Fabricating Lives

How does the autobiographer want us to perceive him? How do we penetrate the memoirist’s strategies and subterfuges—sometimes conscious, usually—brilliant—and discover the real person screened behind them?   In this fresh and provocative approach to the reading of autobiography, Herbert Leibowitz explores the self-portraits of eight Americans whose lives span almost two centuries and encompass a stunning range of personality and circumstances: Benjamin Franklin, Louis Sullivan, Jane Addams,