Great biographies which we have read

[Manself]

Unto The Sons by Gay Talese is an incredible account of Italian emigration to America, a highly readable Italian history, an extraordinary genealogical study of his own family and contains enough talk of tailoring (Talese's father, and his father's cousin were tailors) to delight dedicated Loungers.

[Des Esseintes]

Not exactly a biography as such but can I suggest Stefan Zweig's marvellous "Decisive Moments in History, a series of twelve short portaits of twelve individuals and what Zweig believes their respective decisive moments.

I'll let an anonymous reviewer from Amazon summarise:
This book is not outstanding just because it gives valuable information about the historical events or characters but also for describing events like a story-teller. The book has 12 topics for different historical characters or events. All of them are marvelous. ... This is the best historical book that I have ever read.

dE