Nicholas Basbanes biography
Date of birth : -
Date of death : -
Birthplace : Lowell, Massachusetts
Nationality : American
Category : Famous Figures
Last modified : 2011-05-23
Credited as : Author, A Gentle Madness,
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His 1995 debut, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, became a New York Times notable book of the year and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction. His subsequent works have enjoyed similar success, to the chagrin of those publishers who deemed bibliography too esoteric a topic for popular nonfiction.
Basbanes’ subjects range from the reading habits of Alexander the Great to the stranger-than-fiction crimes of notorious book thief Stephen Blumberg. Equal parts raconteur and historian, Basbanes excels at crafting coherent narratives from disparate episodes of bibliographical lore and history. In his more recent works Basbanes has reported on the future of printed books in the age of electronic media and documented the reactions of librarians, booksellers, readers, and collectors to the changing literary landscape.
A Massachusetts native, Basbanes graduated from Bates College in 1965 and later completed a master of arts from Pennsylvania State University while serving as a naval officer in the Tonkin Gulf. As literary editor of the Worcester Sunday Telegram and Gazette from 1978 until 1991, Basbanes held the enviable assignment of interviewing many of the world’s greatest living authors. His most recent work, About the Author: Inside the Creative Process, gathers forty interviews from this period, including conversations with Margaret Atwood, Joseph Heller, Alice Walker, John Updike, Doris Lessing, and Kurt Vonnegut.
A 2008 recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, Nicholas Basbanes is currently putting the finishing touches on his latest book, a cultural history of paper and paper-making, to be published by Knopf. The book is tentatively titled Common Bond: Stories of a World Awash in Paper.
Author of books:
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (1995)
Patience & Fortitude: A Roving Chronicle of of Book People, Book Places, and Book Culture (2001)
Among The Gently Mad: Perspectives and Strategies for the Book-Hunter in the Twenty-First Century (2002)
A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World (2004)
Every Book Its Reader: The Power Of The Printed Word To Stir The World (2005)
