10 fall biographies you won't want to miss

[marmar]

10 fall biographies you won’t want to miss
From Joan Crawford to Luigi Mangione, this fall's best biographies explore how icons shape cultural memory

By Andi Zeisler
Senior Writer
Published September 8, 2025 10:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) Artists and entertainers who died much too young. A legendary screen presence. A band that drove under the radar for decades. An instant folk hero. More of the Mitford sisters. Oh, and Mount Rushmore. This fall’s new biographies have something for everyone.

Movies and Music

“Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America“
Jeff Chang [Mariner Books, September 23]

“Every generation seems to find the Bruce it needs,” writes Jeff Chang in the author’s note to “Water Mirror Echo.” And this meticulously sourced, image-rich biography of Bruce Lee comes along at a time when America’s leadership is disturbingly bullish on re-entrenching the racial barriers and retrograde anti-Asian views that Lee once confronted. But this book isn’t about an icon or a savior, rather the lesser-known facets of his identity — immigrant, fighter, seeker, teacher and ally — that drove the man Chang calls “the global hero of the underdog” to unite Asian and American culture with an incendiary combination of spiritual tradition and undeniable cool. Tracing Lee’s life as a destiny-defining anchor baby, Hong Kong child star, American martial-arts innovator and global superstar, “Water Mirror Echo” uses a wealth of primary sources and archival material to reinscribe Lee’s legacy.

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Literature

“Do Admit!: The Mitford Sisters and Me“
Mimi Pond [Drawn & Quarterly, September 16]

Growing up in 1960s San Diego, writer and cartoonist Mimi Pond was captivated by the Mitford sisters, six aristocratic young women whose lives put them in proximity to some of the 20th century’s most consequential moments, movements and personalities. Pond, the bookish only girl among brothers, envied the Mitfords’ intellectual freedom and the tangle of conversations, proclamations and arguments (both in real life and in spirited volleys of correspondence) that tied them to one another across time, location, and political sympathies. “Do Admit!” — the title refers to each sister’s determination to best argue their points — is an expansive graphic history rendered in washes of Prussian Blue that dissolve the temporal boundaries between Pond and the sisters. It’s their story, but it’s also Pond’s recollection of how her fascination with them ended up giving her a crucial understanding of her own time. I freely admit to side-eyeing the relentless churning of the Mitford industry. (A biography of the second-youngest sister and “red sheep,” Carla Kaplan’s “Trouble Maker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford” arrives in late November), but “Do Admit” is a winning addition to its ranks.

....(snip)....

American Icons

“Luigi: The Making and the Meaning“
John H. Richardson [Simon & Schuster, November 4]

On the cover of John H. Richardson’s “Luigi,” its subject’s profile, Luigi Mangione, is paused as though in mid-speech — ironic given how little we still know about the man who assassinated a health-insurance CEO in the open in October 2024 and became a folk hero within hours of the killing. Richardson’s aim is less to understand Mangione himself than it is to explore why his premeditated act, planned down to the words DENY DEFEND DEPOSE scratched into the bullet casings, resonated so powerfully and promptly. In a time of cosplay populism, the book centers the grim facts of America’s privatized insurance system that hide in plain sight — including the unavoidable conclusion that the system is functioning just as designed, meting out death sentences that are cheaper (and more profit-generating) from behind a screen. With his three direct shots, Mangione spoke for millions of Americans; “Luigi” articulates how much remains to be said. .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/09/08/10-fall-biographies-you-wont-want-to-miss/

[msongs]

1. the OP title would have different meaning in Russia lol nt

[Dem2theMax]

2. . . .

DUzy!