Driven, Influential & Iconic: Three New Bios – Nonfiction

Jane Eisner’s Carole King: She Made the Earth Move places the pop icon’s life in historical and cultural context, revealing details of her humble beginnings in Jewish Brooklyn, New York, the roots of her musical genius, her four marriages, and her anguish about public life. Through interviews and diverse sources, Eisner highlights an extraordinary career that has defined American popular music across two centuries. Gayle Feldman’s Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built is the story of a driven man who vowed to become a great publisher – and remade the book business. Throughout his storied career, Cerf bought The Modern Library and turned it into an institution, founded Random House, and fought the landmark censorship case that gave Americans the freedom to read Ulysses. Eve Sneider’s The Absent Woman: The Genius of Janet Malcolm, is a critical biography of one of the most influential, and most elusive, literary figures of our time. From photography to psychoanalysis to how we tell stories, Sneider makes the most of her access to Malcolm’s archive and explores her obsessions through her manuscripts, her controversial books, art, correspondence, and…