Pulitzer Prize Winners for Biography or Autobiography
at the SJRCC Libraries

PAL = Palatka Campus | OPC = Orange Park Campus | SAC = St. Augustine Campus

2009: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham - Publisher's Marketing: "Andrew Jackson, his intimate circle of friends, and his tumultuous times are at the heart of this remarkable book about the man who rose from nothing to create the modern presidency. Beloved and hated, venerated and reviled, Andrew Jackson was an orphan who fought his way to the pinnacle of power, bending the nation to his will in the cause of democracy. Jackson's election in 1828 ushered in a new and lasting era in which the people, not distant elites, were the guiding force in American politics. Democracy made its stand in the Jackson years, and he gave voice to the hopes and the fears of a restless, changing nation facing challenging times at home and threats abroad. To tell the saga of Jackson's presidency, acclaimed author Jon Meacham goes inside the Jackson White House. Drawing on newly discovered family letters and papers, he details the human drama-the family, the women, and the inner circle of advisers-that shaped Jackson's private world through years of storm and victory.
One of our most significant yet dimly recalled presidents, Jackson was a battle-hardened warrior, the founder of the Democratic Party, and the architect of the presidency as we know it. His story is one of violence, sex, courage, and tragedy. With his powerful persona, his evident bravery, and his mystical connection to the people, Jackson moved the White House from the periphery of government to the center of national action, articulating a vision of change that challenged entrenched interests to heed the popular will-or face his formidable wrath. The greatest of the presidents who have followed Jackson in the White House-from Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to FDR to Truman-have found inspiration in his example, and virtue in his vision.
Jackson was the most contradictory of men. The architect of the removal of Indians from their native lands, he was warmly sentimental and risked everything to give more power to ordinary citizens. He was, in short, a lot like his country: alternately kind and vicious, brilliant and blind; and a man who fought a lifelong war to keep the republic safe-no matter what it took.
Jon Meacham in "American Lion" has delivered the definitive human portrait of a pivotal president who forever changed the American presidency-and America itself."

Call number: SAC - E382 .M43 2008

Call number: OPC - E382 .M43 2008

2008: Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson - Publisher's Marketing: "The beloved author of "Little Women" was torn between pleasing her idealistic father and planting her feet in the material world.
Louisa May Alcott's name is known universally. Yet, during her youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson--an eminent teacher, lecturer, and admired friend of Emerson and Thoreau. Willful and exuberant, Louisa flew in the face of all her father's intricate theories of child rearing. She, in turn, could not understand the frugal life Bronson preached, one that reached its epitome in the failed utopian community of Fruitlands. In a family that insisted on self-denial and spiritual striving, Louisa dreamed of wealth and fame. At the same time, like most daughters, she wanted her father's approval. As her father struggled to recover from a breakdown and slowly resurrect his career, Louisa learned to support her family, teaching if she must, but finally finding her vocation in writing. This story of their tense yet loving relationship adds dimensions to Louisa's life, her work, and the relationships of fathers and daughters. 26 illustrations."

Call number: SAC - PS1018 .M34 2007

2007: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate - Publisher's Marketing: "No one predicted success for Henry Ward Beecher at his birth in 1813. The blithe, boisterous son of the last great Puritan minister, he seemed destined to be overshadowed by his brilliant siblings--especially his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who penned the century's bestselling book "Uncle Tom's Cabin," But when pushed into the ministry, the charismatic Beecher found international fame by shedding his father Lyman's Old Testament-style fire-and-brimstone theology and instead preaching a New Testament-based gospel of unconditional love and healing, becoming one of the founding fathers of modern American Christianity. By the 1850s, his spectacular sermons at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights had made him New York's number one tourist attraction, so wildly popular that the ferries from Manhattan to Brooklyn were dubbed "Beecher Boats."
Beecher inserted himself into nearly every important drama of the era--among them the antislavery and women's suffrage movements, the rise of the entertainment industry and tabloid press, and controversies ranging from Darwinian evolution to presidential politics. He was notorious for his irreverent humor and melodramatic gestures, such as auctioning slaves to freedom in his pulpit and shipping rifles--nicknamed "Beecher's Bibles"--to the antislavery resistance fighters in Kansas. Thinkers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Twain befriended--and sometimes parodied--him.
And then it all fell apart. In 1872 Beecher was accused by feminist firebrand Victoria Woodhull of adultery with one of his most pious parishioners. Suddenly the "Gospel of Love" seemed to rationalize a life of lust. The cuckolded husband brought charges of "criminalconversation" in a salacious trial that became the most widely covered event of the century, garnering more newspaper headlines than the entire Civil War. Beecher survived, but his reputation and his causes--from women's rights to progressive evangelicalism--suffered devastating setbacks that echo to this day.
Featuring the page-turning suspense of a novel and dramatic new historical evidence, Debby Applegate has written the definitive biography of this captivating, mercurial, and sometimes infuriating figure. In our own time, when religion and politics are again colliding and adultery in high places still commands headlines, Beecher's story sheds new light on the culture and conflicts of contemporary America."

Call number: PAL - BX7260.B3 A67 2006

2006: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - Publisher's Marketing: "American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation-one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress.
He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials-an idea that is still relevant today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and criticized the Air Force's plans to fight an infinitely dangerous nuclear war. In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early 1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss, Superbomb advocate Edward Teller and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America's nuclear secrets.

American Prometheus sets forth Oppenheimer's life and times in revealing and unprecedented detail. Exhaustively researched, it is based on thousands of records and letters gathered from archives in America and abroad, on massive FBI files and on close to a hundred interviews with Oppenheimer's friends, relatives and colleagues.
We follow him from his earliest education at the turn of the twentieth century at New York City's Ethical Culture School, through personal crises at Harvard and Cambridge universities. Then to Germany, where he studied quantum physics with the world's mostaccomplished theorists; and to Berkeley, California, where he established, during the 1930s, the leading American school of theoretical physics, and where he became deeply involved with social justice causes and their advocates, many of whom were communists. Then to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he transformed a bleak mesa into the world's most potent nuclear weapons laboratory-and where he himself was transformed. And finally, to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which he directed from 1947 to 1966.

American Prometheus is a rich evocation of America at midcentury, a new and compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man profoundly connected to its major events-the Depression, World War II and the Cold War. It is at once biography and history, and essential to our understanding of our recent past-and of our choices for the future."

Call number: SAC - QC16.O62 B57 2005

2005: de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan - Publisher's Marketing: "The first major biography of one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Ten years in the making, this exhaustively researched biography is a masterful portrait of the abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, who arrived in New York as a stowaway from Rotterdam in 1926 and underwent a long struggle to become a painter. During the Depression he was a central figure in the bohemian world of downtown New York, surviving on WPA and commercial work and slowly gathering the support of established artists and critics. By 1948, with his successful first show, he took his place as the romantic and charismatic leader of the New York School just when American art was beginning to dominate the international scene. Dashingly handsome, de Kooning had a tumultuous marriage to Elaine Marie Fried, an acclaimed painter herself. Days were spent painting powerful abstractions and intense, disturbing pictures of women--and nights were spent living on the edge, drinking, womanizing, and talking at the Cedar Bar with such friends as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Frank O'Hara. In the 1960s, exhausted by the feverish art world, he retreated to Long Island, where he painted an extraordinary series of pastorals. In the 1980s, as he slowly declined into Alzheimer's, he created a late style of haunting, ethereal work. This is an authoritative and illuminating exploration of the art, life, and world of Willem de Kooning."

Call number: SAC - N6537.D43 S74 2004

This is the first comprehensive biography of Khrushchev and the first of any Soviet leader to reflect the full range of sources that have become available since the USSR collapsed. Combining a page-turning historical narrative with penetrating political and psychological analysis, this book brims with the life and excitement of a man whose story personified his era."

Call number: SAC - DK275 .K5 T38 2004

Interweaving his narrative with a brilliantly astute and concise history of the Senate, Caro shows us how political initiatives triumph or fail and how political genius functions."

Like his masterly, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "Truman," David McCullough's "John Adams" has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. It is both a riveting portrait of an abundantly human man and a vivid evocation of his time, much of it drawn from an outstanding collection of Adams family letters and diaries. In particular, the more than one thousand surviving letters between John and Abigail Adams, nearly half of which have never been published, provide extraordinary access to their private lives and make it possible to know John Adams as no other major American of his founding era.

As he has with stunning effect in his previous books, McCullough tells the story from within -- from the point of view of the amazing eighteenth century and of those who, caught up in events, had no sure way of knowing how things would turn out. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, the British spy Edward Bancroft, Madame Lafayette and Jefferson's Paris "interest" Maria Cosway, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the scandalmonger James Callender, SallyHemings, John Marshall, Talleyrand, and Aaron Burr all figure in this panoramic chronicle, as does, importantly, John Quincy Adams, the adored son whom Adams would live to see become President.

Crucial to the story, as it was to history, is the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, born opposites -- one a Massachusetts farmer's son, the other a Virginia aristocrat and slaveholder, one short and stout, the other tall and spare. Adams embraced conflict; Jefferson avoided it. Adams had great humor; Jefferson, very little. But they were alike in their devotion to their country.

At first they were ardent co-revolutionaries, then fellow diplomats and close friends. With the advent of the two political parties, they became archrivals, even enemies, in the intense struggle for the presidency in 1800, perhaps the most vicious election in history. Then, amazingly, they became friends again, and ultimately, incredibly, they died on the same day -- their day of days -- July 4, in the year 1826.

Much about John Adams's life will come as a surprise to many readers. His courageous voyage on the frigate "Boston" in the winter of 1778 and his later trek over the Pyrenees are exploits that few would have dared and that few readers will ever forget.

It is a life encompassing a huge arc -- Adams lived longer than any president. The story ranges from the Boston Massacre to Philadelphia in 1776 to the Versailles of Louis XVI, from Spain to Amsterdam, from the Court of St. James's, where Adams was the first American to stand before King George III as a representative of the new nation, to the raw, half-finished Capital by the Potomac, where Adams was the first President to occupy the WhiteHouse.

This is history on a grand scale -- a book about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, "John Adams" is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived."

Call number: SAC - E322 .M38 2001

Call number: PAL - E322 .M38 2001

2001: W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 by David Levering Lewis - Publisher's Marketing: "Charismatic, singularly determined, and controversial, W.E.B. Du Bois was a historian, novelist, editor, sociologist, founder of the NAACP, advocate of women's rights, and the premier architect of the Civil Rights movement. His hypnotic voice thunders out of David Levering Lewis's monumental biography like a locomotive under full steam.
This second volume of what is already a classic work begins with the triumphal return from WWI of African American veterans to the shattering reality of racism and lynching even as America discovers the New Negro of literature and art. In stunning detail, Lewis chronicles the little-known political agenda behind the Harlem Renaissance and Du Bois's relentless fight for equality and justice, including his steadfast refusal to allow whites to interpret the aspirations of black America. Seared by the rejection of terrified liberals and the black bourgeoisie during the Communist witch-hunts, Du Bois ended his days in uncompromising exile in newly independent Ghana. In re-creating the turbulent times in which he lived and fought, Lewis restores the inspiring and famed Du Bois to his central place in American history."

Call number: SAC - E185.97.D73 L48 1993

From the moment he landed in Paris on May 21, 1927, Lindbergh found himself thrust on an odyssey for which he was ill-prepared -- becoming the first modern media superstar, deified and demonized many times over in a single lifetime. Berg casts dramatic new light on the lonely, sometimes twisted childhood that formed the aviator's character; the astonishing transatlantic flight and thrilling, then overwhelming aftermath; the controversies surrounding the trial of his son's kidnapper, Lindbergh's fascination with Hitler's Germany and his leadership of America First; his remarkable unsung work in the fields of medical research, rocketry, anthropology, and conservation; and, at the heart of it all, his fascinating, complex marriage to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a relationship filled with sudden joy and bitter darkness.

In all, it is a most compelling story of a most significant life -- the most private of public figures finally revealed with a sweep and detail never before possible. In the skilled hands of A. Scott Berg, this is Lindbergh the hero -- and Lindbergh the man. "

1998: Personal History by Katharine Graham - Publisher's Marketing: "An extraordinarily frank, honest, and generous book by one of America's most famous and admired women -- a book that is, as its title suggests, both personal and history. It is the story of Graham's parents: the multi-millionaire father who left private business and government service to buy and restore the down-and-out Washington Post; the aggressive, formidable, self-absorbed mother, known in her time for her political and welfare work, and her passionate friendships with men such as Thomas Mann and Adlai Stevenson. It is the story of how The Washington Post struggled to succeed -- a fascinating and instructive business history told from the inside (the paper has been run by Graham herself, her father, her husband, and now her son). It is the story of Phil Graham -- Kay's brilliant, charismatic husband (he clerked for two Supreme Court justices), whose plunge into manic-depression and eventual suicide are movingly and charitably recounted. And, best of all, it is Kay Graham herself -- brought up in great wealth, yet understanding nothing of money; half Jewish, yet -- incredibly -- unaware of it; naive, awkward, yet intelligent and energetic, and married to a man she adored. How he fascinated and educated her, and then in his illness turned from her and abused her, destroying her confidence and her happiness, is a drama in itself, followed by the rarer drama of her new life as the head of a great newspaper and a great company -- a woman famous (and feared) in her own right. In other words, here is a life that came into its own with a vengeance -- a success story on every level."

Call number: SAC - Z 473 .G7 A3 1997

Call number: OPC - Z 473 .G7 A3 1997

1997: Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt - Publisher's Marketing: ""When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages.

Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling -- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

"Angela's Ashes," imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic."

Call number: OPC - E184.I6 M117 1999

1996: God: A Biography by Jack Miles - Publisher's Marketing: "Miles shows us God in the guise of a great literary character, the hero of the Old Testament. In a close, careful, and inspired reading of that testament - book by book, verse by verse - God is seen from his first appearance as Creator to his last as Ancient of Days. The God whom Miles reveals to us is a warrior whose greatest battle is with himself. We see God torn by conflicting urges. To his own sorrow, he is by turns destructive and creative, vain and modest, subtle and naive, ruthless and tender, lawful and lawless, powerful yet powerless, omniscient and blind. As we watch him change amazingly, we are drawn into the epic drama of his search for self-knowledge, the search that prompted him to create mankind as his mirror. In that mirror he seeks to examine his own reflection, but he also finds there a rival. We then witness God's own perilous passage from power to wisdom. For generations our culture's approach to the Bible has been more a reverential act than a pursuit of knowledge about the Bible's protagonist; and so, through the centuries the complexity of God's being and "life" has been diluted in our consciousness. In this book we find - in precisely chiseled relief - the infinitely complex God who made infinitely complex man in his image. Here, we come closer to the essence of that literary masterpiece that has shaped our culture no less than our religious life. In God: A Biography, Jack Miles addresses his great subject with imagination, insight, learning, daring, and dazzling originality, giving us at the same time an illumination of the Old Testament as a work of consummate art and a journey to the secret heart of God."

Call number: SAC - BS1192.6.M6

1994: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis - Publisher's Marketing: "William Edward Burghardt Du Bois - the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America - was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator. This monumental biography - eight years in the research and writing - treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves."

Call number: SAC - E185.97.D73 L48

1993: Truman by David McCullough - Publisher's Marketing: "Here at last is the first full-scale biography of Harry S. Truman, his life and times, by David McCullough, distinguished historian and prize-winning author.

Huge, ambitious, ten years in the writing, and perfectly realized, "Truman" is an American masterpiece about that most American of presidents, "the man from Missouri, " the seemingly simple, ordinary man who in fact was always much more than met the eye and who would achieve a greatness of his own after coming to office in FDR's giant shadow.

No one but David McCullough, with his sure grasp of the American past and his feeling for people, could have written this extraordinary, deeply moving biography, at once spare in style yet rich in emotion and insight.

Much of the story is drawn from newly discovered archival material and from extensive interviews with Truman friends, family, and figures once prominent in Truman's Washington. And much will com as a surprise to many readers.

The story begins with Truman's origins in the raw, expansive world of the Missouri frontier. It chronicles a small-town, turn-of-the-century boyhood, family love, family tragedy, and young harry's years on the farm - years of relentless, often brutal work always cheerfully performed; of dogged learning, dogged courtship, optimism in the face of defeat, and courage in the face of war in 19418, the experience that changed everthing for Truman.

Here in colorful detail is the story of his political beginnings with the powerful Pendergast machine that ruled Kansas City, and of Boss Tom Pendergast who sent Truman to the United States Senate, where rapidly, unexpectedly, he proved himself no small-time party hack but a man of uncommon vitality andstrength of character.

With a telling account of Truman at Potsdam and his momentous decision to use the atomic bomb, McCullough's "Truman" shows a gritty, untried, unprepared new President facing responsibilities such as had weighed on no man ever before, confronting a new age and the growing menace of Soviet power, and, in a handful of years, under terrible pressures, defining the course of American politics and diplomacy for the next forty years."

Call number: PAL - E814 .M26 1993

1989: Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann - Publisher's Marketing: "Hailed as a masterpiece, Ellmann's biography of Oscar Wilde has been acclaimed as a perfect marriage of biographer and subject. With precision and wit and sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story, it brings Wilde to life as never before. 32 pages of photos."

Call number: SAC - PR5823 .E38 1988b

In this definitive and compelling biography, Pulitzer PrizePwinning historian David Herbert Donald dismantles that myth and demonstrates that Wolfe was a boldly aware experimental artist who, like James Joyce, William Faulkner, and John Dos Passos, deliberately pushed at the boundaries of the modern novel. Donald takes a new measure of this complex, tormented man as he reveals Wolfe's difficult childhood, when he was buffeted between an alcoholic father and a resentful mother; his "magical" years at the University of North Carolina, where his writing talent first flourished; his rise to literary fame after repeated rejection; and the full story of WolfeUs passionate affair with Aline Bernstein, including their intimate letters."

Call number: PAL - PS3545.O337 Z674 1987

Call number: OPC - PS3545.O337 Z674 1987

1987: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow - Publisher's Marketing: "Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, this is the most comprehensive book ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on more than seven hundred interviews with all of King's surviving associates, as well as with those who opposed him, and enhanced by the author's access to King's personal papers and tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents, this is a towering portrait of a man's metamorphosis into a legend."

Call number: SAC - E185.97 .K5 G36 2004

1983: Growing Up by Russell Baker - Publisher's Marketing: "This is Russell Baker's story of growing up in America between the world wars--in the backwoods mountains of Virginia, in a New Jersey commuter town, and finally in the Depression-shadowed urban landscape of Baltimore."

Call number: PAL - PS3552.A4343 Z466 1982

Call number: OPC - PS3552.A4343 Z466 1982

1982: Grant : A Biography by William S. McFeely - Publisher's Marketing: "The seminal biography of one of America's towering, enigmatic figures. From his boyhood in Ohio to the battlefields of the Civil War and his presidency during the crucial years of Reconstruction, this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography traces the entire arc of Grant's life (1822-1885)."

Call number: PAL - CWC 973.792 G763yM

1981: Peter the Great, His Life and World by Robert K. Massie - Publisher's Marketing: "Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia, unfolds the magnificent story of Peter the Great. He brought Russia from the darkness of its own Middle Ages into the Enlightenment and transformed it into the power that has its legacy in the Russia of our own century."

Call number: SAC - DK131 .M28

Call number: OPC - DK131 .M28

Call number: PAL - DK131 .M28

1980: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris - Publisher's Marketing: ""The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" chronicles the privileged youth, elite education, Western-territory adventures, military campaigns, braggadocio, family life and assemblage of the larger-than-life personality that became TR. It is the first volume of Morris's planned three-volume biography, and concludes on the day TR takes the White House. The awards and critical praise heaped on the book are due to Morris's meticulous research and his intricate and poetic prose style, all of which hauls the form of presidential biography into the realm of literature."

Call number: SAC - E757 .M883

Call number: PAL - E757 .M883

1977: A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence by John E. Mack - Publisher's Marketing: "When this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography first appeared in 1976, it rescued T. E. Lawrence from the mythologizing that had seemed to be his fate. In it, John Mack humanely and objectively explores the relationship between Lawrence's inner life and his historically significant actions. Extensive interviews, far-flung correspondence, access to War Office dispatches and unpublished letters provide the basis for Mack's sensitive investigation of the psychiatric dimensions of Lawrence's personality. In addition, Mack examines the pertinent history, politics, and sociology of the time in order to weigh the real forces with which Lawrence contended and which impinged upon him."

Call number: PAL - D568.4.L45 M28 1976

1976: Edith Wharton : A Biography by R. W. B. Lewis

Call number: PAL - PS3545.I16 Z696

1975: The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro - Publisher's Marketing: "One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today.
In revealing how Moses did it--how he developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government, one that could bring to their knees Governors and Mayors (from La Guardia to Lindsay) by mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, even the press and the Church, into an irresistible economic force--Robert Caro reveals how power works in all the cities of the United States. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars--the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were--even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him--until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.'

Call number: PAL - NA9085.M68 C37 1974

1974: O'Neill, Son and Artist by Louis Sheaffer - Publisher's Marketing: "The turbulent, often tragic life of America's greatest playwright, Eugene O'Neill, is laid bare in this acclaimed and insightful biography."

Call number: PAL - PS3529.N5 Z797 1973

1973: Luce and His Empire by W. A. Swanberg

Call number: PAL - PN4874.L76 S9 1972

Written with great insight and sensitivity by an author who was a close friend of Mrs. Roosevelt's for over twenty years, the volume explores the personal, familial and social influences that shaped Eleanor and prepared her for role as first lady and chief counselor to the president. In many ways Eleanor was her husband's conscience. Her idealism dictated the terms of the complex partnership she evolved with her husband during his rise through local and national politics."

1970: Huey Long by T. Harry Williams - Publisher's Marketing: "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this work describes the life of one of the most extraordinary figures in American political history."

Call number: SAC - E748.L86 W48 1969

Call number: PAL - E748.L86 W48 1970

1968: Memoirs by George F. Kennan - Publisher's Marketing: "A beautifully written autobiography of one of America's most distinguished diplomats."

Call number: PAL - E748.K374 A3

1967: Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, A Biography by Justin Kaplan - Publisher's Marketing: "With brilliant immediacy, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brings to life a towering literary figure whose dual personae symbolized the emerging American conflict between down-to-earth morality and freewheeling ambition. As Mark Twain, he was the Mississippi riverboat pilot, the satirist with a fiery hatred of pretension, and the author of such classics as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. As Mr. Clemens, he was the star who married and heiress, built a palatial estate, threw away fortunes on harebrained financial schemes, and lived the extravagent life that Mark Twain despised. Set against the richly drawn background of the post-Civil War period that Mark Twain dubbed the "Gilded Age," Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain is sure to entertain and enlighten both general readers and scholars alike."

Call number: PAL - PS1331 .K33 1966

1966: A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. - Publisher's Marketing: "As special assistant to the president, Arthur Schlesinger witnessed firsthand the politics and personalities that influenced the now legendary Kennedy administration. Schlesinger"s close relationship with JFK, as a politician and as a friend, has resulted in this authoritative yet intimate account in which the president "walks through the pages, from first to last, alert, alive, amused and amusing" (John Kenneth Galbraith). A THOUSAND DAYS is "at once a masterly literary achievement and a work of major historical significance" (New York Times)."

Call number: PAL - E841 .S3 1965

1964: John Keats by Walter Jackson Bate - Publisher's Marketing: "The life of Keats provides a unique opportunity for the study of literary greatness and of what permits or encourages its development."

Call number: PAL - PR4836 .B3 1963

1963: Henry James by Leon Edel

Call number: SAC - PS2123 .E353 1985

Call number: PAL - PS2123 .E353 1985

1961: Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War by David Donald

Call number: OPC - E415.9.S9 D6 1960

Call number: PAL - CWC E415.9.S9 D6 1981

1960: John Paul Jones, A Sailor's Biography by Samuel Eliot Morison - Publisher's Marketing: "This Pulitzer Prize-winning book vividly portrays the illustrious career of John Paul Jones, from his early training at sea in the British West Indian merchant trade to his command in the newly independent American Navy and his eventual award of flag status."

Call number: PAL - E207 .J7 M6 1959

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1957, "Profiles in Courage -- now featuring a new Introduction by Caroline Kennedy, as well as Robert Kennedy’ s Foreword written for the 1964 memorial edition -- resounds with timeless lessons on the most cherished of virtues and is a powerful reminder of the strength of the human spirit. It is, as Robert Kennedy writes, "not just stories of the past but a book of hope and confidence for the future. What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us." "

Call number: PAL - E176 .K4 1956

Call number: OPC - E176 .K4 1956

1954: The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh - Publisher's Marketing: "Charles A. Lindbergh captured the world's attention when he completed his famous nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1927. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning account, Lindbergh carries the reader from his barnstorming days of youthful vision to his world-famous flight that would change history. This exciting and eloquent account brings to life the energy and foresight that inspired Lindbergh to brave the Atlantic in a single-engine plane.

Call number: PAL - TL540.L5 A85

1952: Charles Evans Hughes by Merlo J. Pusey

Call number: OPC - KF8745.H8 P8 1951

Call number: PAL - KF8745.H8 P8 1951

1951: John C. Calhoun, American Portrait by Margaret L. Coit

Call number: PAL - E340.C15 C63 1961

1950: John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis

Call number: PAL - E377 .B45 1969

1949: Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History by Robert E. Sherwood - Publisher's Marketing: "Roosevelt and Hopkins is the classic account of FDR's foreign policy during World War II and how Harry Hopkins, his friend and closest confidant, became the President's "point man" with Stalin, Churchill and other allied leaders. It is also the inside history of America's inevitable wartime rise as a great power, written in a clear and readable style by White House speechwriter and playwright Robert Sherwood."

Call number: OPC - E807 .S45 1950

Call number: PAL - E807 .S45 1950

1947: The Autobiography of William Allen White - Publisher's Marketing: "One of the most unforgettable personality of his age, a gifted writer, highly admired journalist, politician, friend of presidents, White's life history spans from the time of buffalo and wild Indians in his native Kansas to the age of FDR."

Call number: PAL - PN4874.W52 A3 1946

1943: Admiral of the Ocean Sea, a Life of Christopher Columbus by Samuel Eliot Morison - Publisher's Marketing: "Telling the story of the greatest sailor of them all, "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" is a vivid and definitive biography of Columbus that details all of his voyages that, for better or worse, changed the world."

Call number: SAC - E 111 .M8 1962

Call number: PAL - E111 .M86 1942a

In this monumental biography, which won the Pulitzer Prize when first published in 1939, Carl Van Doren incorporates materials from Franklin's letters, manuscripts, journals, and published works to give the most accurate and comprehensive portrait ever written of this great American."

1938: Andrew Jackson, Portrait of a President by Marquis James

Call number: PAL - E392 .J273 1937

1935: R. E. Lee, a Biography by Douglas Southall Freeman

Call number: PAL - CWC E467.1.L4 F83 1947

Call number: OPC - E467.1.L4 F83

1933: Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage by Allan Nevins

Call number: PAL - E697 .N46 1958

1932: Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography by Henry F. Pringle - Publisher's Marketing: "Pringle's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography not only chronicles the incidents that shaped Roosevelt's career but also offers insight into the character and mind of this colorful american president."

Call number: PAL - E757 .P967 1956

1922: A Daughter of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland - Publisher's Marketing: "Pulitzer Prize-winning sequel to A Son of the Middle Border continues the autobiographical theme of that book and deals with Garland's marriage and later career. A sensitive study of individuals, their relationships, and the colorful drama that made up their daily lives. Among the most perceptive regional works in American literature, this volume about the trials and challenges of pioneer life in mid-America will be of interest to history students and anyone fascinated by the 19th-century cultural scene."

Call number: PAL - PS1733 .A42 1978

1921: The Americanization of Edward Bok : The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

Call number: PAL - PN4874.B62 A4 1923

1920: The Life of John Marshall by Albert J. Beveridge - Publisher's Marketing: "John Marshall (1755-1835) became the fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court despite having had almost no formal schooling and after having studied law for a mere six weeks. Nevertheless, Marshall remains the only judge in American history whose distinction derives almost entirely from his judicial career. During Marshall's nearly 35-year tenure as chief justice, he wielded the Constitution's awe-inspiring power aggressively and wisely, setting the Supreme Court on a course for the ages by ensuring its equal position in the triumvirate of the federal government of the United States and securing its role as interpreter and enforcer of the Constitution. Marshall's judicial energies were as unflagging as his vision was expansive. This four-volume life of Marshall received wide acclaim upon its initial publication in 1920, winning the Pulitzer Prize that year, and makes fascinating reading for the lawyer, historian, and legal scholar."

Call number: PAL - E302.6.M4 B584

1919: The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams - Publisher's Marketing: "A scion of the famous Adams family of American statesmen, historian Henry Adams was more drawn to scholarship than to politics. His well-known autobiographical work--privately printed in 1907 and published posthumously in 1918--reflects his constant search for order and unity in a world he regarded as teetering on the brink of self-destruction. Adams subtitled his work "A Study of 20th-Century Multiplicity" and cast himself as a modern everyman, seeking coherence in a fragmented universe and concluding that his education was inadequate for the demands of modern society."

Call number: SAC - E175.5.A2 A3

Call number: OPC - E175.5.A2 A3

Call number: PAL - E175.5 .A172 1946