Books by Jean Strouse
“Jean Strouse is such a superb writer and she has won several prizes for her biographies of the American financier J.P. Morgan and Alice James, Henry James’s sister. So she’s super familiar with the territory of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which enabled her to create this beautiful background, then plug her characters in. Strouse creates both a vanished world and these wonderful characters who lived in it. And it’s a look at painting and art as Sargent practiced it. I love reading about all these things, so I loved this book.” Read more...
The Best Biographies: The 2025 NBCC Shortlist
Mary Ann Gwinn, Journalist
Interviews where books by Jean Strouse were recommended
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1
Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below
by Jane Kamensky -
2
Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar
by Cynthia Carr -
3
Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
by Jean Strouse -
4
Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People
by Tiya Miles -
5
The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker
by Amy Reading
The Best Biographies: The 2025 NBCC Shortlist, recommended by Mary Ann Gwinn
The Best Biographies: The 2025 NBCC Shortlist, recommended by Mary Ann Gwinn
We always look forward to the shortlists for the National Book Critics Awards, on the basis that literary critics are probably the best read people out there. Here, we asked the garlanded critic Mary Ann Gwinn to talk us through the five biographies highlighted in 2025.
