The 2020 Nonfiction Challenge Part IX: Group Biographies in November

Welcome back to the nonfiction mania...

I don't know about you folks, but I've found some great examples of group biographies to read, including some literary biographies. Here's the concept: instead of a biography focusing on a single individual, your mission (should you choose to accept it...) is to read a biography that deals with a few different people. For instance, instead of reading a biography about Charlotte Brontë, read one that deals with all three sisters, and sheds light on the way the links between them shaped their writings. Or read a book by Joseph Ellis like Revolutionary Brothers that offers a comparison of different leaders of the American Revolution and the distinct ways each shaped the evolution of a new country. I remember reading a fabulous bio about Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley, and also a great book by Daisy Hay about the romantic poets as a group. Or read something about the Bloomsbury group? Or...

One caveat: please put the emphasis on the biography, rather than the underlying theme. So you may be interested in reading about totalitarian leaders? Then look for a dual bio of Stalin and Hitler, for instance, rather than one that uses biography details to explore a broader topic. On the other hand, I've seen an interesting book that relies exclusively on biography to delve into questions of rivalry between artists (eg Matisse & Picasso).

As we lurch into what may be a turbulent month, what with virus cases soaring again AND the US election (finally), not to mention earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and even the occasional locust plague, I hope you find some compelling bios to escape the current global upheaval. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!!

What we're reading this month:

(Covers to come...)

Sigh. I had this all set up, and then the page slammed close on me when I was trying to cut & paste a final URL. This happens ALL the time, and is the reason I loathe posting cover images.

Moving forward...

December's category is a bit of a catch-all one, for those of us still trying to finish up some non-fiction we started earlier in the year, or who have books that didn't fit neatly into 2020's other categories. I've called it "As You Like It"...

In a week or two, I'll post preliminary ideas for 2021; if anyone wants to chip in with a suggestion, post it below or send me a PM!

Welcome back, Suzanne, I hope you're feeling better. Thanks to the group members who kept this going.

For this month's challenge I'm planning on reading The Bletchley Girls by Tessa Dunlop, about the women who worked at Bletchley Park during WW2.

Welcome back, Suzanne! I’ve got the thread on the group wiki - and will be back later with my reads for the month!

I have started reading Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Guilded Age by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart. I started this last weekend and have 70 pages read in it. I would like to read Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse by Stanley Meisler but am not sure if this falls into the category or outside of it because it may be more of a biography than a group biography? What do you think?

Benita, I think that Shocking Paris would fit nicely. It's about how these artists lived and worked in the context of their broader world, and that's fine. If it were about the avant garde in the 1920s or 1930s, and dealt with lots of different artists as examples, that would be different.

>7 Chatterbox:
The other one I had picked out was Wayne and Ford: The Films, the Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero by Nancy Schoenberger. Since Shocking Paris will work I think I will stick with that one.

I'm reading BECOMING by Michelle Obama.

So far the biography of Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt has been good. I have only read 70 pages of it. The reviews here in LT said that it was a boring and mundane work, but I am finding it interesting so far. I am now reading about the building of the Newport, R.I. mansions and about how the "season" there worked. It is a long biography - 500 pages of text with more indices and notes. This seems to be a very scholarly type of work and it flows well, so I am glad I picked it.

Part of the reason I picked the Consuelo and Alva biography was that I recently learned (due to the PBS special on the Women's Suffrage Movement) that Alva was the Mrs. Alva Belmont who funded and fund raised extensively for Women's Suffrage in the 19 teens. I had no idea that she was previously Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt and the mother of the Duchess of Marlborough. I wanted to know more about her and discovered all these connections on her Wikipedia entry. Plus, I already had a copy of the book on my shelves, so it was a done deal.

>2 Chatterbox:
There is something wonky going on. I thought it had to do with the new platform that LT is designing, but I think in my case it is my WiFi connections here at my house. I don't think my Wifi has the bandwidth it needs to accommodate large amounts of information. I keep losing the touchstones on those pages of mine where I am keeping lots of lists of titles. On my Root page I have a listing of 90 titles and nary a one can maintain a touchstone link. I have given up on it and hope that it will get fixed later.

I’m still listening to my audiobook for last month’s topic (oops). Once I finish Lost to the West my next audiobook will be my group biography for November.

I’m going to listen to Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker. It’s about a family with 12 children and 6 of them were eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.

I'm kicking off this month with Square Haunting by Francesca Wade, about five very different women carving out independent lives for themselves in the interwar years in London, linked by the fact that they all lived on the same square in Bloomsbury. The first profile in this was of H.D., which was fascinating, and now the book has moved on to Dorothy Sayers.

Most likely I will read Great Expectations: the Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens by Robert Gottlieb.
If I get ambitious, I may read The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter by Steven Nadler. This book explores 17th century Dutch culture and times of Descartes, through his life and two of his contemporaries: a painter credited with painting Descartes' portrait and an art-collecting Catholic priest.

Yay! At last I'm reading Children of Chivalry, which I have been saving for this month!
In my mind I think I'll put last month's late arrival, Lords of the Horizons aside for now, but I keep picking it up. Meanwhile, Square Haunting looks to be just my thing, and I have to explore Kathy's Dickens's children too. What a great month!
For next year, have you given us a month of letters or diaries? I'd like that a lot.

I have lots of biographies on my shelves but a group biography is harder to find. I'll see if I can locate Eleanor and Hick in my book stacks.

I finished Great Expectations: the Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens by Robert Gottlieb (2012). It's a very readable account of Dickens' 10 (or possibly 11) children. The book is divided into two parts: the lives of each of the children up until Dickens' death in 1870, and their lives after 1870. Each child gets about 4-5 pages in each section.

This is not a scholarly work; it appears Gottlieb compiled information about each of the children from previously published books and letters, and it doesn't appear Gottlieb did any original research of his own. Gottlieb makes assumptions and analysis without much to back up his theories. There are pictures of all the children, but annoyingly there are no photograph credits or dates.

There are more detailed books about the children's lives, particularly those that lived longer and were better known (daughter Kate and son Henry, for example). But if you are interested in a quick read about the children, their relationships with their father and their outcomes, this book should fill the bill.

>17 kac522: Thanks, Kathy. I ordered a copy, and it has come. I'm not very far into *Daughters (not *Children*) of Chivalry,* which I'm really enjoying. I've just read about how invested Eleanor of Castile, Edward I's queen, was in having literate daughters. I had never thought that high born women would have a better opportunity at literacy because they didn't have to learn the arts of war, but it makes sense.

I am about halfway through Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart and am enjoying it. It is a fairly standard biography, but the descriptions of the houses, clothing, and the social life is very interesting. I had no idea that jewelry was so important, and that the ostentatious display of wealth was so important in Britain at that time. I had always thought that the Brits liked their poor relations and looked on them kindly. This book says that is not true, and in fact families that lost their wealth were looked down on. It is incredible the amount of money that members of the upper aristocracy spent on maintaining their social status because to admit that they didn't have the money was admitting defeat of some kind. I am not sure what that defeat was, but it was to be avoided to the point of poverty. Consuelo was appalled at the display of wealth and the lack of economy she saw all around her. She said that her democratic ideals were sorely tested while she was married to the Duke of Marlborourgh. I have finished the section about Alva's divorce from W. K. Vanderbilt and the scandal that surrounded it.

About to start The Witches, about the people involved in the Salem witch trials. Does this count?

I am about 175 pages from finishing Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt and am learning much about these people. I have decided that I need to move up my trip to Rhode Island and do Newport. It would be amazing to see these houses.

I also started Shocking Paris and I just finished a chapter on the great art collector Dr. Albert Barnes and his purchase of 50 Soutine paintings. I am learning a great deal about these 20th century masters. Of course, that was the reason for reading the book. I can tell this is not an in-depth book on the subject, but it is easy reading and very interesting descriptions of the people and the places important to their stories.

I think group bios are becoming more popular, although they still won't displace single-person bios. I'm thinking of books like Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis; he has been a pioneer in this regard.

I finished reading Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and A Mother in the Gilded Age by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart last night. Earlier this year I had watched a PBS American Experience episode about the Women's Suffrage movement and kept hearing about Alva Belmont. I knew that she was a society maven but when I learned that she was of the Belmont Clan who sponsored the famous horse race the Belmont Stakes I was really intrigued and wanted to know more. A quick trip to Wikipedia shocked me. Alva Belmont had been Alva Vanderbilt - and she was the foremost society hostess of the Newport, Rhode Island set!

I knew that I had this book in my collection because I had found it on a table display of books associated with Downtown Abby in a bookstore years ago, so I pulled it out and kept it for this months theme.

The biography is quite long. 512 pages of text and almost 100 pages of notes and index. It is a fairly standard biography but it chocked full of information about both of the Vanderbilt ladies. Alva was the most controversial and it turned out that I liked her better than I did Consuelo, partly for her courage and activism and partly for her chutzpah. She has been getting less than her due in histories of the Women's movement in this country and that needs to be rectified. If it hadn't been for her money and her position in society the Women's Movement would have certainly suffered many more setbacks and the right to vote would not have happened as soon as it did. Furthermore, Alva didn't believe that the Women's Movement should end with getting the vote. She thought that the fight for equality should continue. She was right, but she was defeated in that viewpoint.

Consuelo came across to me as more timid and definitely a spoiled rich girl. Her life, in particular after her marriage to the French society man-about-town, Louis Jacques Balsan, was the typical lifestyle of the rich and famous. She made a big deal of their escape from France in 1940 and never seemed to realize that it was only possible because she was rich and famous. There was much talk of her being such a gracious and pleasant hostess in her later years but to me she could be that due to her money and privilege.

Mostly, this book was a study in contrasts. Both women married for money and eventually both found true love so there is a bit of romance in the story as well.

If you like detailed biographies of interesting women this dual biography will certainly fill the bill.

I have a good start on my next pick for this theme. I am reading Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse by Stanley Meisler and am learning a great deal about these early 20th Century artists. These are artists that I know little to nothing about and want to learn more about them. The book concentrates on painters but does talk a great deal about the milieu of various creative people who lived in a cooperative housing establishment for artists of all types that was located in Montparnasse. The house was called "the Beehive" but I can't remember it's name in French. The atmosphere was quite stimulating and I got a real sense of the creative excitement that the group must have felt.

While reading this part the name of Blaise Cendrars appeared. I recalled that many years ago, the children's illustrator Marcia Brown won a Caldecott medal for the book Shadow. This is a translated version of a poem by this French poet. It prompted me to get that book off the shelf and read the poem. Even though Cendrars is not a painter, this book has already piqued my interest in something else. That is what biographies of this type should do. Non?

OK folks -- no drumroll. But here's a tentative lineup for 2021.

JANUARY: PRIZE NOMINEES/WINNERS
A return, ever-popular category. Any book nominated for a literary prize. No, showing up on a "top books" list in a newspaper does not count!

FEBRUARY: MINORITY LIVES MATTER
A new category. Martin Luther King Day is celebrated in February, and with the increasingly intensive push for social justice, this clearly is an overdue subject for a deep dive. Read about anything involving social justice and minorities of any kind, from Black Americans or indigenous peoples, to the LGBTQ community or the Rohingya in Myanmar.

MARCH: COMFORT READING
Kinda self-explanatory. We all need a place of refuge, especially these days. Dial down the intensity. Read a book about walking, about philosophy, about cooking, about gardening. Whatever helps you cope with the stress.

APRIL: THE ANCIENT WORLD
A new category. Read a book about any ancient civilization. Now, ancient will come up for debate. In Western Europe, I'll set this as the year of Rome's sacking by the Ostrogoths in 546 A.D. In the Americas, any pre-Colombian civilization, from the Incas to the Iroquois (in the historical context, not looking at their lives today...) In China -- well, I'm open for ideas? Before 1000 CE? You can read biographies, history, sweeping looks at civilizations and so on.

MAY: ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL

A repeat category. Your choice of reading material has to fall into one of these categories. You can read a book by Gerald Durrell about his animal collecting adventures (animal) or a book about the energy industry (mineral). You can read that book about the history of the tomato (vegetable).

JUNE: DISCOVERIES
New for 2021. People make all kinds of discoveries all the time. Some are scientific. Some are philosophical. Others (the most contested kind, historically speaking) are geographic. Did Europeans "discover" the Americas? The continent was new to them but obviously not to its prior inhabitants. You can read a book about what geographic discoveries shouldn't carry that label, or about Captain Cook's voyages of exploration. Because discoveries can be personal journeys, as well.

JULY: CITIES
Another new category. Read a book about any specific city, large or small (eg Maximum City, about Mumbai) by Suketu Mehta, or read a book about a group of cities or about city life in general, in history or in the present. There's a new book by James and Deborah Fallows called Our Towns, for instance.

AUGUST: TRANSPORTATION
Yet another new entrant! As suggested by Benita. Planes, trains, automobiles, boats, on foot. How do we get from point A to point B and why? You can read a book by someone walking the length of Scotland and England, or a book about flying planes (like Beryl Markham's tome) or something about how self-driving cars will change the world. Or about shipping routes and trade.

SEPTEMBER: CREATIVITY
Coming back in 2021... Focus on anything that involves creativity or creators. Read about Shakespeare's plays and how they have been performed worldwide. Read about how novelists get their ideas or musicians are inspired.

OCTOBER: HEROES & VILLAINS
Another comeback category, and it's really a closeted biography category. Instead of just reading any bio, though, read a bio or memoir about someone who inspires you (RBG?) or someone you loathe (Hitler? Stalin?) Or someone you think you know about but want to be sure they qualify for your pantheon of heroes or your list of villains.

NOVEMBER: BUSINESS, THE ECONOMY AND BIG POLICY QUESTIONS
Kind of a catch-all category. By this point in 2021, we should have some idea of what the post-pandemic economy will look like. So, read any book about economic or business issues, and the policy questions that they create for politicians and citizens. From data security to minimum living wages, to the stock market.

DECEMBER: GO ANYWHERE!
A perennial. And a great place for that quirky, one-of-a-kind nonfiction book that simply doesn't fit anywhere else.

>25 Chatterbox: Oh that looks AMAZING! I'm excited already! Thank you, Suzanne!

I finished reading Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse by Stanley Meisler while eating my lunch today. This was not a long book - right at 200 pages, but it was chocked full of information about the Paris art scene from 1900 to 1945.

I read this book because a few years ago I read a book on the last years of Claude Monet's life and I was curious about what was going on around him in the Paris art world. I knew that Picasso was already a star but who else? Soon after I read a review of this book, and thought it might provide some answers.

I learned so much about the School of Paris. This group of artists were mostly immigrants from all areas of Europe who came to Paris because of it was the center of the art world. Most of the artists who became famous during this time were Jewish and that caused all kinds of problems. France was still dealing with the fallout from the Dreyfus Affair, then came WWI, and all that with the issue of collaboration and anti-semitism. After that war the art scene in Paris thrived and then was slammed by the Depression and then WWII in which these same talented artists were hunted, chased from Europe or ended up dead.

This book is truly a biography in that it is about individual artists but how they all related to each other and interacted with each other and together created what became known as the School of Paris.

>25 Chatterbox: MLK day is in January: Monday, January 18, 2021 (his actual birthday is January 15).
But February is Black History Month in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_History_Month
so the Minority category would still work.

Okay - I will miss Books By Journalists, but can fit them in the off-categories.

One of the things I learned in the book Shocking Paris was about the poet Blaise Cendrars. I only knew of him because the children's author and illustrator Marcia Brown won a Caldecott medal for the book Shadow. The Caldecott medal is given for the best illustrated children's book of the year. The text of the book is Brown's translation of a Cendrars poem. This book has truly outstanding illustrations but doesn't get much attention because the poem seems hard to understand. If you get a chance check out this children's book and marvel at the illustrations. They are amazing.

When I read the short part of Shocking Paris about the interaction between artists and other authors in the early 20th century I took the time to look up Cendrars and read about him, as well as reading and looking up more detailed descriptions of the artists written about in the book. For a short book there was lots in this one. I am glad I read it.

I am going to try to read another short dual biography this month. I picked up Wayne and Ford: The Films, the Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero by Nancy Schoenberger from the stack of books I have out from the library. This book is one of a spate of books published recently that dissect the work and lives of some of Hollywood's greats. This book is 265 pages, so I think I can get it read for this month, and since next month is a catch-all month if it takes a bit longer than that, it will work out anyway.

>28 kac522: ARGH.I was confusing the two. Blaming it on the fact that one of my closest friends is on a ventilator and possibly dying. Not of the virus, amazingly.

>32 Chatterbox: Ah, so sorry to hear about your friend. And so hard in these days with no visiting.

>33 kac522: thanks. Amazingly and miraculously, he has been hanging on, defying doctors yet again. Fingers, toes and paws crossed.

So, I finished reading Imperfect Union by Steve Inskeep. It's really a dual biography, about John Fremont and his wife Jessie -- who, in Fremont's run for the presidency in 1856, was probably more in demand than her husband as a personality/celebrity, etc. In his own time, it was Fremont who was renowned for his adventures, but Jessie's life overlapped with that of the abolitionists and the first wave of feminists (think, Elizabeth Cady Stanton), and while she wouldn't have firmly aligned herself with either, she behaved like a feminist (claiming her own agency throughout her life) and certainly rejected slavery (if not, sigh, displaying what we today would recognize as anti-racist views...)

My next group bio will be an audiobook of The Boys in the Boat, a book I know a lot of LTers have read, about the US Olympic rowing team and the 1936 Olympics. I've started listening to it already.

>29 m.belljackson: Yes, I think books by journalists will fit into virtually every category!

>34 Chatterbox: - The Boys in the Boat is excellent! I did a lot of googling after reading it to learn more and to watch interviews. An amazing story.

LOVE *Boys/Boat*! Like Jessie, I also did a lot of goolging which can make the experience even more personal.
Meanwhile, I've picked up Daughters of Chivalry again, which I really enjoy, and will try to finish it this very month.

I've finished The Bletchley Girls by Tessa Dunlop - she interviews 15 of the women who worked at Bletchley Park during WW2. It was sometimes hard to keep straight which woman was which (the book is ordered thematically rather than giving each woman their own chapter), but I enjoyed this and think it's great that this story has been told, as histories of BP have thus far tended to be very male-focused.

I finished my last dual/group biography last night. This one was Wayne and Ford: The Films, the Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero by Nancy Schoenberger. This dual biography covered the years of the cinematic collaborations of John Ford and John Wayne. It was not an extensive biography of either man, but rather a biography of the work they did together. The author is a professor in the English department of the College of William and Mary and so her focus was on how these two men created the American Western and along with it the myth of the American West as most people visualize it. The author went into the nuts and bolts of filming and of the vision of John Ford and how John Wayne executed it. It was clear throughout the book that the author's position was that Ford had the vision and Wayne was the vehicle Ford used to illustrate his vision of maleness and of the place of the American West in creating American manhood.

Throughout Ford's life he gathered big strong strapping males around him and is clear in all of his movies that he had a archetype of man. His friends illustrated this. He didn't like actors like James Stewart or Gary Cooper. He wanted big men. Men as big as the land. John Wayne and Ward Bond where his mens men. John Wayne owed his success to his training under John Ford. Even when Ford was not directing Wayne's movies it was Ford's vision and character that the audience saw.

Ford's sexuality is alluded to but the author states plainly that was not the reason she was writing this book. It was strictly about the friendship between the two men and how that translated to the screen. As a result this is a rather short book - 225 pages including the notes. Only at the end does she broaden out and include the last three films that Wayne made. None of the three were Ford pictures, but nevertheless, Ford was the creator of all three of them in that it was his character that John Wayne played in the three. I am sure that I will never watch any of these movies again without seeing the techniques Ford used to create his vision.

Finishing up Boys In the Boat and loving it. Will post the December challenge later tonight.

December challenge is up!! Please don't forget to star it, since we aren't managing to get 150 posts and so your stars won't carry forward automatically...

https://www.librarything.com/topic/326834

I'm still working on my group biography and won't finish it in November. Eleanor and Hick is very interesting but I'm just juggling too many books at the moment. I plan on finishing it by the end of the year.

>25 Chatterbox: The categories for next year look like good ones. Thanks for setting them up!