Best political biographies 2023

The following is a list of political career biographies. It is meant to complement the list of political memoirs page, with the key difference being that the books in this list are authored by persons other than the book's subject. This list is sorted by country and by the political position and last name of the book's subject:

Australia

Richard Casey: Minister for Foreign Affairs 1951-1960

• R G Casey, Australian Foreign Minister, Collins 1972

Ben Chifley: Prime Minister 1945-1949

• Ben Chifley, Things Worth Fighting For, Melbourne University Press, 1952

Sir Robert Menzies: Prime Minister 1939-1941; 1949-1966

• R. G. Menzies, Afternoon Light, Cassell & Co., London, 1967

Graham Richardson: Senator 1983-1994

• Graham Richardson, Whatever It Takes (Bantam, 1994)

Gough Whitlam: Prime Minister 1972-1975

• Gough Whitlam, The Whitlam Government, Penguin, 1985

United Kingdom

Main article: List of British political memoirs

Karl Marx: Writer 1818-1883

United States

U.S. Cabinet

Albright, Madeleine: Secretary of State under PresidentBill Clinton, 1997-2001

• Madeleine Albright : A Twentieth-Century Odyssey (2000) by Michael Dobbs

Brown, Ron: Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton, 1993-1996

Byrnes, James F.: Secretary of State under President Harry Truman, 1945-1947

• Sly and Able: A Political Biography of James F. Byrnes (1994; ISBN 0-393-03367-8) by David Robertson

Connally, John: Secretary of the Treasury under President Richard Nixon, 1971-1972

Dulles, John Foster: Secretary of Defense under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1959

• Power and Peace: The Diplomacy of John Foster Dulles (1995) by Frederick Marks
• John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (1998) by Richard H. Immerman

Forrestal, James: Secretary of Defense under President Harry Truman, 1947-1949

• Driven Patriot : The Life and Times of James Forrestal (1992) by Townsend Hoopes

Johnson, Louis: Secretary of Defense under President Harry Truman, 1949-1950

Kissinger, Henry: Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, 1973-1977

• Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks With Beijing and Moscow (1999) by William Burr
• The Flawed Architect : Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (2004) by Jussi M. Hanhimaki
• The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983) by Seymour M. Hersh
• Sideshow, Revised Edition : Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (2002) by William Shawcross
• The Nixon-Kissinger Years: Reshaping of America's Foreign Policy (1989) by Richard C. Thornton

Marshall, George C.: Secretary of State, 1947-1949, and Secretary of Defense, 1950-1951, under President Harry Truman

McNamara, Robert: Secretary of Defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, 1961-1968

• Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (1993) by Deborah Shapely

O'Neill, Paul: Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush, 2001-2002

Rumsfeld, Donald: Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, 2001–present

• Rumsfeld's War: The Untold Story of America's Anti-Terrorist Commander (2004) by Rowan Scarborough

Vance, Cyrus: Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter, 1977-1980

U.S. Supreme Court

Blackmun, Harry: 98th Supreme Court Justice, 1970-1994

Marshall, Thurgood: 96th Supreme Court Justice, 1967-1991

O'Connor, Sandra Day: 102nd Supreme Court Justice, 1981-2006

• Sandra Day O'Connor : How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice (2005; ISBN 0-06-059018-1) by Joan Biskupic

Scalia, Antonin: 103rd Supreme Court Justice, 1986–present

Souter, David: 105th Supreme Court Justice, 1990–present

Thomas, Clarence: 106th Supreme Court Justice, 1991–present

See also