Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Surely a worthwhile biography shouldn't be either "pro" or "anti" someone. Shouldn't it simply tell the story of the person's life in an unbiased manner and leave it to the reader to form their own opinion of the person?
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Very reasonably so, but I am not sure that this book would be considered "biography", despite the placement in that Amazon category. As described at the above link, under "Harvard Perspectives Press' latest blog post", it is "the first
book-length critical assessment of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin" (emphasis mine). As such, it is possible to construct an argument into book-form that is critical (in the word's negative inference) of a person (that is, it argues a position and makes a judgement about a person from aspects and events and actions and words in a person's life) without it constituting a wholesale "biography".
Should you have been triggered by my phrase "simple bio", note that I selected this phrase precisely to contrast against what this actually appears to be (that is, what the above quote is far closer to describing). I would anticipate that most people could indentify, with minor investigation, whether some text is critical polemic or whether it is simple, unadulterated (by opinion), biographical factualism. To aid matters, GatorDeb has done this for us in this thread's title.
Cheers,
Marc