Everything I do must serve that life story, and give the reader a reason to keep reading the next page, the next paragraph, the next sentence. There will be actions, accidents, choices, and consequences. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I am delivering the story of a life-a story about human beings. As a biographer, I have an implicit contract with the reader. Loosely speaking, I have three goals for each book I write, none of them purely scholarly or artistic.įirst, I'm interested in writing books that succeed as books-that is, as an immersive and satisfying reading experience. Academic historians often feel ambivalent about biography, haunted by Thomas Carlyle's claim that history is made by "great men." But I find it to be the perfect form for what I want to accomplish. To put it another way, I try to work in the space where scholarly and literary virtues overlap, where new knowledge and art (or, at least, the enjoyable narrative) enhance each other. I like to tell good stories and ask big questions. That means my identities as a historian and author are inextricably bound together.
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