What has yet to be written is a full-length narrative biography by a trained musician that synthesizes all this important material into a readable whole.

"I tried to take a different approach from his by writing a chronological narrative biography, but I do not pretend to have matched his insights," Mr. Isaacson accurately tells his readers.

An exhaustively detailed narrative biography of the author of "Silent Spring" and "The Sea Around Us."

The Roosevelt work is "a wonderful narrative biography and probably the most thorough."

Strictly as a narrative biography, Lear's book works perfectly well, but she could usefully have pushed the pause button once in a while.

What today's historians have learned, Mr. Chernow said, is to "take figures who once seemed dry and remote and bring them to life in narrative biographies."

Foote also contributed a long introduction to their edition of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage giving a narrative biography of the author.

Despite his incalculable contributions to American culture, there has never been a fully adequate narrative biography of Louis Armstrong.

However, what he has termed "narrative biography" has been criticized as "an apparent euphemism for poetic license".

Mr. Holmes sets out to answer these questions conventionally, by writing what he hopes "will read like the most traditional form of popular narrative biography."