Gregory Boyington, otherwise known as Pappy, was a media darling before there was such a term. A Marine Corps fighter ace and leader of the famed Black Sheep Squadron during World War II, Boyington used and was used by the press during his long and tumultuous life. His fame took him all the way into the television age when Baa Baa Black Sheep, based on his autobiography, became a hit TV series during the 1970s. Author Bruce Gamble skillfully unravels the highs and lows of Boyington's paradoxical story in Black Sheep One: The Life of Gregory Pappy Boyington. Raised by an alcoholic mother and her common-law husband, Boyington managed to overcome the obstacles of his home life by entering the military, which would ultimately prove to be his salvation as well as his damnation. The Marine Corps trained him as a pilot and rewarded his sometimes reckless courage, but it also introduced him to his nemesis alcohol. The camaraderie and culture of the military made consumption of alcohol almost a requirement.

Despite his drinking binges, Boyington managed to down more Japanese planes than any other Marine fighter pilot and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Gamble's extensive use of military records, interviews and contemporary accounts all give Black Sheep One a wealth of detail. His prose style is clear and he dispassionately recounts the events of Boyington's career without condemning his excesses or extolling his virtues. Black Sheep One succeeds both as biography and history, but its strength lies in its power as a cautionary tale. Looking back at photos of his boyish face as a winning pilot, and later, at the alcohol-ravaged features of an old man, the reader can't help but wonder about the price of Boyington's success.

In his follow-up to the best-selling The Last Lecture, co-written with Randy Pausch, Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow explores the friendship of 11 girls, now women in their mid-40s, who grew up together in Ames, Iowa.

The Girls From Ames grew in response to a piece Zaslow wrote about the enduring bonds of women's friendships. He received an email from Jenny Benson Litchman that gave a few details on how the girls met (three were born within a week of each other in a local hospital), what growing up together had been like, and how they still keep in almost daily contact with each other.

Intrigued, Zaslow took a year's leave from work to spend time with the "girls," hoping, no doubt, to find the key to what has kept them so close for so many years. Instead, he discovered what many women could have told him: the friends of one's youth are often the friends who matter the most. They are the ones with whom a million secrets have been shared, fragile dreams have been explored and countless pranks have been pulled. These are the friends who know the best and the worst about each other and, as English poet Robert Southey wrote, they are completely persuaded of each other's worth.

Still, it is extraordinary how these women (10 now, since the early death of one) have maintained such close contact with each other despite lives that have taken them all across the country (none lives in Ames today). They've shared the joys of marriage and childbirth, the pain of divorce, the tragedy of the deaths of children, the fears surrounding breast cancer. They've cried oceans of tears together and laughed so hard they've wet their pants. Or as Cathy says in The Girls From Ames, when asked why their bond remains so strong: "We root each other to the core of who we are, rather than what defines us as adults–by careers or spouses or kids. There's a young girl in each of us who is still full of life. When we're together, I try to remember that."

Rebecca Bain writes from Nashville.

Eleanor of Aquitaine led a remarkable life: queen of England and France, participant in a Crusade, mother of Richard the Lionheart, patron of troubadours, benefactor of convents, and actor in numerous court intrigues that decided the fates of kingdoms and helped shape the political boundaries of medieval Europe. Courageous, opinionated, and ambitious, she inspired great loyalty in vassals yet incurred the wrath of noblemen and prelates in her drive to acquire power for herself and her children.

The author of six previous books about English history, Alison Weir tackles familiar territory with Eleanor of Aquitaine. She ostensibly chronicles the life of Eleanor, though the book also provides a tableau of 12th-century Europe. It is saturated with episodes demonstrating the Byzantine nature of dynastic politics and the intensely complex machinations involved in the often bloody chess game that characterized Europe at this time. This lends a healthy vitality to the events Weir describes: This book doesn't read as history, this book is history.

Moreover, Weir seasons her account with voluminous and vivid detail culled from an impressive collection of sources. We discover that kings wore hairshirts and submitted themselves to monks for flagellation as penance for their myriad sins and that nobles often employed the claim of consanguinity as grounds for divorce, paving the way for new and more politically rewarding marriages that created a mosaic of extremely fluid alliances. Such morsels crop up throughout, adding layers of depth to a period often labeled the Dark Ages.

The title notwithstanding, much of the book revolves around the men in Eleanor's life; after all, she was married at different times to the kings of France and England. Both marriages were arranged in large part because of Eleanor's claim to the vast, wealthy duchy of Aquitaine in France, and Weir carefully shows how the unions deteriorated into acrimony. But the queen's legacy reached all the way to the War of the Roses 300 years later, which marked the end of the line she and Henry founded, and she left her distinctive imprint on the map of Europe.

In 1950, a poor Lebanese teenager, 19-year-old Sam Moore, emigrated alone to America. His English was as broken as his prospects for the American Dream. Eventually, Moore would purchase one of the oldest and most respected publishing companies in Britain, Thomas Nelson Publishers. Under his direction, Thomas Nelson would become one of the leading Bible publishers in the world and would contribute to the developing successes of such best-selling nonfiction authors as Robert Schuller and Zig Ziglar. Watching his company being listed in 1995 on the New York Stock Exchange was many smiles and tears from Idlewild Airport in New York City just across town where Moore first entered the country with only $600 to his name in 1950. Moore can testify loudly that the American Dream is neither myth nor fact. It is opportunity.

Written to coincide with the 200 year anniversary of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the first half of American by Choice is pure Moore autobiography. In places, the writing is cliche-ridden, but where the writing itself fails, the reader should concentrate on the unusual and inspirational story revisited in the second half of the book. When Moore begins to write about Thomas Nelson Publishers, his tone changes dramatically. In the last half, it is obvious that Moore is more comfortable outlining his company and where he wishes to lead it than he is in writing about himself. As you read, you can feel his driving nature.

"They did not know how hard I worked and the amount of hours and sweat I put out during the summer, the dogs that jumped on me, the doors that were slammed in my face. But that was nothing compared to the joy and rewards I found in what I had been able to achieve." His is more than a rags-to-riches story. It's a reminder.

He was a Native American warrior known as Tecumseh. Translated into English, the name means "Shooting Star." The fiery Shawnee leader's passions burned brightly during his life, as he struggled to protect his people's property rights and cultural heritage from being destroyed by white settlers. Like a comet's tail, Tecumseh's legacy continues to shine long after his passing. The life and legend of this warrior chief are the focus of John Sugden's biography Tecumseh. Tecumseh's powerful impact on Native Americans, both during his life and following his death, are thoroughly analyzed by Sugden, a noted authority on the Shawnee chief.

"Even today one can still feel that passionate belief that spurred Tecumseh on, that powerful spirit that again and again urged him to confront every obstacle and meet every danger." There have been volumes written about the warrior chief, who spent most of his life roaming the upper Midwest and Canada. Born sometime in the late 1760s, Tecumseh died in the War of 1812, while leading a failed effort to stave off aggressive American expansionism. During his life, he was often feared and vilified by whites. Upon his death, his stature as a heroic figure grew, almost to the point of exaggeration. This point leads Sugden to state that his mission is to provide readers with an accurate account of Tecumseh's life, which he does in exhaustive detail.

While some of the magic is lost as Sugden dispels the many myths, he offers insight into what influenced Tecumseh's life-long quest to unite Native Americans and preserve their civilization. A disdain for white settlers formed early in Tecumseh's childhood after settlers killed his father, seized the hunting grounds, and uprooted the Shawnees from Ohio. While these events could have turned him into a bitter, savage warrior, Sugden points out that Tecumseh grew into a strong, inspiring leader. This is further illustrated by several examples of how Tecumseh overruled fellow warriors to spare an enemy's life. Delving into Tecumseh's past allows us to further appreciate this renowned and gifted speaker and diplomat who skillfully negotiated with the U.S. government. Yet the biography also portrays Tecumseh as a human being with his own shortcomings. "Arrogance, impulsiveness, haughty pride, and a capacity for ruthlessness were all part of his makeup," writes Sugden, "but it was his virtues that were remembered, even by his enemies."

The author also explores how Tecumseh urged his people to strive for self-improvement by rejecting alcohol, witchcraft, and violence attempts that were influenced by his brother, Lalawethika, the Prophet, who told of messages he received from the Great Spirit. Unfortunately, Tecumseh's efforts to reform and unite Native Americans had to be set aside when forced to defend Shawnee land, resulting in the ill-fated alliance with the British against the United States in the War of 1812. While Tecumseh gave his life in the war, Sugden writes that the warrior chief also gave his people a lasting gift. "Tecumseh may have been unsuccessful, but he bequeathed to Indian peoples something of great importance: from his memory they have drawn pride and self-respect."

Starting with its subtitle, “The Man Who Bet on Everything,” Kevin Cook’s biography of legendary gambler Titanic Thompson pulls you in with stories of crafty bets, pretty women and narrow escapes. Cook isn’t content just to tell those tales; he reveals the person behind the conniver. It proves to be a wise decision.

Born Alvin Thomas, Titanic grew up bored and poor in rural Arkansas, pitching pennies and dealing cards to pass the time. He left home at 16, and spent the rest of his life looking for action. And regardless of where he was—Pittsburgh, New York, California, Texas—he found it. Titanic won millions playing cards, pool, golf, even horseshoes. He loved making outlandish bets and duping marks by finding the profitable loophole. Like a grifter Forrest Gump, he rubbed elbows with notorious icons such as Al Capone and Minnesota Fats. Titanic was no angel himself, killing five men and marrying five women.

Titanic never saved anything, and he couldn’t stop chasing the next big pot. With Las Vegas eliminating opportunities and his reputation known throughout the land, the action slowed to a trickle in the late 1960s and ‘70s. Elderly and in failing health, Titanic was reduced to picking “coins from a dish in the kitchen so he could take his wife out for ice cream.” His final days were spent in a nursing home, where nothing changed. He chipped golf balls outside, played poker (his hands were so stiff that he used his knuckle to deal the cards) and paid a nurse $80 to parade around his room nude. Later, he asked to touch her, but not for obvious reasons: “He had only married girls with soft skin,” Cook writes.

Cook deftly includes historical observations and biographies of Titanic’s associates (such as Guys & Dolls writer Damon Runyon, who based Sky Masterson on Titanic), and his colorful prose brings Titanic and his schemes to life: The man’s blood pressure, he observes, was “somewhere between the values for hibernation and coma.” But Cook avoids being seduced by Titanic’s glorious past, and thus provides readers with the gambler’s sobering reality: Eventually everyone learns your tricks. Filled with equal parts gusto and poignancy, the compulsively readable Titanic Thompson chronicles the lush life of a hard-living high roller—and his sad aftermath.

At the age of 47, Don Snyder kneels at the grave of his mother. A line of geese crosses the sky. He is embarrassed to speak out loud, but he does. I don't know where you are, Peggy. Of Time and Memory is a unique book, a biography of a mother written by a son who never knew her. Peggy Snyder died when Don and his twin brother were 16 days old, and the tragedy so affected their father Dick that he locked the memory of Peggy away. He remarried, worked until retirement, and now has developed a brain tumor. This pending loss makes his son Don begin to ask questions about his mother, questions that result in this book.

Dick Snyder returned from World War II and began work as a printing press operator. He saw a picture of Peggy on the desk of her father, who worked beside him. He fell in love with the picture, and then with the girl. Peggy was only 18, a recent high school graduate who dreamed of moving to New York. But Dick won her heart, and then her hand in marriage. Ten months later she gave birth to twin sons. Sixteen days afterwards, she died.

In Of Time and Memory, Don Snyder tells his own story, as well as the love story of his parents, a love story that outlives them. He calls it an unremembered love story, true in every aspect, preserved behind the heavy door that was closed against the terrible sadness of its end.

Peggy gave birth to twin sons and then died from a condition known as preeclampsia. Her parents, her sister, and his father blamed her doctor for her untimely death. By researching and writing this book, the author discovers the truth: that Peggy's doctor told her of her dangerous condition at the beginning of her pregnancy and warned her that the only treatment for the condition was to take the fetuses no later than the end of her second trimester, before she became too sick to recover.

Peggy made the decision to carry her sons to term, giving them life while sacrificing her own. Of Time and Memory becomes more than the love story of the author's parents. Though he never knew her, Don Snyder finds that he loves Peggy too.

David Sinclair is a former English Literature teacher.

At the time of Princess Diana's death, she was probably the world's most famous celebrity. Her work for various charities and her crusade against land mines had taken her to numerous countries. She gave comfort by ministering to the needy, the sick, and the dying. But as Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a Troubled Princess relates, the private Diana differed significantly from her public persona.

This authoritative biography by Sally Bedell Smith considers previous books and articles about Diana. It also includes Diana's own words as well as quotes from acquaintances and friends. When versions of an incident differ, the author appropriately presents as many sides as possible and withholds final judgment.

What emerges is a portrait of an extremely complex, basically insecure woman, whose marriage to Prince Charles thrusts her into a situation she is unable to handle. Her depression, bulimia, and occasional attempts at self-mutilation appear to be symptoms of a deep psychological conflict that she was never able to resolve, despite visits to different therapists and the use of alternative therapies. Neither the royals nor her own family understood the extent of her illness, and Diana was never able to find the safe, nurturing environment she sought.

The book recounts how Diana searched for approval to bolster her shaky self-image throughout her entire life. Wanting to control relationships and needing frequent reassurance to help her cope with mood swings, Diana went so far as to attempt to control her public image through her management of media contacts.

If you lack the stamina to slog through another 600-page fact-fest but retain a taste for biography and admire good writing, Penguin Books is publishing the ideal series for you. When Penguin first announced that they were launching the series, the volumes of which weigh in at 150-200 pages, a few curmudgeons were heard to mutter words like McBio. Au contraire. These little books read not as Reader's Digest summaries, but as thoughtful, extended essays by literary writers who understand their subjects. Both the subjects and their biographers are surprising.

Frequently they are an inspired match, as with the first two volumes, which came out in January Edmund White's Marcel Proust and Larry McMurtry's Crazy Horse. Any series of biographies is an acknowledgment of human diversity, and this one certainly celebrates it. Out this month are two more in the series, Peter Gay on Mozart and Garry Wills on St. Augustine. Later this year Penguin will publish Edna O'Brien's James Joyce and Jonathan Spence's Mao Zedong. Slated for the future, appearing at a rate of six per year, are such appealing combinations as Jane Smiley on Charles Dickens, Patricia Bosworth on Marlon Brando, Marshall Frady on Martin Luther King, Jr., and Karen Armstrong on the Buddha.

If you aren't familiar with the life of the author of Remembrance of Things Past, you'll be in for some surprises in Edmund White's Marcel Proust. Did you know that the asthmatic aesthete left his cork-lined fortress of solitude and challenged several men to duels when they dared to suggest in print what everyone already knew that he was a homosexual? White elegantly weaves an analysis of Proust's sex life into the many other strands that made him such a complicated figure, from illness and emotional dependency upon his mother to his natural historian's passion for dissecting every subspecies of class status. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of every kind of spectrum you can imagine, there is the life of Crazy Horse. Larry McMurtry, thoughtfully piecing together shards of a story, is quick to point out how little we really know about the man we call Crazy Horse. Still he recalls to life the ghostly, mythical figure that hangs over our memories of one of the great tragedies of American history, the relentless genocide that a solitary man was forced to battle and which ultimately killed him. Resisting the myths, yet first drawn to Crazy Horse because of them, McMurtry employs his vast knowledge of the era and his considerable narrative gifts in a curious performance, and an oddly moving one.

Peter Gay seems perfect to probe the mind of one of the great geniuses of Western music, and he does so with his usual expertise and style in Mozart. The life of Mozart, he begins, is the triumph of genius over precociousness. Who would not keep reading after that gauntlet of a first sentence? Along the way Gay reevaluates the influence of Wolfgang's famously tyrannical father. Historian Garry Wills looks a bit farther back into history than usual with his St. Augustine. Naturally the ever contentious Wills questions some of the standard myths of Augustine's life, such as his early sexual excesses. His combined analysis of the man, the leader, and the writer is fascinating. The Penguin Lives series is off to an impressive start.

Michael Sims is the author of Darwin's Orchestra (Henry Holt).

The more we learn about Elvis Presley, the more sad and pathetic his life seems to have been. Presley's apologists will maintain, of course, that his music and presence were so world-changing that they render all his other personal characteristics moot. But as the audience that was initially transformed by his music grows older, the bulk of the population is left with the image of a man whose excesses ate him alive. That is basically the story Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske relate in Down at the End of Lonely Street: The Life and Death of Elvis Presley.

Without ignoring or minimizing Presley's astounding talent and charisma, the authors provide us a parallel account of his descent into an exhausting and ultimately joyless hedonism. It reveals a man for whom solitude was horrifying and whose most creative thinking was devoted to the acquisition of drugs. Squeezed on the one side by his hard-driving, Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and on the other by his own insatiable appetites for food, women, drugs, and respect, Presley is as doomed as the hero in a Greek tragedy but without the moral stature. The singer shines brightest in this book during his days as a conscientious, high-achieving soldier in Germany. Although Brown and Broeske cover much the same ground as the legion of other Presley biographers, they do offer a more thorough and up-to-date account of his death and a more charitable assessment of Presley's personal physician, the much vilified George Dr. Nick Nichopoulos. Enriching the text, which is indexed, are 16 pages of pictures, a chronology of Presley's entire life, a list (with summaries) of all his movies, a selective discography, and a list of his television appearances.

Edward Morris is a Nashville-based journalist.

Stephen Crane was only 28 when he died of tuberculosis in England in 1900. He packed into that time, however, enough highs and lows, achievements and disappointments, as well as adventure, for several lives. Almost a century after his death, his best novels, The Red Badge of Courage and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, are American classics. His short stories, “The Open Boat” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” among others, are widely read and enjoyed. It confirms what Crane’s friend, H.G. Wells, said at his death, “I do not think that American criticism has yet done justice to the unsurpassable beauty of Crane’s best writing. And when I write those words, magnificent, unsurpassable, I mean them fully. He was, beyond dispute, the best writer of our generation, and his untimely death was an irreparable loss to our literature.”

Crane was a complex man of great personal charm whose work was a combination of his imagination and experience. Red Badge was set during the Civil War, although Crane was not born until 1871. He drew on his work as a war correspondent in Cuba and Greece for later work including his last novel, Active Service. He was, as Linda H. Davis writes in her outstanding new biography, Badge of Courage, a writer who was always pretending to be someone else. Davis begins with the early influence of Crane’s parents. His father, a Methodist minister, wrote ten pages a day, primarily, it seems, to impress his children with the importance of writing. More importantly, his mother, who bore 14 children, was a social activist and the author of several published short works.

During his brief period as a college student, Stephen began to write seriously and left school to become a newspaper reporter. In 1895 he explained to Willa Cather that he led a double literary life; writing in the first place the matter that pleased himself and doing it very slowly; in the second place, any sort of stuff that would sell. It was a pattern he would follow all his writing life. Although he lived modestly, even in virtual poverty at times, he seems to never have been free of debt. This was due in part to the fact that although he was widely acclaimed as a writer, he earned little from it. Davis notes that “In four years [he] had published five novels, two volumes of poetry, three big story collections, two books of war stories, and countless works of short fiction and reporting.” And yet in three years he had earned just over $1,200 for his entire American output, at a time when the country’s per capita income was $1,200 annually.

Crane was sensitive to the plight of others. His sympathies, as novelist and war correspondent were with the wounded and the private soldier. His defense of a prostitute wrongly arrested by a corrupt New York City policeman cost him the friendship of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. At the same time, he did not write or talk about his feelings for Cora [the bordello madam he met in Jacksonville, Florida, and who lived with him as his wife] yet friends described him as devoted and protective of her. Cora was devoted to him as well. His happiness, well-being, and work were of paramount importance to her something that endeared her to his friends, whether they actually liked her or not. In discussing his life Crane wrote to a friend, “I cannot help vanishing and disappearing and dissolving. It is my foremost trait.” To an admirer he did not know, he wrote “I am clay very common, uninteresting clay. I am a good deal of a rascal, sometimes a bore, often dishonest.” Of particular interest are Crane’s relationships with other writers. In the United States, these included Hamlin Garland and William Dean Howells. Later, in England, they were H.G. Wells, Ford Maddox Hueffer (last name later changed to Ford), Henry James, and, most importantly, Joseph Conrad.

Because of his tuberculosis, Crane was convinced that he would die young. Davis speculates, Given Stephen’s personality, his feverish approach to his work, and his penchant for risk-taking, one wonders whether he lived and worked on the ragged edge because he knew he hadn’t much time. Drawing on the latest Crane scholarship, Davis captures all of these aspects of his life and work. Her book is beautifully done, and I finished reading it with the appropriate response to a good literary biography I wanted to read or reread Crane’s work.

Roger Bishop is a monthly contributor to BookPage.