Poor Millard Fillmore. He’s been a running gag for years. Among the crop of generally undistinguished mid-19th-century presidents who served between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, Fillmore is often considered, if not the worst, then certainly the most colorless, of all chief executives. George Pendle’s new book, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President, only adds to Fillmore’s perceptual woes. In this lampoon of formal presidential biographies, Pendle claims to have been spurred on by the discovery in Africa of never-before-seen Fillmore journals, including letters and napkin doodles. (Did paper napkins exist in 1850? Did doodling?) Pendle hits all the general chronological marks of Fillmore’s life, but he fabricates the particulars in wildly imaginative fashion, complete with copious, addlepated footnotes that affirm the book’s comic intent.

Good ol’ Millard: He puts in an appearance at the Alamo (but dressed in drag, thus avoiding all those murderous Mexicans); he duels with Old Hickory (it never really happened); he proves to be an unheralded inventor (no way); and he also attends Ford’s Theatre with Honest Abe as a bonneted stand-in for the First Lady (and picks up John Wilkes Booth’s derringer and hands it back to the assassin).

To the very end, Pendle’s Fillmore is a figure of whimsy, on the day of his death having great difficulty doing his favorite animal impersonations, being forced to confine himself to cows and sheep. The Remarkable Millard Fillmore is esoteric stuff, but recommended highly for history buffs or those steeped in Fillmoriana (an ever-growing precious few).

Edith Wharton is perhaps best known for translating social history into fiction as she did in two of her most widely read novels, The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, becoming the first woman to do so. Her most popular book, Ethan Frome, a departure for her, was published in 1911. Growing up in New York in a well-to-do family during the Gilded Age, Wharton was an avid reader of important nonfiction works and a close observer of the elegant life and dramatic social change of that era. Despite an unhappy marriage and a difficult relationship with her mother and brothers, Wharton created a distinctive and sometimes extravagant life for herself, mostly abroad.

That story unfolds in Hermione Lee’s magnificent new biography Edith Wharton. Lee, Oxford’s first female Goldsmith’s Professor of English Literature and author of a highly acclaimed biography of Virginia Woolf, says Wharton was passionately interested in France, England, and Italy, but could never be done with the subject of America and Americans. In her richly detailed study, Lee shows how Wharton developed into an extremely ambitious author, publishing at least one book every year between 1897 and her death in 1937. Apart from her writing, Wharton was interested in fine homes and gardens, travel and friendships. Her circle of friends and acquaintances included Henry James, art critic Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark and Theodore Roosevelt.

Lee discusses what she calls the two essential underpinnings of [Wharton’s] life, money and servants. Of particular interest is Wharton’s work in establishing and supporting charities to assist in the war effort in France during World War I. Lee’s portrait also reveals some of Wharton’s less attractive characteristics, such as snobbery, racism, anti-Semitism and anti-feminism, which she says were commonplace among upper-class Anglo-Americans of the era.

This authoritative book, sensitive and thorough, is surely the definitive biography of Edith Wharton. Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Henry Hungerford died in 1834, unmarried, without children and without notable accomplishment. But his death was extraordinary good luck for the United States, because it led to the creation of the Smithsonian Institution. Hungerford was the nephew and heir of an odd rich man who lived more than half his life under the name James Macie, but changed it at age 35 to James Smithson. Smithson, who died in 1829, left his fortune to Hungerford, but made the U.S. his secondary legatee if Hungerford died without issue. The U.S., the will said, was to use the money to create a Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. Smithson, an Englishman who never visited this country, has always seemed a shadowy figure, in large part because most of his papers were destroyed in a fire at the Smithsonian in 1865. But author Heather Ewing, an architectural historian who has worked for the Smithsonian, has risen to the biographical challenge in The Lost World of James Smithson. She has exhumed letters, diaries, bank records and government documents throughout Europe and the U.S. that add up to a clear picture of our cultural benefactor.

Smithson, it turns out, was a fascinating person, albeit quirky and frustrated. He was a politically progressive amateur chemist and geologist, who traveled widely, amassed a significant geological collection and befriended the scientific pioneers of his age. Although well-regarded in scientific circles, Smithson was insecure because of his background as the illegitimate son of a well-born widow and the illustrious Duke of Northumberland. The name James Macie was his mother’s pretense that he was the son of her late husband; he changed it to Smithson, the duke’s surname, immediately after his mother’s death.

Childless and aware that his scientific work was of only middling importance, Smithson wanted to be remembered as something more than his parents’ mistake. Hence the Smithsonian will. Of course, his name is now world-famous. Ewing’s psychologically sensitive book gives us the man behind the name. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

There are a handful of names associated with the abolitionist movement that most everyone knows Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass. But history seems to have nearly forgotten one name William Wilberforce. Author Eric Metaxas chronicles the intriguing life and towering accomplishments of Wilberforce in his biography Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery.

Despite his slight physical stature, Wilberforce made a Herculean contribution to society, as he nearly single-handedly ended the British Empire’s slave trade in 1807, thereby paving the way for emancipation in 1833. Living in an era when slavery was ensconced as a social norm, Wilberforce found himself in the midst of a spiritual awakening a personal transformation that he referred to as his Great Change. Though he was one of the most talented and well connected men of his time, Wilberforce’s success is most firmly connected to his deep-seated belief in the equality of all men in the eyes of God. The Cambridge-educated Wilberforce secured a position in the House of Commons by the age of 21, and soon heard God’s calling for his life and became the foremost political leader and public figure of the abolitionist movement in England. He persistently led the fight for 20 long years, despite violent opposition from pro-slavery groups who felt that the slave trade was an integral part of Britain’s economy. Never yielding to the hostility he faced, as his adversaries targeted him with public ridicule, personal attacks and even a challenge to a duel, Wilberforce forged ahead, becoming the moral conscience of his country. This year marks the bicentennial of Wilberforce’s accomplishment, and Amazing Grace serves as the companion book to a recently released feature film by the same name. Metaxas tells Wilberforce’s story with a charm and energy reminiscent of a favorite history professor, painting a captivating picture of this era of social reform that revolutionized the world.

We know Washington Irving best for his folk tales The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Born in the year the American Revolution ended, Irving died not long before the start of the Civil War. During his lifetime, his versatility as an author who could successfully write satire, history and biography helped to establish him as the country’s first professional man of letters. How this lifelong bachelor and citizen of the world put Manhattan on the literary map is the subject of Andrew Burstein’s discerning biography The Original Knickerbocker.

From early on, Irving was part of a mutually supportive New York literary community that included three of his brothers, who were well-connected and politically engaged. His first book, 1809’s A History of New York, allegedly written by Diedrich Knickerbocker, was a mock history, a widely read satiric masterpiece. In 1815, Irving sailed to Europe in search of new directions for his writing. When he returned home 17 years later, he was an international celebrity.

Burstein guides us carefully through Irving’s works, explaining both how each was received in its time and how later readers viewed them. [Irving] gave his country the epic historical romances they craved, he writes, He celebrated an at once vigorous, amusing, and opportunistic people. Although Irving the historian appreciated primary sources and archives, Burstein says he had a jaunty, sometimes starry-eyed way of telling history. He could not help but re-create it imaginatively. Irving was congenial and witty, had a naturally tolerant personality, was good company for the likes of Sir Walter Scott and Martin Van Buren, and was generous in trying to help other authors, even James Fenimore Cooper, who did not care for him. Burstein, who is best known for his books on Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, demonstrates here that he is also skilled in bringing readers the life and times of an important literary figure.

Thomas Hardy’s extraordinary journey from modest beginnings as the son of a builder to the pinnacle of British literary society was the result of his exceptional talent and fierce ambition. His road to critical acclaim and commercial success was fraught with numerous challenges as he steered his way between two worlds in a class-conscious society. Claire Tomalin, the author of distinguished biographies of Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft and Samuel Pepys the last receiving the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year award gives us an elegant and incisive account of Hardy’s life in Thomas Hardy.

Her careful narrative vividly evokes his development from a bright young man, unable to go to university, who works as an architect’s clerk while becoming an aspiring author. He found his true voice with Far from the Madding Crowd, where he established the territory in which he worked best in fiction, in which rural landscape is drawn with a naturalist’s eye and he portrays country people as they cope with custom and change. Tomalin notes that while in all of his works Hardy wasted no scrap of experience, some readers may have misunderstood him. Although he has been read as a realist, she notes, he was not producing documentaries but writing fiction. In addition to his work, at the center of his life for many years was his first wife, Emma Gifford. She was the inspiration for some of his best work, both before and, with regard to his poetry, after her death in 1912. He was in love with her, there was no doubt of that, Tomalin writes, but she was also a precious commodity a mine,’ as he so frankly told her. . . . She gave him material for his writing. Years later, Emma felt that her husband cared more for his fictional women than he did the real ones he encountered. Tomalin writes perceptively about Hardy’s relationships with other women, including his mother and his second wife, Florence.

Throughout Thomas Hardy Tomalin takes us behind the scenes of late 19th- and early 20th-century literary life in England and shows that Hardy was a shrewd businessman as well as a major author. She explains that early in his career he did whatever was necessary to have his work serialized in publications and for circulating libraries, as well as being deemed appropriate for family reading. Nevertheless, she writes, [h]e did want to become a serious novelist, and his best novels are great works of imagination each with its own seam of poetry sewn into the narrative. Tomalin gives us skillful and helpful readings of Hardy’s fiction and poetry and considers the poems an essential part of the narrative of his life. Although his works sometimes aroused controversy because of his views on religion and marriage, Tomalin says that he remained conventional and conservative in his personal life. He chose not to get involved with causes, for example, because he believed a writer was more effective if he appeared open-minded on strictly political questions. Tomalin’s beautifully crafted biography helps us to better understand the man and his work.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

There are few portraits more beloved in jazz than that of Dizzy Gillespie playing his upturned horn, cheeks billowing as notes come cascading out. Gillespie skillfully navigated the tight line between artistry and entertainment, spearheading radical changes in jazz technique while remaining extremely popular throughout his career. Despite being self-taught, he had phenomenal technical facility and could execute intricate passages with ease and insert a warm, engaging lyricism into every solo.

Author and longtime jazz concert producer Donald L. Maggin’s authoritative Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie is not only the first complete biography of the bebop legend, it explains Gillespie’s musical innovations in precise language that doesn’t confuse novices or alienate knowledgeable players and fans. Maggin emphasizes Gillespie’s role as a soloist, bandleader and musical thinker. He credits Gillespie’s family with instilling in him both the discipline and hunger essential for success and enough self-esteem to overcome the racist attitudes toward blacks he endured while growing up in South Carolina (where he witnessed the lynching of a member of his high school band).

Dizzy carefully traces Gillespie’s two major legacies. One was his participation with saxophonist Charlie Parker, drummer Kenny Clarke, pianist Thelonious Monk and guitarist Charlie Christian in the bebop revolution. The second came through his collaborations with bandleader Mario Bauza in the late ’40s. They brought the multi-textured beats and syncopation of Africa and Cuba into jazz, enabling the style to expand its rhythmic reach and broaden its compositional framework.

Maggin also covers the complex relationship between Gillespie and Parker, his emergence as an international ambassador and spokesperson for the Baha’i faith, his 53-year marriage, and his role as mentor to numerous musicians. Maggin’s book effectively documents the many changes pioneered by Gillespie, who never lost contact with either the experimental or traditional wings of the jazz world. Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and several other publications.

Enron’s Ken Lay and Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski made headlines for living lavishly, basking in the money their corporations made. But no one seems to live larger than Donald Trump does. Host of the NBC series The Apprentice, real-estate mogul, celebrity magnet and all-around intriguing personality, Trump is the subject of Robert Slater’s No Such Thing as Over-Exposure: Inside the Life and Celebrity of Donald Trump. Yet, Trump differs from Lay and Kozlowski in one major way: the money he spends or loses is his own.

Trump inherited a nice sum and followed in his dad’s footsteps as a real estate developer, but kicked the marketing up a notch. His lifestyle is part of his marketing plan: he builds places for wealthy people to live and play. And that, Slater argues, is exactly how Trump makes it big in business: he maintains and polishes his celebrity mystique by perfectly timed media management. This is a hugely entertaining book that dispels a few popular myths about the Donald. Take his signature You’re fired phrase apparently Trump rarely fires anyone in his real-life work life; his execs have to beg him to let someone go.

From the first notes he played during his London debut at a trendy nightspot early in 1967, Jimi Hendrix was a sensation. His appearance had a lot to do with it: blues-dazzled Brits lionized black American musicians, and when one showed up, as Hendrix did, in an outfit even wilder than those being marketed on Carnaby Street, that alone was enough to turn heads. Then there was the music, and here he was even more of an oddity: a left-handed virtuoso who held his guitar upside-down. And when he played it, he had no equal and quite probably never will.

As a young UPI journalist, Sharon Lawrence witnessed Hendrix’s ascension. More than that, she befriended and came to know him as shy and quiet offstage, emotionally fragile, willing to trust people who seemed in a hurry to betray him. This picture darkens throughout her narrative in <b>Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth</b>, as groupies, drug suppliers, attorneys and dollar-hungry relatives cast their shadows against it.

Lawrence doesn’t overplay her role: the more Hendrix fell under the sway of unscrupulous associates, the less often her path crossed his. When it did, though, she was stunned by his transformation: cynicism and depression replaced Hendrix’s gentle, somewhat goofy humor, and in one encounter he lashed at her with an outburst of four-letter words behavior that would have been unimaginable just a year or so before.

Inevitably Lawrence comes to Hendrix’s death at age 27 and then recounts the lawsuits, recriminations, finger-pointing and two suicides that came in its wake. Much of the ugliness continues to this day and may well stretch into the lives of generations unborn before Hendrix’s demise. Yet Lawrence uses this grim denouement to illuminate the impression that lingers of her friend, as a dove, perhaps, rising finally beyond the reach of the vultures he has left behind.

<i>Robert L. Doerschuk’s investigative piece, "What Really Happened: The Last Days of Jimi Hendrix," ran in the February 1996 issue of</i> Musician <i>magazine.</i>

Beatrix Potter’s characters have been loved by generations of children and adults since the early 1900s, but, as former professor Linda Lear reveals in her new biography Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, she was also a scientific illustrator, mycologist (person who studies fungi), businesswoman and conservationist. Lear also a biographer of environmentalist Rachel Carson spent a decade researching Potter’s life, becoming intimately acquainted with her journals, sketchbooks, story ideas and letters. The resulting book does an excellent job of giving the reader a sense of the time and place in which Potter lived and the real-life locations and people featured in her stories, and includes family photos and a peek at Potter’s scientific illustrations.

Potter introduced Peter Rabbit and his friends in illustrated letters she sent to children of her acquaintance. Initially a self-published author, she wrote and illustrated 23 books by the time of her death at age 77. Children’s books were just one chapter in Potter’s life, however. In her early 20s, she was an avid toadstool hunter and scientist. Her conclusions (initially pooh-poohed by the male scientific establishment) were later proven and accepted and her illustrations are still used today for the study and identification of fungi.

Amid all her work and study, Potter fell in love, and when her fiance her London publisher and editor, Norman Warne died a month after their engagement, Potter left London and bought a farm. There, she embarked on what Lear calls the third act of her life, and deepened her appreciation for and knowledge of the natural world. When she died in 1943, she left significant parcels of land to England’s National Trust.

Lear paints an appealing, revealing picture of an independent, accomplished and loving woman who used her art and research to educate herself and a host of readers. The publication of this biography coincides with the release of Miss Potter, a biopic starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, but read the book first! Linda M. Castellitto still has her Peter Rabbit coloring book.

The carefully researched The Guggenheims: A Family History is an intriguing look at one of the country’s wealthiest and most influential families from the 1880s to the present, as well as a perceptive probe into the constant intermingling of business, politics and anti-Semitism during those years. Their story begins with Simon, who leaves Switzerland for America in 1847; Simon’s oldest son Meyer produces seven sons and three daughters, whose lives the authors document in meticulous detail, beginning with their fortunes gained from mining in Colorado. Meyer passes on to his sons the “core Guggenheim principles” of maintaining strong family solidarity and always hiring the best talent available. By the 1890s, their “breakthrough decade,” they move to New York City and take their place among the Jewish upper-crust, although compromising somewhat by joining an “assimilationist” congregation. With the fall of postwar mineral prices, the Guggenheims see a gradual retreat of their industrial empire. In the second two-thirds of the century, they become known primarily as patrons of the arts and sciences; by 1950, they are no longer listed among the nation’s wealthiest families. The authors delve deeply into the lives of some of the more notable members of the second and third generations, beginning with Harry, Meyer’s grandson, who befriends Lindbergh and helps to promote aviation in America. Solomon, Meyer’s last male survivor, opens a museum for his growing art collection in 1939; the move to the renowned Frank Lloyd Wright building comes in 1959, long after his death. Peggy, daughter of Meyer’s son Ben, leads a flamboyant life while assembling an impressive collection of western 20th-century art of her own.

Although very few family members still carry the last name Guggenheim, the authors conclude that a bond remains, created by their foundations and museums. This thoughtful and well-researched look at the family and the times in which it ro se and fell serves as an insightful journey through the whole of the 20th century.

Michael Streissguth, who has written extensively about Johnny Cash before, essays a final summation of the singer/songwriter’s career and personal struggles in Johnny Cash: The Biography. As the author points out, Cash had a direct hand in shaping his earlier biographies, from which he emerged as a flawed but larger-than-life figure who ultimately had gained control of his demons. While clearly a great admirer of Cash and his music, Streissguth nonetheless chips away at the sanitized version of The Man in Black. In so doing, he makes Cash more human and, thus, his achievements all the more remarkable.

To piece together this complex artist, Streissguth interviewed dozens of people who knew him well at every stage of his development from distant and long-forgotten high school classmates to such inside observers as his daughters Rosanne and Cindy; managers Saul Holiff and Lou Robin; producer Jack Clement; former band members Marshall Grant and Marty Stuart; Bill Walker, the music director for Cash’s TV show; and numerous record company executives who witnessed and/or contributed to Cash’s rise and fall. Of particular relevance are Streissguth’s portraits of two of the most influential figures in Cash life’s his flinty and love-withholding father, Ray, and his second wife, June Carter, who emerges as both self-sacrificing and self-aggrandizing. Obsessed by religion and the desire to live righteously, Cash, nonetheless, was more of a drug addict than he ever admitted and, says the author, a womanizer even as he publicly trumpeted his love for June. This is the best study of Cash to date.

Edward Morris is the former country music editor of Billboard and currently a contributor to CMT.com.