From Alexander the Great to Marie Curie, Here Are the Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2024

Sonia Purnell’s Kingmaker shines a fascinating new light on the extraordinary life of Pamela Harriman, the ambitious British-born socialite who became a leading power player in late 20th-century American politics. Once infamously described as the “courtesan of the century” by William Paley, Harriman first came to prominence as a result of her acrimonious short-lived wartime marriage to Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph. Thereafter she remained in the public eye, enjoying a series of romantic dalliances with high profile figures in the worlds of finance, business and broadcasting, as well as two further marriages to Broadway producer, Leland Hayward, and influential US statesman, W. Averell Harriman.

Purnell’s “compulsively readable, multifaceted portrait of an oft-misunderstood woman” (Booklist) reveals the surprising extent to which Harriman played an influential role on the geopolitical stage for more than five decades, ranging from the World War II era through to her appointment as United States Ambassador to France in the early 1990s. 

Dava Sobel’s accomplished new biography of Marie Curie re-examines both the professional and personal life of one of the early 20th century’s most influential scientists. Curie, a two-time Nobel Prize winner, is commonly portrayed as an isolated female figure working in a male-dominated environment. In contrast, Sobel reveals the extent to which Curie blazed a trail for other women in the same field by establishing a thriving female scientific community within her own Paris laboratory. The author highlights the achievements of some of these other women alongside Marie Curie’s own groundbreaking contributions to modern science, producing “a nuanced portrait…capturing both her genius and her legacy” (New Scientist).

Part autobiography, part prison diary, Alexei Navalny’s extraordinary personal memoir was published posthumously, with the assistance of his widow, Yulia, following his untimely death in a Siberian penal colony in February 2024. Navalny began work on Patriot soon after his near-fatal poisoning by the Russian security services in August 2020 and continued writing it even after his subsequent arrest and imprisonment the following year. 

Featuring plenty of fascinating content as to how his early life in the Soviet Union shaped his future career as a political dissident, Patriot’s subject matter becomes even more compelling as Navalny outlines his harrowing experiences in a succession of increasingly brutal Russian prisons. Extraordinarily, even in his worst moments the heroic dissident’s wry humor and defiant spirit remain intact. Kirkus Reviews praised this remarkable memoir as “a true profile in courage, written with verve and wit…one that will inspire generations to come”.

A New York Times Notable Book of 2024, David Greenberg’s “passionately researched and defining portrait of an American hero” (Booklist) sheds a fascinating new light on the life and career of John Lewis. In later life, the influential civil rights activist came to be known as “the conscience of the Congress”, but Lewis is still most associated with an infamous earlier incident. During the peaceful Selma protest marches of 1965, he was brutally assaulted by law enforcers, prompting such huge public outrage that it proved a contributory factor in the passing of the landmark Voting Rights Act later that same year. 

Using previously unreleased FBI documents and many hundreds of interviews with people who knew Lewis personally, Greenberg’s comprehensive biography charts the iconic civil rights activist’s development from the valiant young freedom fighter of the 1960s to the highly respected elder statesman of the early 21st century. 

Best remembered as the victor against all odds at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, Henry V was later immortalized in three of Shakespeare’s history plays, written nearly two centuries after the medieval king’s death. In this landmark new biography, Dan Jones discovers the real Henry beyond the Shakespearean character, producing “an intense, rich account of an ‘unusual but utterly compelling’ man” (Telegraph UK). 

The acclaimed historian’s insight into Henry’s early life proves particularly revealing. In contrast to the playboy prince portrayed in Shakespeare’s plays, Jones illustrates how the future monarch had already become a dominant figure at the royal court, well-versed in political and military affairs, long before his accession to the throne in 1413. 

Iris Jamahl Dunkle specializes in chronicling the lives of long-neglected female authors and here she turns her attention to Sanora Babb. Inspired by her first-hand experience of the plight of those compelled to flee Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, Babb penned an evocative and insightful novel called Whose Names Are Unknown. Yet this important work was shelved by her publisher because of its similarity to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and only finally made it to print just a year before her death in 2005. Just to add insult to injury, Steinbeck was given access to Babb’s own carefully collated research material when writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece. 

Dunkle’s fascinating biography delves deep into this controversy, but also recalls the other pivotal moments in Babb’s remarkable life. These include her impoverished childhood in Oklahoma, the political activism which brought her into conflict with the US authorities during the 1940s and her convention-defying relationship with Chinese-American filmmaker, James Wong Howe.

By the time that Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE at the age of just 32, his colossal Macedonian empire stretched from Greece in the west to the Indian subcontinent in the east. In her riveting new biography, Rachel Kousser chronicles the final seven years of the Macedonian leader’s extraordinary life, exploring how his overriding ambition to reach the end of the world shaped his destiny and came to define his legacy. 

Her narrative begins in 330 BCE with the news of the death of Alexander’s rival, Darius III, and follows an already exhausted Macedonian army through its subsequent long military campaigns in Persia and India, led by a man who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. This “thoughtful elegant study…sheds new light on an endlessly fascinating historical figure” (Kirkus Reviews). 

A decade in the making, Max Boot’s critically acclaimed new biography of Ronald Reagan aims to uncover the truth about the surprisingly enigmatic 40th US President. The distinguished political analyst unearthed hundreds of previously unreleased files and interviewed a wide cross-section of Reagan’s friends, family and aides to produce this well-balanced and vividly detailed portrait of the former president who, even now, continues to polarize public opinion. 

In naming Reagan: His Life and Legend as one of its “10 Best Books of 2024”, The New York Times praised this “landmark work” which “stands out for its deep authority and nimble style”.