#Best Biographies

[theseoblogspace]

Best Top Rated Biographies to Read Now

Summer is the perfect time to relax, unwind, and soak up the sun. And what better way to complement those lazy days than with a compelling book that takes you on a journey through someone else’s extraordinary life? Whether you’re lounging by the pool, enjoying a picnic in the park, or escaping into the shade of a cozy hammock, a top rated biography can transport you to different times and places,…

[bloseroseone]

Top 10 Best Biographies of All Time

Best biographies hold a significant place in literature, offering readers a glimpse into the lives of remarkable individuals. They provide insights into the personal struggles, triumphs, and motivations of historical figures, shedding light on their contributions to society.

When it comes to literary legends, biographies play a crucial role in understanding the complexities behind their masterpieces.

Steve Jobs by walter isaacson

One of the best biographies is “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, This book is captivating, discussing both the subject’s extraordinary talent and drive and how modern life is changing in the information age.” – Telegraph This celebrated, worldwide best-selling biography of the ultimate creative icon is based on over forty interviews with Steve Jobs over a two-year period, in addition to conversations with over a hundred friends, foes, and coworkers.

Frida by Hayden Herrera

This appealing biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, praised by readers and critics nationwide, portrays a woman of extraordinary magnetism and uniqueness.

An artist whose sensual vibrancy stemmed directly from her own experiences: her early years spent close to Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution; her tragic accident at the age of eighteen, which left her crippled and unable to bear children; her turbulent marriage to muralist Diego Rivera and her sporadic relationships with men as diverse as Leon Trotsky and Isamu Noguchi; her affiliation with the Communist Party; her immersion in Mexican folklore and culture; and her dramatic love of spectacle.

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

A Beautiful Mind” by Sylvia Nasar is one of the best biographies of all time that delves into the extraordinary life of mathematician John Nash. Nasar’s narrative skillfully navigates through Nash’s brilliance in academia, his struggles with mental illness, and his eventual triumphs.

With meticulous research and engaging prose, Nasar paints a vivid portrait of Nash’s journey, from his groundbreaking contributions to game theory to his personal battles with schizophreblsnia...Continue reading

[thatsrightice]

But [Rosie] was not very good at maneuvering a spindly British bicycle. As "airplane commander," Rosenthal was issued along with a good deal of other matériel, a bicycle for getting around the wide vistas of Thorpe Abbotts. He found himself heavily burdened by all this issue but somehow managed to get himself upon the cycle. He carried a load of gear in one arm, had draped his life preserver around his neck, and set off in the general direction of his quarters.

Rosenthal managed to do pretty well, for he got some distance away from the supply hut and was pedaling his uncertain way along a little dirt road. A shift in the load contributed to a series of unusual course changes which came to a sudden, damp conclusion as Rosenthal, newly issued supplies and bicycle plunged down an embankment into one of those charming little ditches that run along the picturesque rural English roads.

Lying in the water (which was not deep), Lieutenant Rosenthal felt there was only one thing to do in this emergency as he lay there, face up in the ditch: he inflated his Mae West. This was probably the only time during all of the Second World War that a member of the 8th Air Force was thus saved from British waters.

— an except from Edward Jablonski’s Flying Fortress : the illustrated biography of the B-17s and the men who flew them

[sforzesco]

many thanks @twobeesornottwobees for helping me out with the theodosius biography!! at long last, agrippa makes a reappearance on my blog! and additionally octavian because it feels wrong to draw agrippa without him

[pastlivesandpurplepuppets]

[satellitesunset]

I attribute the belief (that's mostly present on tiktok) that the story a song tells must be solely rooted in nonfictional events that occurrd to the songwriter to taylor swift. it's not only abt her strictly autobiographical approach (it's natural for your art to be derived from personal experience). but rather the the culture (that she created !); from speculations to who they're abt to. to attempting to work them into the story/timeline she constructed. that is det​ri​men​tal to music (and on a larger scale literature) analysis. it convinced most that is the norm and every record must be 100% based on a true experience.

[chicago-geniza]

Deleted all the work apps from my phone and downloaded a ton of Stefania PDFs...we're so back

[drrav3nb]

KIM YOUNG KWANG as SEO DO YOUNG in EVILIVE [E6]

[god-hates-sickness]

If you’re a fan of Frankenstein or mary shelleys writing in general, I suggest reading “The Strange True Tale of Frankenstein’s Creator Mary Shelley” by Catherine Reef. She had such a tragic and adventurous life.

[theinfinitedivides]

something very homosexual is going on here

[vthanie]

ㅤㅤㅤㅤ

ㅤ ㅤ me faça objeto das suas escolhas, ㅤe eu lhe reduzo aos meus objetivos. ㅤacontece que almejo além do imaginário possível.

ㅤ ㅤ eternaria o teu nome nas estrelas, ㅤse o brilho do teu olhar já não estivesse cravado nelas.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤ

[psykopaths]

The Bang Bang Club, (2010)

[sforzesco]

Brutus: the Noble Conspirator, Kathryn Tempest, Plutarch, Brutus 7 (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace & Oblivion in Roman Political Culture, Harriet I. Flower

[princesssarcastia]

delighted by the series finale of the borgias

holy shit!!!!!

FUCK!

let me start again.

the slowest burn

the slowest burn on this show was not, in fact, lucrezia/cesare—it was cesare/the papal armies. it was cesare/his father's trust. Cesare could only find himself in possession of these things at the very end because they're overwhelmingly transformative. We spent two seasons watching his brother, Juan, faff about, completely inept, unable to accomplish almost any task the pope sets for him. And then! Cesare takes command and it really is like god smiles on him and everything is suddenly possible. Suddenly, for one shining moment, it seems like the world really is ripe for the taking.

This was of course foreshadowed as far back as the first episode, when Cesare, cloaked in an archbishop's robes, steps in with a sword to easily, handily, save his brother from two random dudes he got into a fight with on the street. It's perfectly emblematic of what's to come.

Micheletto and the case of courtly love

The return of Micheletto!!!! Micheletto my love!! My darling dearest. Talk about the platonic ideal of courtly love—his devotion to Cesare, his love for Cesare, his impulse to serve him, outweighs even his hatred and his grief. To have him come back one last time, grant Cesare one last gift, one that wins him his first battle decisively? How utterly fantastic.

And of course, when Micheletto says it's over and done with and he's dead as far as anyone is concerned, Cesare lets him go. First of all, because there's no way in hell he could stop him. Second of all, because of course Cesare loves him, too. Trusts him.

One great parallel drawn is between Cesare/Micheletto and Caterina/Rufio. Two nobles who remain ennobled by their left hands of death whom they trust utterly and, apparently, love beyond anyone else. Cesare lets Micheletto go...and Caterina lets Rufio go. Gives him her blessing to go serve a new master once she's finally gone—once he ensure that she's finally gone. You could read it as Caterina searching to put a failsafe into place, to put someone in Cesare's household that can one day free her or continue to work to her ends. But honestly? I think the most Rufio will ever do for her again is slip into her rooms one night and see her dead, like she asked. A last kindness for the Lady he served his whole life.

Caterina Sforza meets her end

Caterina Sforza, my love, you were fantastic, and you lost in a spectacular fashion fitting your spectacular legend and comportment. Ten more sons! The Tigress of Forli indeed!

I thought her storyline was also tragically beset by in-universe sexism; the way those other Italian lords abandoned her cause for Cesare the second he gathered an army of his own must have burned. Certainly, it ensured there was no way for her to win. But everything she accomplished in spite of that is all the more impressive, to the very end.

It's also interesting, because as she had to deal with sexism, so too have the Borgias dealt with that classic european mix of nativism and racism, and no one else spells it out quite like Caterina does. At the very end, the second she's well and truly lost:

"Damn you, Spanish half-breed," she says to Cesare, who just prevented her from killing herself.

Her family was originally supposed to be allied with the Borgias! The Sforzas and the Borgias, bound together by Lucrezia's marriage to her first husband. But the Sforzas spurned the alliance at every turn, refusing to provide the promised military aid, and on a more personal level, allowing Giovanni to beat Lucrezia and generally treat her like shit.

Why? Because the Borgias are outsiders. Because they're a bunch of Spaniards in an Italian world, and the italians can't help but punish them for it. Why should the Sforzas keep their word to a bunch of spanish half-breeds?

Why should a bunch of italian men keep their word to an italian woman?

Caterina Sforza sits at a very neat intersection of prejudices, and I find it fascinating.

Lucrezia now firmly resides in a tragedy

There's also a fantastic comparison to be had between Cesare's love for Lucrezia and his love for Micheletto. Both of them, he would trust with power and authority—he tells his mother he misses Micheletto's counsel and skill. He tells Machiavelli he would make his sister the regent of Naples. But here lies the difference: Micheletto he would allow to walk free, to live as he chooses. Lucrezia will never, ever be afforded that privilege. Never.

"You will be naked, and clean, and bloodless again. And mine."

FUCK.

Watching him kneel at her side, as she lies next to her husband's recent bloody corpse, and try to wipe her clean...that's romance. Creepy, terrifying, devoted love. An insidious inversion of the tender care he's shown for her the whole show up to this point. He'll continue to love her, care for her and her son and her happiness, no doubt. But there can also be no doubt that Lucrezia is completely at the mercy of a much more powerful man once again.

Literally the last lines of the whole show is a creepy incestuous declaration of possession. Cesare owns Lucrezia, now. I'd be shocked, in this universe the show constructed, if she ever married again. Certainly, now that their father has given Cesare the keys to the kingdom, has decided he'll trust his first-born son with both their ambitions, I can't see him denying Cesare anything, even Lucrezia—so long as he's discrete.

I mean...the pair of them DID keep making out in front of servants and also minor lordlings who owe Cesare allegiance. It's not like it's a total secret at this point. And still, they follow him.

Poor Lucrezia. I think if Rodrigo and Cesare had literally just included her, treated her like, if not an equal, at least someone with skin in the game whom they trust, this could have turned from the tragedy it was to a triumph, for her.

Instead, she has to beg for scraps of news Rodrigo can barely give her, and grant her husband a mercy killing after her brother stabs him mortally but doesn't finish the job.

Cesare's new preoccupation with legitimacy

There's also a fantastic scene between Cesare and Vanozza, his mother. His mother, the courtesan, the whore, who offers her son her counsel, offers to ride to war with him so he has someone he can trust by his side! Something he had just finished telling her he desperately missed (Micheletto my love you are irreplaceable)

And...he turns her down.

He not only turns her down, he does so in a way that's eerily reminiscent of his dead brother, Juan. His dead brother whom he murdered.

"I would not be the son of a whore," Cesare says to his mother, the whore. Suddenly, after his father shared his dream of creating a Papal Bloodline, to be passed down to Cesare so he in turn can pass it down to his own son...suddenly, now, he begins to care about the very perceptions that eventually drove Juan to dangle his nephew over a balcony and sign his own death warrant. It is, to me, the second most chilling moment in the whole episode, after what he says to Lucrezia.

Now, Vanozza might not be trapped like her daughter, but she may soon be consigned to insignificance, without any responsibility or meaning, but also without any power. Relevant only as much as Cesare loves her or wants to see her. Which, before this episode, I would have said was quite a lot! But if he's about to descend into the same game of legitimacy and legend and perception his brother did...perhaps not so much.

Rodrigo and Cesare and the death of daddy issues

We spent three seasons watching Rodrigo dismiss and belittle and refuse to trust Cesare, but finally, in this episode, we come to see the truth: that he always meant for Cesare to succeed him in the only way that matters to him: in the church. He made him a cardinal so he could one day be pope, after him! Made him a prince of the church! But Cesare was also right to miss and lust after traditional station of power, after the dukedoms and armies he amasses after forcing his father to let him renounce his position as cardinal, because the empire they both want to build is impossible without them.

Still: to realize, with Cesare, that even though Rodrigo sees so much of himself in Cesare, he still planned from the beginning to make Cesare his true heir...what a payoff. What a relief. What a consolation for years of feelings of inadequacy! Of never being enough!

No wonder he's riding high, immortal, invincible, Cesar come again. All his daddy issues went "poof" and left him, well, clean.

All told?

In the end, having now watched all of it, I have to say the whole show was marvelous. Politics, intrigue, romance, forbidden romance, the things people do for family or for love or for both, the things they do for power, how lonely it is to sit at the pinnacle of the world. The costuming, the writing, the dialogue, it's all so compelling, and I frankly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in period dramas

P.S.

Contender for funniest line in the whole fucking show:

"Primogeniture is the future," the pope of rome says.

CACKLING oh my god. that's hilarious. definitely, that is a thing that will happen for the papacy and the world at large.

SureJan.gif

[scarlet-abyss]

09-11-24

didn't get much done yest cuz i watched a movie in the morning-afternoon. my bestie and her sister came in the evening, after she got her prom dress (yay!). girlie finished her os and im so proud her. shes gg to be awesome and i love her to bits even if she can be a dumbass. played uno and mastermind, i fried them in uno most of the time. when we played mastermind, i was half asleep so I made really stupid choices.

mastermind is really fun tho, i love placing the cute little coloured pins into the holes. the silver and red pins are my fav hehehe.

we then had dinner from the temple, man id die for the sambar. i swear, that place makes the best sambar in the whole world. obviously, it was 11 pm and the three of us were half asleep so naturally it was time for ice cream. mcd was immediately vetoed, cuz we were sick of mcd ice cream.

the little Indian small supermarket we have was in a sketchy corner of the neighbourhood, so we got to watch a bunch of drunk men being kinda shady and creepy. we had to get our ice cream quickly. anyway, got myself a butterscotch cone, while the other two got chocobars cuz diabetes <3.

in the end, after the sugar high, my bestie and i were giggling over the dumbest things like the ceiling being shaped like a kidney bean and the window looking like a waffle. and man, that flickering light bulb is brighter than our futures. than my we both fell asleep on each other on the floor, and we only woke up when her parents wanted to leave.

overall, this was an amazing day. nothing beats spending a day with your best friend :D.