Famous American Biographers

Widely known as the first American man of letters, Washington Irving penned the legendary tales of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which are also called the first short stories by an American author. He had also had a brief stint as a lawyer.

Starting as a freelance writer, Lee Israel later penned bestselling biographies of personalities such as Tallulah Bankhead and Estée Lauder. She made headlines when she admitted to forging works of deceased authors and actors to make money. Her memoir, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, was later turned into a film.

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Public Affairs, Monica Crowley is also known as a Fox News political analyst. She has penned two bestsellers about her experience of working with Richard Nixon and has also contributed to the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.

French and American writer, journalist, and pianist Ève Curie was one of the daughters of scientists Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. She was the only one in the Curie family who did not choose a career in science. She authored her mother’s biography and was actively involved with UNICEF, helping women and children in developing countries.

Punk musician and author Jim Carroll is best remembered for his autobiographical depiction of his struggle with drugs in his teenage years, The Basketball Diaries, which was later turned into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Part of The Jim Carroll Band, he was known for the single People Who Died.

David McCullough was an American historian, author, narrator, and lecturer. Over the course of his illustrious career, McCullough received two National Book Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, and two Francis Parkman Prizes among other prestigious awards. In 2006, he was honored with America's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He also received over 40 honorary degrees.

Best known for his over two-decade-long stint as a Turner Classic Movies host, Robert Osborne also gained fame for his penning The Official History of the Academy Awards and the National Film Book Award-winning 50 Golden Years of Oscar. A qualified journalist, he also wrote columns for The Hollywood Reporter.

Best known for his 1995 memoir, A Child Called "It", David James Pelzer is an American author of four autobiographical work and three self-help books. Raised by abusing parents until the age of twelve, he has described his childhood, adolescence and adulthood in the first three books. Also a motivational speaker, his message is all about triumph of human spirit.

Jon Meacham is an American historian, writer, reviewer, and presidential biographer. Over the years Meacham has contributed to popular publications like The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his work American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. He has also received honorary doctorates from many universities including the University of Tennessee.

U.S. Army officer John Eisenhower was the son of military-general-turned-president Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had donned many hats, from teaching English to serving on his father's White House staff. He also assisted his father in writing his memoirs and had been the American ambassador to Belgium, too.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow is best known for his books Washington: A Life and The House of Morgan. Educated at Yale and Cambridge, he started his career as a freelance journalist and later turned into a master biographer. He also reviews books and is a radio/TV commentator.

True crime author Ann Rule had initially been a policewoman and was also well-versed in criminology and psychology. She first gained attention with her book The Stranger Beside Me, which relates her experiences of working with Ted Bundy, a volunteer at a suicide hotline, who later murdered several women.

Carl Sandburg had begun working since age 11 and been employed in various odd jobs, such as a truck driver, a harvester, and a brickyard hand, before being part of the Illinois Infantry. The two-time Pulitzer-winning poet and biographer late also won a Grammy for his recording of Lincoln Portrait.

Crushed to death in Gaza by an Israeli armored bulldozer, peace activist Rachel Corrie was also a member of pro-Palestine International Solidarity Movement. Born and raised in USA, she had gone there as part of her college assignment and met her death while trying to stop the demolition of Palestinian houses by Israeli forces, causing international furore.

Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American biographer and historian. A respected figure, Ambrose was honored with several prestigious awards during his lifetime. In 1998, he was honored with the National Humanities Medal. The same year, he also won the Golden Plate Award as well as the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize. In 2001, he received the Theodore Roosevelt Medal.

The author of the New York Times bestseller My Father, My President, Dorothy Bush Koch is the sixth child of former U.S. president George H.W. Bush, and the sister of George W. Bush. A Eucharistic minister, she is also the founder of BB&R Wellness Consulting, centered on health and well-being.

Once an inspiring journalist, Walter Isaacson now teaches history at the Tulane University. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, he has been the chair of CNN, the CEO of Aspen Institute, and an editor at Time. He has also penned biographies of personalities such as Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci.

Investigative journalist Carl Bernstein is best known for his reporting on what later came to be known as the Watergate Scandal and led to U.S. president Richard Nixon’s resignation. During the COVID-19 crisis, he termed President Donald Trump a “war criminal.” He is also known for co-authoring All the President's Men.

Known for his extensive research, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Caro began his career as journalist. Fascinated by the vast power enjoyed by Robert Moses, he published a biography on him, concurrently dealing in prevalent political practices. Taking up Lyndon B. Johnson as his next subject, he has already published four volumes on him and is currently working on the fifth.   

Cathy O'Brien is an American author and conspiracy theorist. She gained national attention when she claimed that the US government is running a secret program called Project Monarch which is designed to control people's minds. She also claimed that she has been a victim of the program and that Project Monarch was part of the Central Intelligence Agency's Project MKUltra.

Michael Chaplin is an American actor best known as Charlie Chaplin's eldest son from his fourth marriage to actress Oona O'Neill. Michael Chaplin is also known for his book I Couldn't Smoke The Grass On My Father's Lawn, a memoir of drugs and rebellion against Charlie Chaplin.

Michael Eric Dyson is an American author, academic, radio host, and ordained minister. He is currently serving as a professor at Vanderbilt University and in the College of Arts and Science. Over the course of his illustrious career, Dyson has received a couple of NAACP Image Awards as well as an American Book Award for his skills as a writer.

Ruth Benedict was an American folklorist and anthropologist. Benedict, who played an important role in the American Folklore Society, also served as the American Anthropological Association's president; the association gives away an annual prize named after Ruth Benedict. In 2005, she was made an inductee of the National Women's Hall of Fame.

John Henry Lahr is an American theater critic who worked as he senior drama critic at The New Yorker magazine from 1992 to 2013. Also an established author, he is known for works like Joy Ride and Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh.

Author of The Death of a President, William Raymond Manchester was a well-known historian, author and a WWII veteran. On finishing his education after the war, he began his career as a reporter, publishing his master's thesis as Disturber of the Peace in 1951, thereafter, continuing to write, publishing a total of eighteen books, including a three part-biography of Churchill

Best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills is a prominent American journalist and historian. Apart from writing books on American politics and the Roman Catholic Church, he also teaches history at Northwestern University. His unorthodox views on Catholicism have often created controversies.

Military historian and Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis is known for his extensive research on the Cold War and for his books such as The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947. He has also won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of George F. Kennan.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and University of Chicago professor Daniel J. Boorstin is best known for his three-volume history of American civilization, The Americans. Born to a lawyer father, Daniel J. Boorstin studied law at Harvard and had also been a communist in his youth. He also held 20 honorary degrees.