Writing Biography: Historians and Their Craft.

Writing Biography: Historians and Their Craft. Edited by Lloyd E. Ambrosius. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, c. 2004. Pp. xvi, 166. $45.00, ISBN 0-8032-1066-3.)

This collection of six essays in which prominent historians reflect on their experiences as biographers resulted from a symposium held at the University of Nebraska in 2000 on the topic "Biography and Historical Analysis." In introducing his essay, John Milton Cooper Jr. emphasizes the importance of experience and advises those who really want to become biographers to "skip this chapter and get back to your research and writing" (p. 79). To the contrary, I suggest that would-be biographers carefully read the chapter by Cooper and the other five as well. Each contains valuable insight into the biographical approach to history.

Shirley A. Leckie, biographer of major figures in the American West, presents a persuasive chapter on why biography matters as a form of history. It humanizes the past, she argues, and more important at this time, it allows historians to "bridge the gap between themselves and the general reading public" and to "weave the stories of new groups into our national fabric" (p. 20). R. Keith Schoppa, a specialist in modern China, reminds biographers that they must consider the cultural context in which their subjects lived. For example, Westerners place a very different value on individualism than do the Chinese. Retha M. Warnicke, the author of studies of Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves, calls for biographers to show greater awareness of advances in social history as they write about the roles of individuals in great political and diplomatic events. The story of Tudor women, she argues, cannot be understood without a knowledge of family history and the history of sexuality. Cooper, the author of a joint biography of Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, explains the advantages and limitations of the comparative approach. "I wish this method had a wider applicability," he concludes, "but I do not think it has" (p. 99). Nell Irvin Painter argues persuasively for the use of images in writing biography, especially in studies of "subaltern subjects" such as her own work on Sojourner Truth. Finally, Robert J. Richards offers a case study from the life of Friedrich Schelling, the German philosopher, to show that even intellectual history should never take leave of the personal. Schelling, Richards shows, notably altered his philosophy in response to the tragic death of his lover's child.

Biography has never had universal approval from historians. How, some ask, can the story of any single life do justice to the entire history of a civilization or culture or even a brief chronological period? The essays in this volume offer a convincing answer. Biography is not all of history; it is, however, a very valuable way to humanize as well as analyze the past.

RANDOLPH B. CAMPBELL

University of North Texas