June 19 is a holiday or day of special observance in forty-two states, known as Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, or simply Juneteenth. Marking the abolition of slavery in Texas in June 1865, the celebration has its roots in the South, and is the longest-running commemoration of emancipation in the country.(READ MORE)
On the opening page of her short firecracker of a memoir, I Await the Devil's Cming, Mary MacLane declares herself 'odd,' 'distinctly original,' and 'a genius' -- and it’s hard to argue with any of those claims. Biographile Recommends this re-released edition of MacLane's memoir, with an intro by Jessa...(READ MORE)
Wordmaster Oscar Wilde has been eulogized time and time again in print -- but the biography we're daydreaming about is so much more than just the facts. In the first piece of this kind on Biographile, we fantasize about a quintessential biography we'd love to see written. (READ MORE)
Memorial Day Weekend means beach time, which also means guiltily remembering that long forgotten New Year's resolution. But it's not too late! These five books show how profoundly a deep commitment to fitness can change a body -- both inside and out.(READ MORE)
Thomas Edison received a whopping 1,093 patents, but they weren't all his ideas alone. Edison often took advantage of the less resourceful inventors, so here we pay homage to 5 little known inventors in history. (READ MORE)
In Robert Kaiser's book Acts of Congress, he uses uses the Dodd-Frank Act as a means of investigating how Congress works -- and doesn’t -- concluding that this branch of the government can sometimes, miraculously, get things done. Congress is not the only group capable of performing the occasional miraculous...(READ MORE)
A successful Kickstarter campaign by Brooklyn designer Jack Sutter, founder of TGT (Tight) wallets, illustrates the potential of effective personal storytelling via the online fundraising platform. In his book The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great, published early this...(READ MORE)
Rod Dreher and his late sister Ruthie Leming grew up in Starhill, a rural community six miles south of St. Francisville, Louisiana, a town of 2,000 and the county seat of West Feliciana Parish. Though both were raised by Mam and Paw Dreher on fifty acres and descended from “country people,” their...(READ MORE)
In mid-August 1943, 24-year-old Celia Szapka boarded a train in Newark, New Jersey, carrying a suitcase and wearing her brand new I. Miller shoes. She knew she was traveling for a job helping the war effort but she did not know where she was going or how long the journey would last, nor that her project...(READ MORE)
John Updike would have been 81 today. The gifted and prolific writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction died in 2009, but his inspiration and legacy live on. (READ MORE)
