Carl R. Trueman is the Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
He is the author (among other books) of Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History and the forthcoming Luther on the Christian Life.
Here are the top 5 biographies he recommends:
1. Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Young Stalin (Vintage, 2008).
A prequel to Montefiore’s Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar, this is a fascinating study of the early development of the later Soviet dictator and proof of the maxim that the child is father of the man, even when the man is named Joseph Stalin.
2. Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (Harper Perennial, 2011).
The most readable of many biographies of T.E. Lawrencs, the ultimate intellectual man of action and a personal hero.
3. Sheridan Gilley, Newman and His Age (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002).
Ian Ker’s is surely the definitive biography of John Henry Newman but I give this the edge as being more readable and as offering a fascinating portrait not simply of the most influential religious thinker of the nineteenth century but also of the era in which he lived.
4. D.G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (P & R Publishing, 2003).
An important study of a key figure in the fundamentalist-modernist debate which also helps to demonstrate why the simple polarities of liberal/conservative are incapable of capturing the nuances of what actually happened.
5. Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and Devil (Yale, 2006).
Oberman’s most brilliant, speculative, flawed, and thought-provoking book is a fascinating study of the Luther as a late medieval figure. Blending social history, textual study, theology, philosophy, and psychology in a fascinating mix, this is the book which transformed my own thinking about Luther.
