Stacy Schiff Popular Books
Stacy Schiff Biography & Facts
Stacy Madeleine Schiff (born October 26, 1961) is an American former editor, essayist, and author of five biographies. Her biography of Véra Nabokov won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography. Schiff has also written biographies of French aviator and author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, colonial American-era polymath and prime mover of America's founding, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin's fellow Founding Father Samuel Adams, ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and the important figures and events of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692–93 in colonial Massachusetts. Early life and career Schiff was born in Adams, Massachusetts, to Morton Schiff, the president of Schiff Clothing, a store founded by Schiff's great-grandfather in 1897, and Ellen, a professor of French literature at North Adams State college (now called Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts). Schiff graduated from Phillips Academy (Andover) preparatory school, and subsequently earned her B.A. degree from Williams College in 1982. She was a senior editor at Simon & Schuster until 1990. Career as author Schiff won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Véra, a biography of Véra Nabokov, the wife and muse of the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. She was also a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Saint-Exupéry: A Biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Schiff's A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005) won the George Washington Book Prize. It was made into Franklin, a 2024 miniseries starring Michael Douglas. Her fourth book, Cleopatra: A Life, was published in 2010. As The Wall Street Journal's reviewer put it, "Schiff does a rare thing: She gives us a book we'd miss if it didn't exist." The New Yorker termed the book "a work of literature"; Simon Winchester predicted "it will become a classic". Cleopatra appeared on The New York Times's Top Ten Books of 2010, and won the 2011 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Schiff's The Witches: Salem, 1692 was published in 2015. The New York Times described it as "an almost novelistic, thriller-like narrative". David McCullough declared the book "brilliant from start to finish". Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Jane Kamensky found it to be “curiously flat,” offering “banalities” and a “tenuous grip on the period.” Kamensky concluded, “For all her talents in sketching the who, what, where and when of the Salem trials, [the] vexed question of why is one that Schiff simply cannot manage.” Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Felipe Fernández-Armesto found that Schiff offered "a trial narrative unsurpassed for detail and impressive for her mastery of the fragmentary and frustrating sources." He found the overall result, however, to be "unsatisfying" because "she uncovers no new clues to understanding" the context of the trials. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Washington Post. A former guest columnist at The New York Times, Schiff resides in New York City and is a trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Awards and honors National Endowment for the Humanities, fellowship 1996 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, fellowship 2000 Pulitzer Prize, Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) 2006 George Washington Book Prize, A Great Improvisation 2015 Lapham's Quarterly Janus Prize 2017 New England Historic Genealogical Society Lifetime Achievement Award in History and Biography 2018 French Ministry of Culture, Chevalier des Arts et Lettres 2019 American Academy of Arts and Letters Works Books Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. New York: A. A. Knopf. 1994. ISBN 0-679-40310-8.; nominated for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). Pan Books. 1999. ISBN 0-330-37674-8.; winner of 2000 Pulitzer Prize A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. New York: Henry Holt. 2005. ISBN 0-8050-6633-0.; published in the UK as Dr Franklin Goes to France Cleopatra: A Life. Little, Brown and Company. 2010. ISBN 978-0-316-00192-2. The Witches: Salem, 1692. Little, Brown and Company. 2015. ISBN 978-0-316-20061-5. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. Little, Brown and Company. 2022. ISBN 9780316441117. Columns and reviews "Know It All". The New Yorker. July 24, 2006. Retrieved April 14, 2022. See also Essjay controversy § The New Yorker interview References External links Official website Appearances on C-SPAN, including "Q&A – interview with Schiff", November 6, 2011 Interview with Schiff on "New Books in Biography" "Stacy Schiff, The Art of Biography No. 6", The Paris Review, Winter 2017. Discover the Stacy Schiff popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Stacy Schiff books.
Best Seller Stacy Schiff Books of 2024
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Ashes and Stones
Allyson ShawA moving and personal journey, along rugged coasts and through remote villages and cities, in search of the traces of those accused of witchcraft in seventeenthcentury Scotland.'It...
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Making History
Richard CohenA “supremely entertaining” (The New Yorker) exploration of who gets to record the world’s historyfrom Julius Caesar to William Shakespeare to Ken Burnsand how their biases influenc...
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The Fever of 1721
Stephen CossThe “intelligent and sweeping” (Booklist) story of the crucial year that prefigured the events of the American Revolution in 1776and how Boston’s smallpox epidemic was at the cente...
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The Death of Caesar
Barry StraussIn this story of the most famous assassination in history, “the last bloody day of the [Roman] Republic has never been painted so brilliantly” (The Wall Street Journal).Julius Caes...
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Lady Romeo
Tana WojczukFinalist for a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Finalist for the Marfield PrizeFor fans of Book of Ages and Amer...
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Free Love
Robert Shaplen & Louis MenandA wry, instructive, and hugely entertaining account of “one of the most sensational trials in American history” (New York Times Book Review).On the night of July 3, 1870, Elizabeth...
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Young and Damned and Fair
Gareth RussellWritten with an exciting combination of narrative flair and historical authority, this biography of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, is “a stunning achievement” (The Sund...
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The Audacity of Inez Burns
Stephen G. BloomTHE VIVID, SCANDALFILLED STORY OF A SHREWD, RAGSTORICHES MILLIONAIRESS AND THE RUTHLESS POLITICIAN WHO PURSUED HER, TOLD AGAINST THE EFFERVESCENT BACKDROP OF AMERICA’S GOLDEN CITYS...
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Cleopatra
Harold BloomFrom Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, comes an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Cleopatraone of the Bard’s most riveting and memorab...
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Angelic Music
Corey Mead“Fascinating, insightful, and, best of all, great fun…with spirited charm, Mead weaves history, music, science, and medicine into the story” (The Washington Post) of Ben Franklin’s...
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The American Spirit
David McCulloughA New York Times BestsellerA timely collection of speeches by David McCullough, the most honored historian in the United Stateswinner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awar...