Thaddeus Stevens by Bruce Levine

Thaddeus Stevens Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine Simon & Schuster, 309 pp., hardcover $28 In most respects a conventional biography, Thaddeus Stevens revisits the life and times of a consequential American character. Levine limns the forces that shaped Stevens’ sensibility and his commitment to racial justice as his most notable cause. Stevens’ family...
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Chuck Noll by Michael MacCambridge

Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work by Michael MacCambridge University of Pittsburgh Press, 504 pp., cloth $27.95 There is a saying in the world of professional sports that a coach will not know for five to ten years whether a decision to accept a job was the right choice. That maxim, in essence, says everything about the risks of making a career out of professional coaching, and it is the theme...
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Updike by Adam Begley

Updike by Adam Begley HarperCollins, 558 pp., cloth $29.95 “No, no, no, no, no, to paraphrase King Lear,” John Updike told me 12 years ago when I suggested he consider authorizing a biographer. “Please don’t ruin the rest of my life with any talk of a biography, that living death.” Updike’s opposition to literary biography was so fierce it’s no surprise his widow, Martha Updike, refused to...
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Homeward Bound: An Interview with David McCullough

David McCullough is a familiar name – and face. Known to millions as the author of bestselling books, including The Great Bridge, The Path Between the Seas, Truman, Mornings on Horseback, and Brave Companions, and as host of the popular PBS television series “Smithsonian World” and “The American Experience,” he is noted for his remarkable gift of writing richly...
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