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Lloyd E. Ambrosius, ed. Writing Biography: Historians and Their Craft. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2004. 166 pp. ISBN 0-8032-1066-3, $45.00.
Modern theory and practice of biography, typically dated from the eighteenth century, have identified recurring core questions (philosophical, aesthetic, ethical, and rhetorical) that require perennial discussion by writers and readers of this genre. The purpose of these questions, which are not intended to be solved once and for all, is to motivate energizing skepticism and debate about the ends, aims, purposes, subjects, and forms of life writing. Thus a collection of essays on the poetics, practice, and problems of biographical writing by good practicing biographers is almost certain to be worthwhile and engaging. Thoughtful accounts of problems faced, judgments made, and solutions created in this multi- and inter-disciplinary and boundary-crossing genre will always find a readership.
The origin of Lloyd E. Ambrosius's edited volume, Writing Biography, Historians and Their Craft, was a symposium, entitled "Biography and Historical Analysis," hosted by the Department of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2000. Six historians were invited to explore the intersecting methods of history that examine socio-political context and the practice of biography that examines the individual. Within the contributors' overarching commonality as professional historians, they also represent a vigorous range and variety of scholarly areas and methodologies. The editor is a scholar of the Civil War and Wilsonian periods. John Milton Cooper, Jr., American political historian, is author of a life of Walter Hines Page and a comparative biography of Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Shirley A. Leckie, who specializes in women in American History, has written lives of the historian Angie Debo and Elizabeth Bacon Custer, widow of George Armstrong Custer, and edited the correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson. Nell Irvin Painter is author of a study of U.S. history 1877-1919 and the biography Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol. Robert J. Richards, historian of science and philosophy, has explored and advocated the essential role of biography in understanding how scientific and philosophical ideas develop not through objective thinking alone, but also through the individual's subjective experience. Asian historian...