For a comparison of my two Addams biographies, scroll down.

Meanwhile, first, some thoughts about Writing Biography

The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.”       
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

No biography is about its author, but writing about anything, and especially biography, requires the writer engage deeply. This means not that she writes personally but that she bring to her books her questions about living. These include her curiosity about how and why people change or how and why they get stuck; her fears about being trapped, or being free, her loves – of books, of certain kinds of people, of certain professions, of travel, of causes. What fascinates me are people who escape their narrow, prosperous beginnings to lead lives committed to social justice. I am drawn to stories of increasing freedom, rather than stories of the power of fear.  I also like people who love books and reading, because I do too. And I am especially fascinated when people expect and allow ideas to change their lives.

This effort to engage deeply, however, brings with it a challenge: when my subject goes off into aspects of life that I are not drawn to, or do not find fascinating, that is exactly when I must apply all my biographical skills the most intently. For in the end the book is about my subject, and my responsibility is to follow her wherever she takes me, no matter how strange a place it feels to me. If she is a pacifist, and I am not, then I had better dive deeply into the how and why she rejected war as the solution to international disputes. If she is a Southerner and I am a Northerner, than I had better study her love of the South closely, to be sure I can capture how she felt.  

Ralph Waldo Emerson, author of the quote above, was gifted at such efforts. His broad imagination took him into Hinduism and other subjects unfamiliar to mid-nineteenth-century Protestant Americans. He was eager to learn from every culture because he believed he held the universe inside himself and that every human being did as well. It is a great goal for any writer to aim for – to find ways to write that are open-hearted to all viewpoints and honest about facing the truth.

Jane Addams and Sarah and Angelina Grimke were women whose lives and choices I am drawn to and, at the same time, their lives challenge me to stretch my own imagination and the frontiers of my own knowledge.

---

University of Chicago Press, 2005.

This book covers Addams's life from birth to age 40. My goal was to understand her formative years, how she became the leader she became. Born in 1860 and raised in a upper-middle-class family in northern Illinois, she attended college at a time when a tiny percentage of women were able to do so. Ambitious to achieve something and troubled by industrial and immigrant urban poverty, Addams moved to Chicago and in 1889 co-founded, with her friend Ellen Gates Starr, the first settlement house in the United States.  

The second half of the book covers her first ten years at Hull House, the settlement house she co-founded with her friend Ellen Gates Starr, in an industrial, immigrant neighborhood. Living among working class people, mostly immigrants, changed her ideas about democracy. She had always loved the idea, but it was life at Hull House that taught her what trusting the people really meant and what it meant to be a citizen in a democracy.
​
Those interested in the story of how Jane Addams became a great leader will want to read this book.
 

Visit the Citizen page >

W.W. Norton, 2010.

This book is a full-life biography. While it draws on the insights I gained from writing Citizen, it is fresh writing, and carries the story across every decade of her life, from 1860 until her death in 1935.

 It traces her emergence as a political leader and tells what she was able to accomplish in collaboration with many allies and the price she paid for her commitments. From child labor, to immigrant rights, to women's suffrage, to bringing warring nations to the negotiation table, Addams fought for issues that would benefit working people. She also joined their campaigns, as was a co-founder of a national trade union league for women. 
​
We see her wrestling with the politicization of politics, trying to find her footing during a painful dispute within the rising suffrage movement, and feeling compelled by her conscience to take an anguished stand for peace during time of war. This book highlights the moral dilemmas created by her aspiring, Christian-infused integrity, which was always under construction. It focuses on her emergence as a political leader with a fierce democratic vision and shows what she was able to accomplish in collaboration with many allies and the price she paid for her commitments.

Those looking for a short introduction to her full life. will want to read this book. It was written because so many people do not know the story. When it was published it is the first full-life biography of Addams in 37 years and none has been published since. 

Visit the Spirit in Action page >