.
An ok read.
by Kathleen Raine
Kathleen Raine has written an comprehensive study of William Blake - Prophet, poet, painter and engraver - art and life. Richly illustrated.
Times Literary Supplement wrote:
A thing of joy. Warmly recommended.
Highly recommended.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
by Peter Dally
Dally is suposedly an eminent psychiatrist. However, you would not know it from his Woolf biography. It is full of annoying conjectures like:
Leslie's loss of faith was surely linked to the death of his father and represented a rejection of his authority; ...
If Leslie had been motivated to free himself from his father by rejecting Christianity, he was only partially successful. A parent is far more difficult than God to kill and the phantom lives on long after death, ...
or
The spectre of her mother created violent distress in Virginia. Julia stood for Victorian standards, female domesticity, a home run by the woman and ruled by the man, a concept long rejected by her daughter. Did Julia's ghost tell her she was a failure as a woman? Did Julia's words merge with Leonard's, that she was frigid and unfit for motherhood? ...
A weak and uninteresting look af the madness of Virginia Woolf.
Portrait of a Writer
by Susannah Clapp
Susannah Clapp's book on Chatwin is more of a memoir than a biography and paints a picture of a slightlly different Chatwin than one would assume from his books.
He made many journeys, but he often stayed comfortably in the house of friends - and to some of these friends his perpetual motion seemed like that of a perpetual guest. 'For a nomad,' commented one host after an extended Bruce visit, 'he spends an awful lot of time in one place.'
No need to read With Chatwin if you have already read Nicholas Shakespeare's biography.
Recommended.
A Memoir of Moods and Madness
by Kay Redfield Jamison
A first hand account of a bipolar depression by an authority in the field.
The book reveals her struggle with manic depression from adolescence through college, her bouts of madness and violence as well as the seductive fascination of mania while persuing a career in medicine.
Recommended.
by Peter Ackroyd
A brilliant biography of the poet, painter and mystic William Blake.
A highly detailed book revealing the affinities of Blake's poetry, his art, and his mystical beliefs.
The biography is also the story of the last part of the 18th and the first part of the 19th century London.
Recommended.
af Ivo Frenzel
En fremragende Nietzsche-biografi med introduktion til hans filosofi.
Stor anbefaling.
A Life Remembered
by Elizabeth Wilson
A brilliant portrait of Shostakovich.
Wilson has based the book on extensive interviews and memories of Shostakovich's comtemporaries.
Well written.
Highly reccommended.
The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich
by Solomon Volkov
Volkov claimed that Shostakovich sanctioned this memoir. Recent research leaves little doubt that that was not the case.
Bearing this in mind it is, however, still a wonderful book about a composer trying to live under tyranny.
Highly recommended.
by Gelsey Kirkland with Greg Lawrence
An account of a descent into anorexia, drugs and personal torment in an obsessive search for perfection.
The Times wrote:
Powerful, compelling, and almost as painful to read as it must have been to live.
Gelsey Kirkland was a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre.
Recommended.
The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence
by Jeremy Wilson
A very detailed although not entirely factual biography of the fabled Lawrence of Arabia.
The biography tells the nice version of his life - the story of Lawrence the Legend.
However, if you only want to read about the legend of Lawrence you do not need to read the 1.000 pages of the full version or the 500 pages of the abridged version. See the brilliant film by David Lean or read Lawrence's own book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
An OK read, though.
The Life of Ezra Pound
by Humphrey Carpenter
A monumental biography of the profoundly influencial American poet Ezra Pound - secretary to W. B. Yeats, literary agent to James Joyce, press agent to Robert Frost, and editor and meal ticket to T. S. Eliot.
As a poet Pound is difficult to say the least. Poetically he is a modernist. As a person he was an antisemite, a fascist and an admirer of Mussolini. After the second world war he was charged with treason and without a conviction committed to a psychiatric institution for 12 years to avoid an embarressing political process. A clear case of state abuse and a sad part of American post war history.
Pound was released in 1958 though still considered incurably insane but not dangerous to anyone and allowed to return to Italy. He died in Venice in 1972 at the age of 87.
Highly recommended.
The Duty of Genius
by Ray Monk
A brilliant biography of Ludvig Wittgenstein - a philosopher who changed the course of philosophy not only once but twice.
In 1929 when Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge the second time Keynes wrote of him in a letter: "Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train."
Wittgenstein was born into one of the wealthiest families of fin-de-siecle Wienna - great patrons of the art - his sister had her wedding picure painted by Gustav Klimt and Ravel wrote his left hand piano concerto for Wittgenstein's borther who lost an arm in the first world war.
Even though Wittgenstein was seemingly born with a silver spoon in his mouth he was never happy. His last words were reportedly: "Tell them I have had a good life." Reading this biography you really have to wonder whom he thought he was kidding.
Ray Monk has written an outstanding biography that can also serve as a small introduction to the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
Highly recommended.
A Story of Wealth and Power
by Derek Wilson
The story of the Rothschild family from 1560 to the present, from rags to riches, from banking to wine, from Judengasse of Frankfurt-am-Main to the world.
An excellent biography of the highly influencial family of bankers and excentrics.
The biography of the family is interesting in itself but, furthermore, the book reads like a history of the making of Europe.
Highly recommended.
af Peter Thielst
En Kierkegaard-biografi med introduktion til hans filosofi.
En fejlbehæftet og spekulativ bog. Fx antyder Thielst, at en nu tabt optegnelse med titlen "Den dyriske Fnisen" skulle være en optegnelse om et bordelbesøg, selvom det af Barfods indholdsfortegnelse over Kierkegaards efterladte papirer fremgår, at optegnelsen har drejet om Don Juan.
Kan ikke anbefales.
by Kenneth Rose
The book is the excelent biography of George Nathaniel Curzon, an imperialist of relentless ambition and commanding intellect and Marquess of Kedleston, who was made the Viceroy of India in 1898.
The biography also tells the story of the ruling class of Victorian England.
Times Literary Supllement wrote:
[Rose's] account is fortified with wit and great variaty of entertaining anecdotes.
Recommended.
Being the first part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess
By Anthony Burgess
This the first part of the autobiography of Anthony Burgess. It covers his childhood and youth in Manchester growing up as a catholic with the glooming glare of God constantly watching him and his time at the University of Manchester. It is also about the nymphomanics, drunks, poets, and muscians of his first forty-two years.
The second part of his confessions is called You've had your time starting in 1959 and covers his years as a professional writer.
They are both great works of (non-)fiction. I do, however, prefer Little Wilson and Big God to You've had your time.
Unfortunately, the books seems to be out of print.
Highly recommended.
A remarkable book about a brilliant mind pleagued by schizophrenia. John Nash was a brilliant mathmatician who did revolutionary research in game theory - the Nash Equilibrium - as a youth before schizophrenia destroyed his ability to do real research.
After 30 years of madness and horrible treatments in the insane asylums of the 1950's Nash had a remarkable remission before getting the Nobel Price in economics in 1993 for his early research.
Sylvia Nasar has written an excellent and thorough book. There is also a film with Russell Crowe as Nash. The film is not quite as good, though.
Recommended.
by Nicholas Shakespeare
By most people Bruce Chatwin is considered to be a travel novellist. But considering that he is also the author of books like Utz and On the Black Hill this is not the full story. However, travelling filled a great deal of Chatwin's life but he he also had a strong affinity towards his native Wales.
Nicholas Shakespeare was given unrestricted access to the diaries, letters, and private notebooks of Bruce Chatwin so this must be considered the authoritative biography. It is a well witten but unless you really interested in Chatwin and his books you will probably find it a bit long.
Bruce Chatwin died from AIDS in 1989.
Recommended.
by David Macey
Foucault was controversial and radical as a philosopher and as well as a private person. Foucault the philosopher wrote about madness, prisons and sex.
It is an excellent, well written, and thorough book with only one problem. I most admit that I dislike the private Foucault. On the other hand I find Foucault the philosopher fascinating.
Foucault died from AIDS in 1984.
Recommended.
by Deirdre Bair
Beckett is probably most know for the play "Waiting for Godot", however, he has also written novels as well as short stories detailing the darker side of life ('nothing is funnier than unhappiness').
Beckett considered life a desease and this idea permeates his work. You need a strong stomach to read Beckett and to read this biography. But it is an excellent book worth reading if you are interested in one of the great literary figures of the 20th century. Unfortunately the book seems to be out of print.
Beckett won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969.
Highly recommended.
