Another Eisenhower Biography?

As I open Claire Tomalin's Thomas Hardy biography, I anticipate a good read. I'm an admirer of Tomalin's previous biographies (Jane Austen and Samuel Pepys, among them). I know the Penguin Press imprint frequently means quality. As a biographer myself, I seek techniques that can improve my craft. Before I jump in, I read the acknowledgments. There, I learn that Tomalin admires Michael Millgate, “the Grand Master of Hardy studies,” including “two meticulously researched biographies.” She mentions James Gibson, another Hardy biographer, favorably. Still other Hardy biographers receive mentions in the bibliography. So, I wonder, if there are so many Hardy biographies, and at least some of them are first-rate, why did Tomalin feel compelled to write another? Why not chronicle the life of a writer or some other worthy previously ignored by biographers, or treated shabbily?

I'm not picking on Tomalin; she's simply a handy example, and I think highly of her Hardy version. But I would like to see full disclosure, rather than silence or incomplete explanation, become biographers' (and publishers') default mode. When I open a new biography of those whose lives have been chronicled multiple—sometimes dozens—of times (Abraham Lincoln, Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ; you get the idea), why should I have to ponder the reason for the new version?

I'm thinking not only of myself, who sometimes as a reviewer or biographer receives payment to read multiple versions of the same life. I'm also assuming the role of consumer advocate. I think of my mother, an avid, 83-year-old reader who is unlikely to consume more than one biography of Abe or Marilyn or John or Jesus, given her philosophy of so little time, so many more books to devour. My mother wants to know why the new one is ostensibly the best choice for her.

I'm currently reading Ike: An American Hero, a biography forthcoming in October from HarperCollins of Dwight Eisenhower by Michael Korda, an author who famously doubles as a publishing executive. I figured Korda of all people would tell me why he is devoting around 800 pages to a U.S. military general and president who's been chronicled multiple times.

Instead, Korda leaves me confused. Just five years ago, he reminds me, author Carlo D'Este and publisher Henry Holt brought an Eisenhower biography to market. Korda calls it “an amazingly thorough, scrupulously researched, and richly detailed biography.... D'Este's book is such an impeccable work of scholarship that any biographer of Eisenhower can only write in its massive shadow.”

Now, why should I start Korda's opus, rather than grabbing D'Este's from the shelf? (Again, I don't mean to harass Korda. I'm reviewing the book on assignment and am deeply impressed, especially by the narrative storytelling.)

I've also started reading a Daniel Boone biography by Robert Morgan, coming in October from Algonquin Books. In the introduction, Morgan devotes six pages to evaluating previous Boone biographies, then explains why he has proceeded despite the daunting literature. Finally! A fellow biographer has followed my request (probably without knowing such a request exists). I'm also captivated by Morgan's admissions. “It requires a certain bravado to enter a field as crowded as Boone biography,” he writes. “Of major figures in early American history, only Washington and Franklin and Jefferson have had their stories told more often and in greater detail. What recklessness or delusion could tempt a writer to take on a subject so often studied, attacked, dramatized?”

Morgan's answer contains many threads: his father's oft-stated fascination with Boone as a hunter/explorer; his own boyhood exploits hunting, trapping, fishing and wandering in the mountains of western North Carolina; and the possibility of a blood relationship between his family and that of Boone's mother, born Sarah Morgan.

Ultimately, though, Morgan's answer is inchoate, as is my answer if asked why I am completing a biography of Ida Tarbell given the existence of a version published in 1984. We can't always explain intellectual desires.

Still, biographers owe their readers an explanation. Or at least give it a try, for the sake of my 83-year-old mother.