Word: new
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...case of the current bestseller Galileo's Daughter, although readers might not be that interested in the daughter herself, they do get a chance to look at Galileo at an unusually intimate distance. This "relive the life" approach demands a book very different from, for example The New, New Thing. Small details matter, whereas no one is too concerned what technology wizard Jim Clark had for lunch every day (Lombardi had a daily hamburger) or where Mankind happened to grow up. The focus is the individual, and while that focus often includes the larger scope of the endeavors that individual...
...This new infusion of fiction into the contemporary biography seems as much a symptom of readership as of much-pondered methodology. It may be ultimately impossible to recreate someone's life in words, and therefore perhaps one might as well add a bit of fiction to a biography. But a much more compelling reason for creativity in biography stems from the problem of entertaining the reader. If the reader wants to relive the life of John Glenn, why not let the reader relive an embellished life of Reagan, in a sense more complete and enticing than the real thing. Does...
...weeks ago, Harvard University Identification Services (HUID) made available a new program that allows members of the Harvard community to deactivate and reactivate lost or stolen ID cards using their Harvard...
...this doesn't seem to stop the reading public from snapping up biographies as if they were retellings of polar expeditions. A glance at the New York Times Book Review bestseller list for nonfiction reveals that biographies take up a large share of the popular market. Regardless of what the domination of Harry Potter books on the fiction bestseller list might indicate about the typical reader of today, just as interesting is the number of biographies on the nonfiction list. Of the top 15 bestsellers last week, only two non-fiction books can be classified as having no biographical content...
...many bestsellers that are bio-related, quite a few have deviated from a strictly biographical form. Have a Nice Day!, detailing the professional wrestling exploits of the wrestler known as Mankind, and The New, New Thing, the story of technology/computer pioneer Jim Clark, both represent a move away from the typical biography in which the life of a single person is the subject of the book. Instead, these biographies tell readers about a larger phenomenon through a smaller lens, funneling the world of professional wrestling and technology into personal stories that readers can relate to and understand. Given that biography...