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The Autobiography of a Biographer

By: James Atlas, Edmund Morris, Stacy Schiff
Narrated by: Symphony Space
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Editorial reviews

This fascinating audio gives listeners a glimpse into the lives of people who specialize in inhabiting others' lives: biographers. As part of its literary series Thalia Book Club, Symphony Space put together this panel of accomplished biographers who’ve worked on subjects as far-ranging as Roosevelt and Cleopatra. James Atlas, himself a renowned writer, biographer, and Rhodes Scholar, moderates as Stacy Schiff and Edmund Morris talk about the often exhausting and absorbing process of writing a biography. With wit and deep insight, these three distinguished authors discuss choosing a subject, objectivity, research, their thoughts on what a biography is, and a number of other revealing aspects of an intriguing and sometimes esoteric discipline.

Publisher's Summary

Symphony Space invited three renowned biographers, James Atlas, Edmund Morris, and Stacy Schiff, to reveal the fascinating, all-absorbing process of researching and writing another person's life story.

The conversation delved deeply into the challenges the authors encountered and the pleasures they enjoyed in writing the lives of Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Vera Nabakov, and Saul Bellow, as well as the difficulty of getting past the "unreliable narrator".

This special event was recorded live as part of the Thalia Book Club series at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City.

©2008 Symphony Space, Inc (P)2008 Symphony Space, Inc

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