Harder - Biographies are written stories of a person's life that were written by someone else, while an autobiography is a person's story written by themselves. Biographies make past history more real and easier to understand by telling about real people and actual events. People reading the biography can satisfy their curiosity about well-known individuals and can experience historical events as though they were actually present. A good biography presents the facts about the person's life including what the subject did and how they influenced their world. It should describe the person's personality and provide an explanation for why he or she acted in certain ways.
Biographers make their writings accurate by learning as much as possible about their subjects.
They study materials such as diaries, personal letters, and autobiographies. A good biography should be objective and balanced, but those lofty goals are not always achieved. Some biographers present a biased view by selectively presenting only the facts that portray the subject in either a favorable or an unflattering way. Explore over 25,000 short biographies of people from around the world. This dictionary contains information about over 28,000 people from past and present.