TEN BIOGRAPHIES YOU MUST READ

The best biographies give us a satisfying glimpse into a great person’s life, while also teaching us about the context in which that person lived. Through biography, we can also learn history, psychology, sociology, politics, philosophy, and more. Reading a great biography is both fun and educational. What’s not to love right? 

Below I have mentioned some BIOGRAPHIES that you must read. I've tried to keep this list on biographies only, so there is little way of memoir or autobiography. In some, authors have written about there family member and some of there friends, but for the most part these are books where the focus is on the biographical subject, not the author. 

1) 'Educated' by Tara Westover. 

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Then lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied History, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the Civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home. 

2) 'Losing my Virginity' by Richard Branson. 

Losing My Virginity is the unusual, frequently outrageous autobiography of the great business geniuses of our time. When Richard Branson started his first business, he and his friends decided that "since we're complete virgins at business, let's just call it just virgin." Since then, Branson has written his own 'rules' for success, creating a group a companies with the global presence, but no central headquarters, no management hierarchy, and minimal bureaucracy. 

3) 'Long Walk to Freedom' by Nelson Mandela. 

Nelson Mandela’s autobiography contains every elements of knowledge you want to know about this legendary leader. Starting from his childhood, growing up in to a freedom fighter, to his twenty seven years in prison, and his significant role in molding up a new, democratic South Africa, this book has it all. It also contains in depth analysis of Mandela’s perception of the anti-apartheid struggle of the South Africans. In simple words, this book is Mandela’s long walk to freedom!

4) 'The Story of my Experiments with Truth' by Mahatma Gandhi. 

This unusual autobiography “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”, is a window to the workings of Mahatma Gandhi’s mind a window to the emotions of his heart a window to understanding what drove this seemingly ordinary man to the heights of being the father of a nation India. Starting with his days as a boy, Gandhi takes one through his trials and turmoils and situations that moulded his philosophy of life going through child marriage, his studies in England, practicing Law in South Africa and his Satyagraha there to the early beginnings of the Independence movement in India.
He did not aim to write an autobiography but rather share the experience of his various experiments with truth to arrive at what he perceived as Absolute Truth – the ideal of his struggle against racism, violence and colonialism.

5) 'The Diary of a Young Girl' by Anne Frank. 

This is my personal favorite autobiography, the way she wrote this book at this early age amaze me! In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.

6) 'Mein Kampf' by Adolf Hitler. 

Adolf Hitler, though you may like him or not you can't forget him. He is an icon, yes he has done few wrong things but it can take nothing away from a man that he is. Also by reading this book you will come to know why he did that. The book has much more than one would expect knowing Hitler. We should try to gather the positives from his life an believe me there are many positives in Hitler specially for us Indians, the love for their motherland and all. The book is a classic and it ought to be in your collection.

7) 'Dreams from my Father' by Barack Obama.

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

8) 'Can't Hurt Me' by David Goggins. 

For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare - poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him The Fittest Man in America. 

9) 'Steve jobs' by Walter Isaacson. 

Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years - as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues this is the acclaimed, internationally bestselling biography of the ultimate icon of inventiveness. Walter Isaacson tells the story of the rollercoaster life and searingly intense personality of creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written, nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

10) 'MRS. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of Victorian lady' by Kate Summerscale. 

Kate Summerscale brilliantly recreates the Victorian world, chronicling in exquisite and compelling detail the life of Isabella Robinson, wherein the longings of a frustrated wife collided with a society clinging to rigid ideas about sanity, the boundaries of privacy, the institution of marriage, and female sexuality.

HOPE YOU LOVE THIS POST, PLEASE SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIEDNS AND FAMILY.

HERE ARE SOME MORE THAT YOU MAY LOVE. 

- READING STRATEGIES AND TIPS YOU NEED TO KNOW. 

- TOP BOOKS EVERY ENTREPRENEUR SHOULD READ ATLEAST ONCE IN LIFE 

-BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY BILLS GATES