Book Business' The Best We Read 2012
Colleen Reese, New Media Marketing Manager
Zelda: A Biography, by Nancy Milford (Harper & Row, 1970)
My cousin’s wife lent me this really early on in January 2012. She gave me a hardback book with a green cover and no jacket that I’m relatively certain she “forgot” to bring back to a library (sorry, guys). Long story short, Zelda started for me what is now a love affair with biographies—specifically, Nancy Milford’s biographies. While Milford has been criticized for being too sympathetic a biographer, I’d argue that that quality helps create an emotionally accessible story for the reader.
Zelda is about Zelda Fitzgerald and her intense, confusing life as the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He steals her prose, verbatim, and rarely gives her even partial credit. Scott resents Zelda for going insane and, in return, she continues to resent him for his literary success.
Milford does an extraordinary job coaxing the reader to invest emotionally in this rather tumultuous story, using correspondence and journal entries to build a unique and seamless narrative.
- People:
- Alex Schwartz
- Annie Barrows
- Carl Zimmer
- Charles Lamb
- Christopher McDougall
- Christopher Wren
- David Foster Wallace
- David McCullough
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- James Sturdivant
- Jane Mendelsohn
- John Locke
- Juliet Ashton
- Katherine Dunn
- Mary Ann Shaffer
- Mike Cooper
- Nancy Milford
- Nate Silver
- Paco Underhill
- Robert Boyle
- Robert Hooke
- Roger Federer
- Sandor Katz
- Sean Howe
- Steve Jobs
- Thomas Willis
- Todd Andrlik
- Tommy James
- Walter Isaacson
- William Harvey
- Zelda Fitzgerald