Susan Page's best-selling biography of Barbara Walters, The Rulebreaker, is now out in paperback. Below, USA Today's Washington bureau chief, who has also written biographies of Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Bush, recommends six books about rule breakers.
'Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom' by Catherine Clinton (2004)
'John Lewis: A Life' by David Greenberg (2024)
For the rest of his life, John Lewis bore a scar on his forehead from the police beating he endured during the 1965 civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. Reserved and relentless, Lewis became the House member from Georgia known as "the conscience of Congress." Buy it here.
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'Nightingale's Song' by Robert Timberg (1995)
This book intertwines stories of five Annapolis graduates, each shadowed by their service in Vietnam. One of them is maverick John McCain, whose life is explored in depth. The onetime prisoner of war became a U.S. senator, a Republican presidential nominee, and an independent GOP voice not afraid to take a stand against President Trump. Buy it here.
'Personal History' by Katharine Graham (1997)
Graham's father and her husband were supposed to lead The Washington Post; she was cast as the supportive spouse. But after her husband's suicide, she became the first female Fortune 500 CEO and the fearless publisher of a top newspaper, including during its war with President Richard Nixon. Buy it here.
'Janis: Her Life and Music' by Holly George-Warren (2019)
A brash musical trailblazer who sensed the power of the blues, Janis Joplin would find her place as the impassioned queen of rock, but she could never escape her personal demons. The singer and songwriter died of a heroin overdose at 27. Buy it here.
'Patriot: A Memoir' by Alexei Navalny (2024)
After he was poisoned in 2020 and evacuated to Germany for treatment, Navalny returned to Russia knowing that prison was likely and death possible. The opposition activist continued to defy Russian President Vladimir Putin anyway. In 2024, Navalny died serving a 19-year prison sentence in a penal colony in the Russian arctic. Buy it here.
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