Books by Ron Chernow
Mark Twain
by Ron Chernow
Biographer extraordinaire Ron Chernow (whose biography of Alexander Hamilton we have to thank for inspiring the musical Hamilton) takes on the American writer Mark Twain. At 1,200 pages, it's another long one. It brings to life the man born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who spent formative years as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River—even his pen name, Mark Twain, was a riverboat term—before travelling the world, writing a lot, and speaking even more.
Washington: A Life
by Ron Chernow
🏆 Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
An expertly told, cradle-to-grave biography of the first US president from the author of Alexander Hamilton—the biography that inspired the hit Broadway musical. "Never before has Washington been rendered so tangibly in such a smart, tenaciously researched volume as Chernow's opus," declared the LA Times when it was released in 2010.
Alexander Hamilton
by Ron Chernow
There are not many single volume biographies of Alexander Hamilton. Ron Chernow’s biography is widely considered the best of them and was used as the basis for Hamilton the musical.
Interviews where books by Ron Chernow were recommended
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1
Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
by Jason Roberts -
2
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
by Ilyon Woo -
3
King: A Life
by Jonathan Eig -
4
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
by Beverly Gage -
5
Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South
by Winfred Rembert -
6
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
by Les Payne & Tamara Payne
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Biographies
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Biographies
The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is awarded annually to “a distinguished and appropriately documented” biography by an author from or based in the United States. The authors of winning books receive $15,000, and join a starry pantheon of great American writers. Here, we’ve put together a summary of all the Pulitzer-winning biographies since the turn of the millennium.
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1
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
by Stephen Greenblatt -
2
The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes
by William Kelleher Storey -
3
Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome
by Jane Draycott -
4
The Traitors Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany and the Spy Who Betrayed Them
by Jonathan Freedland -
5
Baldwin: A Love Story
by Nicholas Boggs -
6
True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen
by Lance Richardson
New Biographies
New Biographies
Among the new biographies coming out in 2025, the lives of literary figures have been particularly prominent, including new books about Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish adventure writer, and Shakespeare’s rival Christopher Marlowe, who was stabbed to death aged 29. Also popular are reconstructions of lives from the distant past that we know little about, including the first King of England and Fulvia, the first wife of Mark Antony.
