The 54 best biographies from the United States

It is widely taught in American history and literature courses, is named among Time's most important nonfiction books of the century, and is an essential text in African American studies.

Taught in virtually every American high school and across university courses in African American literature, women's studies, and autobiography. One of the American Library Association's most frequently challenged books — a perverse testament to its ubiquity — and named among the most important American autobiographies of the 20th century on lists from the Modern Library and TIME.

The standard account of Robert Moses and of how power works in American cities, assigned in urban planning, political science and journalism programmes. It appears on nearly every list of the best American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

The Autobiography is among the most assigned texts in American literature and history courses at both high school and university level, serving as the foundational document of the American self-made-man tradition. No awards data is available in the database, but the work appears on virtually every syllabus of early American literature and is regularly included in surveys of American nonfiction. It is universally treated as essential reading for understanding American culture and civic ideology.

Our database captured no syllabus or Wikipedia signals for this title, but the book's real-world position is unambiguous: it is the standard reference for Joyce's life, cited in virtually every scholarly work on Joyce since 1959, assigned in graduate modernism courses, and named to the Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction list. 'Ellmann' functions as shorthand — critics cite it by the biographer's surname alone.

The standard English-language biography of Leopardi; long considered definitive.

The definitive modern biography of Alexander Hamilton, widely assigned in American history, political science, and constitutional law courses at universities across the United States. It has become the standard reference work on Hamilton's life, and its cultural footprint expanded enormously after inspiring Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway musical 'Hamilton' in 2015.

The volume is widely assigned in political biography and American history courses, and it anchors the Years of Lyndon Johnson series. It is a modern classic of the genre rather than a universal curriculum fixture.

The one-volume condensation of Joseph Frank's five-volume biography is the standard single-volume life of Dostoevsky in English and a common recommendation in Russian literature courses. Like most biographies, it is consulted more than assigned.

It is a standard presidential biography, widely read and often assigned in American history courses. It sits well below the literary canon proper.