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disciplines. Still other contemporary biographies examine a “slice,” or specific time period, of the subject’s life. For instance, Steve Weinberg (2009) examines the intersection of the lives of investigative journalist Ida Tarbell and Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller in his Taking on the Trust: How Ida Tarbell Brought Down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Although this book does examine the early lives and careers of both figures, its main focus is the relationship between them—a relationship that was key in the lives of both. The two main figures in the book were complete opposites: Rockefeller used his enormous wealth to form the close-knit family he lacked as a youngster; the firebrand Tarbell shunned the conventional domestic life of most women of her era to take up “muckraking”—investigative reporting of established institutions. Taking a historical perspective when telling the lives of two people offers another way to look at their impact. Similarly, Susan Hertog (2009) examines the lives of two female writers whom she believes in some ways lived parallel lives in her dual biography of Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson. Hertog traces the parallel paths of these two writers—Thompson, an American columnist, broadcaster, and the first female head of a European news bureau, and West, a British journalist and critic. The women were friends, but their lives took dramatically different turns. This approach can be seen clearly in Stranger from Abroad, which examines the relationship between writer-philosopher Hannah Arendt and German philosopher Martin Heidegger, focusing on the affair the two had when Arendt was Heidegger’s student and its long- term effect on her (Maier-Katkin 2010). Similarly, some recent biographies have examined a specific dimension of a life—an aspect of a life that may or may not be well known to the public. In Lincoln: the Biography of a Writer, author Fred Kaplan (2010) analyzes in detail the sixteenth US president’s writings to determine how they shaped his own thinking and actions. He traces Lincoln’s evolution as a writer and, in some respects, scholar. The subject of historian David S. Reynolds’s (2011) Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America is a dual one: it draws a detailed picture of the background and impact of one of the nation’s most widely read books, while also exploring the background of its author and the long-term legacy of this influential and well-known novel. While much has been written about author and feminist Betty Friedan and her landmark book The Feminine Mystique (1963), Daniel Horowitz (2000) digs into the roots of Friedan’s feminism in Betty Friedan and the Making of ‘The Feminine Mystique’: The American Left, the Cold
