How To Do Biography

A Primer

Nigel Hamilton

    • Introduction

    I. Getting Started

    • The Task of Biography
    • What Is Your Agenda?
    • Defining Your Audience
    • Researching Your Subject
    • The Shape of a Life

    II. Composing a Life-Story

    • The Starting Point
    • Birthing Your Subject
    • Childhood and Youth
    • Love Stories
    • Life’s Work
    • The Twilight Years
    • Ending Your Story

    III. Variations on a Theme

    • Autobiography and Memoirs
    • Memoir
    • Truth—and Its Consequences
    • The Afterlife
    • Notes
    • Selected Bibliography
    • Acknowledgments
    • Index
  • Cover: How To Do Biography
  • A photo of the author

Nigel Hamilton is the author of prize-winning biographies of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and of John F. Kennedy. He is currently a Fellow of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston, where he is writing a three-volume biography of President Clinton.