Non fiction biographies
Non-fiction biographies for teens
Non-fiction examples.
The Best Biographies of 2024: The National Book Critics Circle Shortlist
It’s brilliant to have you back on the site—for the fourth time—to talk about the books that made the National Book Critics Circle shortlist for the best recent biography.
Did you notice any trends among the submissions for the 2024 biography prize?
Biographies rarely break news, but two of our finalists did so months or years before publication.
Non fiction biographies
Still, in the eyes of our committee, biographies are not elevated by ‘scoops.’ This set of books, each in its distinctive way, contributed to a substantial revision of history.
Let’s talk about the finalists first, starting with Jonathan Eig’s biography of Martin Luther King Jr., King: A Life?
The New York Times described it as “the first comprehensive account of the civil rights icon in decades.” Could you tell us why the judges thought it was one of the best biographies of 2024?
With new evidence, Eig enriches our understanding of King and rescues the ci