Most book reviewers know very little about the history or the art of biography. Indeed, if there is any art in biography, it is the rare reviewer that acknowledges it or knows how to discuss it. Usually the reviewer regards biography as an occasion to wax eloquent about what he or she thinks of the subject. Little space, if any, is devoted to the biography's structure or style, to the biographer's peculiar problems, or to how the biography relates to others about the same subject.

Carl Rollyson, a professional biographer and weekly columnist ("On Biography") for "The New York Sun,"...

"Documentary Film: A Primer" provides a succinct introduction to the nature of the documentary, drawing on examples from the work of Robert Flaherty, Dziga Vertov, Leni Riefenstahl, Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, Spalding Gray, Cindy Sherman, Susan Sontag, and others. The documentaries discussed cover a range of subjects including the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, and the worlds of fashion and sports. This incisive foray into the essentials of documentary is then buttressed by an in depth discussion of the career of Jill Craigie, a British director/writer who brought to the cinema an...

Professional biographer Carl Rollyson has pioneered a new kind of biography for children and adults alike. His narrative of "Marie Curie's" life is rendered in simple, precise prose, but he also includes material addressed to adults--especially to parents who wish some guidance in discussing what their children read. This home schooling biography also includes a timeline, sources for further study, a glossary, and an index.

Vivid quotations from those who knew "Marie Curie" as well as a "points to ponder" section in each chapter are designed to provoke further discussion and research into...

"Essays in Biography" is a play on words conveying Carl Rollyson's attempt to explore the nature of biography in pieces about the history of the genre and in portrayals of biographers (Plutarch, Leon Edel, and W. A. Swanberg), literary figures (Lillian Hellman, Jack London), philosophers and critics (Leo Strauss and Hippolyte Taine), political figures (Winston Churchill and Napoleon), and artists (Rembrandt and Rubens).
An essay in biography, Rollyson argues, is an effort to comprehend a life that is inherently incomplete and subject to revision. Many of the facts about a biographical...

This volume represents more than twenty-five years of writing about female icons and biography. Rollyson provides the bits and pieces that resulted not only in his biography of "Marilyn Monroe" but also in much of the work he has subsequently done on "Lillian Hellman," "Martha Gellhorn," "Rebecca West," "Susan Sontag," and on the nature of biography itself. This book includes a selection of Rollyson's "New York Sun" book reviews dealing with female icons such as Mary Stuart, Mary Wollstonecraft, The Brontes, Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Sylvia Plath. Rollyson's writing...

After completing his biography of Rebecca West in 1995, Carl Rollyson felt bereft. As his wife said, 'Rebecca was such good company." He had already embarked on another biography, but Rebecca kept beckoning him. He felt there was more to say about her politics-a misunderstood part of her repertoire as reporter and novelist. And had he done justice to her enormous sense of fun and humor? He regretted excising the portrait of her he wanted to put at the beginning of his biography. His editor kept cutting away at what he called Rollyson's doorstop of a book. And then after years of waiting,...

Is there a right way to write a literary life? In this collection of columns from the New York Sun, Carl Rollyson explores the relationship between narrative and literary analysis. Should biographies be written in the style and form of novels? How to balance the life and the work? How much literary criticism can a biography absorb into its narrative?

Rollyson proposes a number of apologias for biography-including the thought that in the right hands the literary biography is a continuation not only of the writer's work and life. In such instances there seems to be a symbiosis between...

This collection of reviews, selected from Rollyson's "New York Sun" column, is as much about the romance of biography as it is about the American lives. Certain concerns resonate throughout the book: the American left's failure to reckon with Communist subversion, McCarthyism, and Stalinism, the problematic nature of authorized biography, the history of American biography, definitive biographies, literary biography, the differences between autobiography and biography, the importance of interviews in biographies of contemporary figures, the differences between history and biography,...

"Documentary Film: Contexts and Criticism" is designed to complement Rollyson's "Documentary Film: A Primer." The films discussed in this volume include "Zelig, the Lumiere brothers documentaries, Nanook of the North, The Man With a Movie Camera, Triumph of the Will, Olympia, The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, Why We Fight, Fires Were Started," and several Jill Craigie films, including an extended discussion of "Two Hours From London," her controversial examination of the Balkan wars and the siege of Dubrovnik.What sets this text apart from other studies of documentary is that...

Reading Susan Sontag is the first book to survey the broad range of Ms. Sontag's work, including full discussions of her fiction. Carl Rollyson, Ms. Sontag's first biographer, is uniquely situated to provide well-informed and clear readings of all her major work. He writes for general readers and students as well as for specialists. Each of his chapters is devoted to one of Ms. Sontag's books and is divided into three sections: synopsis, Ms. Sontag's own views of her work, and critical commentary, and thus progresses from basic knowledge to more sophisticated interpretation. In a detailed...