John Steinbeck based “The Grapes of Wrath” on Sanora Babb’s notes. But she was writing her own American epic.

The senator has always wrestled with his conscience—and compromise.

The decline in his fiction over his lifetime was understandable. The mystery is why his worst journalism ever received such lavish praise.

A new book traces Chekhov’s relentless work as both a doctor and a master of the short story.

Not many people bought her books, but nearly everyone who did wrote their own.

The great grand strategist of the Cold War believed he failed in his most important task.

A new biography traces Rhys’s life of self-sabotage, excess, and devotion to art.

A lifelong striver who wrote about lifelong strivers, Hazzard was perpetually dissatisfied with the world she grew up in.

Charles Leerhsen’s biography promises the unfiltered story of Bourdain’s life and final days. But it misses the qualities that made him so magnetic in the first place.

In the quaint, well-to-do worlds of her novels, anyone could be guilty. Murderers kill to beat the social order at its own game.

Ada Calhoun set out to complete her father’s abandoned biography of the poet. She ended up with a reflection on living with art.

Biographers get distracted by the photographer’s unusual life story—to the point of diminishing her work itself.

The final installment in John Richardson’s mammoth biography reveals the artist’s fiendish control over his admirers.

He made art that looked like the future. How did he become a minor figure?

The Portuguese writer lived through dozens of detailed alter egos. How much does his real identity matter?

A new book examines the tension between Elon Musk’s personality and the business of making cars. But what if there is none?

The creator of James Bond had an unremarkable career in intelligence and considered his own books “piffle.”

The fiercely competitive field of Dylanology pits expert against expert. No one is spared—not even Dylan himself.

Gigantic new biographies by Hermione Lee and Mark Harris reveal the possibilities—and the limits—of a life in art.

A new biography captures a poet’s commitments, reversals, and reinventions.