Biography

ELIZABETH AND PHILIP.Charles Highamand Roy Moseley.Doubleday.516 pages. $22.95.There, Charles Higham and Roy Moseley have gone and donit. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip may not be intrinsically interesting people, but even a die-hard royalist who actually finishes "Elizabeth and Philip" may be grateful to close the book on the couple.Rather than a flesh-and-blood Elizabeth and Philip, we are given lifeless, static prose riddled with the "must-haves" (as in "she must have felt . . .")

FLAUBERT.Henri Troyat.Viking.374 pages. $25.With this newly translated biography of Gustave Flaubert, Henri Troyat, who is renowned for his books on Russian novelists, gives an accessible and vivid picture of this strangely isolated writer. Flaubert's nature, full of gloomy vitality, is clear from the start, from Mr. Troyat's first sketches of him as a boy of 9. And he is consistently portrayed to the end: full of life but bitter about its general absurdity, and thus a fanatical believer in the redeeming value of artistic work.

JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON: A CIVIL WAR BIOGRAPHY.Craig L. Symonds.Norton.450 pages. $29.95. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was likened to Julius Caesar and hailed, in 1862, as "the only man who can save the Confederacy." But, two years later, having retreated before General Sherman's onslaught in Georgia, Johnston was ignominiously relieved of command of the Army of Tennessee.His critics had quipped that he would stop retreating only when he reached the Gulf of Mexico. Johnston was, in brief, one of the most enigmatic and controversial commanders on either side during the Civil War.He had impeccable credentials.

I have been a newspaper reporter, editor, columnist, editorial page editor and critic since John F. Kennedy was president. I have interviewed and otherwise covered eight U.S. presidents, including one, Harry S Truman, after his time in office. During those years, I've met six men who I believe had the qualities of character, principle, energy and ambition that could make them great presidents. Four had that job. Two did not. I will leave the other names for other occasions, but one of the latter was Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

PATRIARCH: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE NE AMERICAN NATION.Richard Norton Smith.Houghton Mifflin.399 pages. $24.95.FOR KING AND COUNTRY: THE MATURING OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1748-1750.Thomas A. Lewis.HarperCollins.296 pages. $27.50He is the best- and least-known of all American heroes. Was the "Father of Our Country," America's first president, a man or a monument? Who's the person lurking behind that patrician staring soberly from Gilbert Stuart's well-known portrait? Surely that somber face, that protruding jaw, was chiseled from marble or granite.

Among my firmest certainties is that vastly too many memoirs are being written and published. Another is that the most fatuous work being done these days by otherwise serious writers concerns writers writing about the agonies of writing -- a narcissistic but apparently irresistible indulgence. That being so, I should be either repelled by or indifferent to Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography Writing, by Michael Holroyd (Counterpoint, 336 pages, $27). Not so. I find it to be an enchanting, provocative and richly informing collection of observations on arts and letters, a sort of gazetteer of what might be called literary civility.

Richard Pryor. John Belushi. Jackie Gleason. Milton Berle. The contrast between the troubled offstage lives and the dazzling comedic characters invented by such performers has become a staple of show business biography in these anti-heroic, deconstruct-'em, postmodern times. It's rare indeed that a great comedian or comedic actor dies and his death isn't followed by biographies describing a tortured, twisted, sad and lonely life. Even by the harsh standards of today, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, which airs tomorrow night on HBO and is based on a Roger Lewis' biography of the same title, is a stunner.

An interview with Rolland Amos, facilitator for the Biography Book Club at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Ellicott City. What is your club reading? Mr. Capone by Robert J. Schoenberg. How did this club get started? I saw a flier at the store on the club. They were reading a book on Thomas Jefferson so I decided to go. The facilitator then had to leave so I assumed his duties. That was three years ago. The club is in its fourth year, at least. Who are some of the people your club has enjoyed reading about most?

CARL SANDBURG:A BIOGRAPHY.Penelope Niven.Robert Stewart/Scribner's.843 pages. $35.With a shock of dark hair spilling onto his forehead, Charlie Sandburg searched himself "for Jekyll and Hyde streaks." He was introspective, mercurial. The expression in his eyes could change instantaneously from teasing to brooding. Even their color had a chameleonlike quality, becoming blue, green or gray.At 21, Carl August Sandburg (calling himself Charlie and known as the Terrible Swede) was older than the other students at Lombard Preparatory College.

CLARIFICATION - An article in Thursday's Howard County edition of The Sun about the coming biography of developer James W. Rouse listed New York's South Street Seaport as one of his projects. While Rouse headed the Rouse Co. when the project was first conceived, he was not leading the company when it was implemented, according to biographer Josh Olsen. Seven years after the death of visionary developer James W. Rouse, the first biography of the social architect has been written, detailing his childhood and career - which is highlighted by Columbia, his most celebrated endeavor.