Biographies

Gretchen Beilfuss Witt

March 17, 2019

            Biographies have held an endless fascination for me.  Not only does the reader get to discover the life and achievements of a particular person, often the milieu of the times is revealed and considered as well.   The library has just received a new assortment of biographies with fascinating experiences to share. 

            The biography “Bluff City” by Preston Lauterbach is just such a book.  Subtitled The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers, the book describes Withers life as he grows up in Memphis TN, the son of a postman, who discovers photography as a teenager, develops his skills as a photographer during his army experiences in the Pacific theatre of WWII.  After returning to Memphis after the war, he becomes one of the first black members of the Memphis police, but continues to hone his photography skills taking pictures of the baseball greats of the Negro League and attendees of the games.  Losing his job as a policeman, he supported his growing family as a freelance photographer.  The book continues to expound on Withers involvement and photographic witness of the action in Memphis from Elvis Presley to the strike in 1968 that drew Martin Luther King Jr. to the city before his assassination.  This is a fascinating look at one man’s observations and contributions to a complex and remarkable era in American history.

            Also exploring a tense and changing time in American history is “Born Criminal:  the story of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist” by Angelica Shirley Carpenter.   The only child of a liberal Quaker doctor and his wife, Matilda was constantly involved in the family’s discussions on politics.   In an age when children were to remain quietly invisible among company, her father insisted she be educated and her opinions regarded as important.  Matilda’s parents were initially involved in the Underground Railroad, welcoming former slaves traveling through New York to Canada and their freedom.  She was raised to think for herself and to challenge social injustices.  She was an active partner with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the suffragist’s movement although she is not as well known as the others.  Interestingly, she is also the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum of “Wizard of Oz” fame and had a great deal of influence on him as a person and writer.

            David Grann’s “The White Darkness” tells the tale of Henry Worsley, a contemporary British polar explorer following in the footsteps of Ernest Shackleton.  The slim volume fits nicely in your hands and has startlingly lovely photography of Antarctica as well as pictures of Worsley and his fellow explorers.  Henry Worsley, a distant relation of Shackleton’s teammate Frank Worsley, teamed up with the great-grand nephew of Shackleton, Will Gow and Henry Adams, the great grandson of Jameson Boyd Adams, second-in-command of Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition.  After training together for two years they successfully walked to the South Pole.   Several years later, Worsley attempts to walk across Antarctica alone and these experiences are also related in the book.

            Other folks may be more interested in sports or literary figures.   Catherine Reef’s “A Strange True Tale of Frankenstein’s Creator Mary Shelley” is a fascinating look at the complicated life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.  “Bobby” a pictorial autobiography of hockey legend Bobby Orr is a fun and uplifting journey through his growing up years and through to his work after his retirement from hockey.  Pick up these or other personal stories at the library and enjoy today.