Mr. Rollyson is the author of The Life of William Faulkner and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. He has published fourteen biographies and has written about biography for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington, Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New Criterion, and other publications.
The author argues that modern presidents would do well to heed the lessons of the past and adopt a new, chastened view of America’s role in the world.
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
The 26th president, who lived a life rich in ‘hard and dangerous endeavor,’ offers lessons to help understand the ambitions of the 47th one.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Norman Holmes Pearson was integral to the development of an ‘American Cold War cultural consensus.’
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
In their examinations of two monarchs and a princess, a trio of writers disclose the human beings beneath the pomp and policies.
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
A biography of the Lane sisters recalls their roles in dramas, musicals, westerns, and gangster pictures alongside the likes of Dick Powell and Cary Grant.
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
Wooed by the likes of George Orwell and Albert Camus, twin sisters Celia and Mamaine Paget remained most attached to one another.
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
Artists, misfits, and superstars come to life in a triad of new books featuring extraordinary American women.
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
The virtue of this approach is best seen in its attention to figures you might not expect to encounter in a book about Hemingway.
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
Christine Kuehn grew up knowing very little about her genial, story-telling father’s family. Then a letter arrived with questions she couldn’t answer.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Certain scholarly insights cannot be generated without understanding how the artist’s family curated and financed his work, argues the author of a new book on Édouard Manet.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Was Mary the victim of Queen Elizabeth’s dynastic ambitions or the perfidious plotter not only against the English queen but against the English church and the liberties of its populace?
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
Think of graphic biographies as entry-level exposures to a range of cultural figures that will appeal to fans as well as to those who are simply curious.
By CARL ROLLYSON
||Culture
