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Biographies / Autobiographies Books In Punjabi

Showing 1–16 of 104 results

Acharia Channkia Jiwan Ate Vichar

Adbi Mulakatan

Agam Agadh Purakh

Baba Hardas Singh

Bhagat Singh Nu Fansi

Bhai Kahan Singh Nabha Ik Parichay

Bharat Pak De Parsidh Sufi Sant

Budha Dal De Tisre Jathedar Singh Sahib Nawab Kapoor Singh Ji

Desh Bhagat Babe

Dhupan Chhavan (Novel)

Gadri Yodhe Sant Baba Visakha Singh

Guru Gobind Singh Jeevan Te Falsafa

Guru Teg Bahadur (Shakshiat, Safar, Sandesh Ate Sahadat)

Guru Tegh Bahadar Jiwan Ate Bani Vichar

Ik Vigyani Adhiatamveta Bh. Sher Singh Kashmir

Jathedar Teja Singh Akarpuri

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Think and Grow Rich (Punjabi)

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The Best 7 Books About Punjab’s History and Culture

Punjab has a rich culture and history we all want to know more about, but it feels very challenging to find the correct sources. With all the false commercialism and connotations about Punjab, the urge to learn more is always there. 

Having said that, you've come to the right place. We have researched, curated, and read the following books that feature the history, lives and culture of Punjab. 

There is so much to learn, not just for Punjabis, but for those around the world who are just getting to know the culture.  Everyone has had questions like what is Punjabi, what does Punjabi mean, where is Punjab, when was Punjab founded, what is the taste of Punjab? The answers to these and much much more can be found in the books mentioned in this article. 

Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines 

Photo source: amazon.

Author: Amandeep Sandhu 

Chapters: 16 

One thing you will surely love about this book is that you’ll feel engrossed with all the stories. It feels like you are on a real journey and Amandeep is taking you to that particular place or setting. Sandhu has a tremendous anecdotal style whenever he is writing about Punjab's history and current state of affairs. The lines between the characters feel like home. 

Every Punjabi should know about Punjab's history. The story begins with Satt, which means ‘wound,’ and ends with Janamdin, which means ‘birthday.’ 

As you read, you will also come across the representation and reality of Punjab. What makes this unique is that you will feel like you are holding a mirror when you read and turn the pages. All the stories are also the reflection of you and some of your experiences. It also focuses on the problems occurring in the state so that you can better understand what's going on today.    Buy Now

Sadda Punjab 

Photo source: amazon .

Author: Munish Jindal 

This book is the perfect choice for those Punjab Civil Service hopefuls and those taking exams. The topic revolves around Punjab’s geography, Sikh and Punjabi history, which discusses Punjab’s ancient, medieval, and modern periods. 

Even without a plan to take Civil Service exam, you can read this to enhance your knowledge about Punjab’s history and culture.   

Tales of the Punjab 

Author: Flora Annie Steel 

Illustrator: John Lockwood Kipling 

Chapters: 43 Eastern folktales 

The author of this book is famous among Punjabis, and she lived in British India for over 22 years.

Tales of the Punjab is a collection of 43 Easter folktales, which include: 

• The Adventures of Raja Rasalu 
• The Son of Seven Mother 
• Prince Lionheart and His Three Friends
• The Bear’s Bad Bargain
• The Faithful Prince 

Social & Cultural History of the Punjab: Prehistoric Ancient & Early Medieval 

Author: J S Grewal 

The author used Punjab in this book as a metaphor for the four places surrounding the geographical region: the Jamuna River, Aravali Hills, the Great Indian Desert, and the Himalayas. 

The Social & Cultural History of the Punjab’s story revolves around Punjab’s social and cultural history that happened around BC 3000 to AD 1000. This book captivated the interest of professional historians, students, and even general readers. 

Grewal examines the area through the lenses of the socio-cultural dynamics of the region at various points in its history, the Harappan civilisation, the Rigvedic culture, the development of states in the area and their incorporation into empires, the rise of urban centres, and the formation of new social and cultural forms.

The book also delves into how Punjab's shifting politics and economics influenced the region's religious history.  Buy Now

Punjab, Punjabis, and Punjabiyat: Reflections on a Land and its People

Author: Khushwant Singh

This book focuses on the culture, people, and area of Punjab. It is a compilation of Singh's finest works of Punjab, Punjabis, and Sikhs. Across its three sections, the book discusses several facets of the area, such as its climate, history, religion, politics, language, and literature.

The first section focuses on the history and culture of the Sikhs and the state of Punjab. On the other hand, the second section discusses the pressing difficulties that plagued the state throughout Singh's lifetime, like partition, the Khalistan movement, Operation Blue Star, anti-Sikh riots, and more. Lastly, the third section includes biographies of prominent poets, politicians, activists, friends, and family members. 

Since it was printed after the author's death, it is unrealistic to anticipate a systematic analysis, but it helps sketch out the broad strokes of Punjab's cultural development.   Buy Now

Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten

Author: Rajmohan Gandhi

Well-researched and quite popular among the worldwide Punjabi community, Rajmohan Gandhi's book is a must-read. This book traces Punjab's turbulent history from Aurangzeb's demise through the bloody partition of 1947, which coincided with the British withdrawal.

The author has written an engaging overview of the significant events of the era in the area, drawing on new and previously published testimonies. 

Several examples are shown below:

• Wars and disasters that often shattered the life of regular Punjabis
• A series of invaders ransacked famous towns in Pakistan and India, including Lahore, Amritsar, Multan and Jalandhar
• The devastation brought upon by conquerors like Nadir Shah
• As the Sikh movement gained momentum under Maharaja Ranjit Singh's rule
• The conflicts between Britain and the Sikh monarchy
• Effects of the 1857 Great Rebellion on Punjab
• The destruction caused by Partition and more

Furthermore, Rajmohan Gandhi makes an effort to address several crucial issues. An interesting fact that caught my attention was that during Aurangzeb's reign, Muslims and Hindus made up the vast majority of Punjab, with the Sikhs making up a tiny fraction of the population.

It was the Sikhs, however, who eventually came out on top when the Mughal Empire collapsed. Why didn't the Muslims in Punjab step up?  Buy Now

History and Culture of Punjab

Author: Mohinder Singh

Students, academics, and those interested in Punjab will find Mohinder Singh's History and Culture of Punjab an excellent resource. The articles collected here cover many facets of Punjabi history and culture. It is one of the most reliable resources for learning about the events that led up to contemporary Punjab since it has contributions from some of the most renowned historians.

This collection includes the following articles:

• The Chief Khalsa Diwan
• The Singh Sabha Movement
• Modern Panjab: An Overview
• Images of Sikhism in the Writings of early Orientalists
• Inter-religious Dialogue and Understanding
• The Sikh Philosophy of God
• The Guru in Sikhism: Some Further Considerations
• Guru Gobind Singh in Bengali Writings
• Guru Nanak’s Vision of Religious Humanism
• History and Culture of Panjab through the Ages

Now that you have the list of these fantastic books about Punjab’s History and Culture, it is time to read them one by one. Get engaged with all the wonderful collections of stories in each book that will let you dig deeper into the rich culture of Punjab. 

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Sikh Heros Blog. Read through this blog about Sikh Religion and Culture

15 Famous Punjabi Novels/Books

Table of Contents

Today you can find billions of Novels in market or online websites today that too in numerous languages few are translated in all languages. But if you feel that the actual beauty is in the novel which is written in an actual language not translated like from original to any other language. And when you talk about Punjabi novels there is this different essence of Punjab in such novels which are originally written in Punjabi by famous writers.

So let’s have a look at top 15 Punjabi novels so that you can read them and feel the beauty of Punjab.

1. Pinjar(Hindi Hardcover Jan 01 2014) by Amrita Pritam

An heartbreaking story about a girl who was kidnapped and refused to be accepted by her father. She tries and succeeds in returning another girl. Dr. Chandra Prakash Dwivedi of Chanakya serial fame made a film based on this novel with the same name.

Amrita Pritam was a prominent Punjabi and Hindi writer who lived from August 31, 1919, to October 31, 2005. Amrita Pritam, the first Punjabi language poet, was born in the Gujranwala area of Punjab (India) (now in Pakistan following the 1947 India Pakistan partition).

Amrita Pritam was one of the numerous poets whose writings have been admired and translated into a variety of national and international languages. Amrita Pritam was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest distinction after the Bharat Ratna, in her final days. She was also given the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Jnanpith Award, which is India’s highest literary honour.

2. Chitta Lahu

This novel depicts the real societal issues that have always existed but have been overlooked. And Nanak Singh has accurately depicted each and every character.

Start with Nanak Singh’s writings if you’re looking for a classic Punjabi novel.

The author of this novel tells us about a girl who has to go through a lot of hardships because of society’s laws. Sundri is the primary character in this storey.

Nanak Singh is a Punjabi novelist who lives in the Pakistani village of Chak Hameed in the district of Jehlum. Nanak Singh became his new name. He was imprisoned for his involvement in the Gurdwara Reform movement. In jail, he discovered the meaning of his existence through reading Munshi Prem Chand’s novels. He began writing novels in order to bring attention to the societal ills that plague our society.

His ideal characters would use their moral endeavours to alter society. His characters have a huge impact on the readers. His stories have well-knit narratives, and his narration style is so compelling and rich with Punjabi idioms and proverbs that readers can’t put them down. For four decades, he ruled over a generation of readers. He received the Sahit Akademi Award.

3. Main Te Main

Shiv Kumar Batalvi was born on July 23, 1936, in the Pakistani town of Bara Pind Lohtian. His early years were spent in the rustic and enchanting surroundings of Punjab, the country of five rivers, where folk melodies and music abound. Shiv’s poetry was built on the pure spirit of the region, balanced with the folklore and culture of the people who lived there.

Shiv was enthralled with Indian epics as well as Punjabi literature. He held the gurus in high regard, and his renditions of their shabads are reputed to be fascinating. He also enjoyed listening to the saints, hermits, and folk singers who were an important part of Punjabi culture at the time.

His romantic poetry has made him famous. His public recitations of poetry and singing of his own verse made him and his work extremely popular. In 1967, he received the Sahitya Akademi award for his epic verse drama Loona, making him the youngest laureate of the honour.

4. PALI (NOVEL)

Jaswant Singh Kanwal is a Punjabi novelist, short storey writer, and essay writer. He was born in the Punjabi village of Dhudike in the Moga District. He dropped out of school and moved to Malaya when he was a youngster. It was there that he became interested in literature for the first time. In 2007, he was honoured with the Punjabi Sahit Shiromani Award.

He wrote a number of books. His books usually have a rustic tinge to them and eloquently represent Punjabi country life. In general, his essays cast doubt on long-held social norms and beliefs. Many of his most popular novels support the cause of socially relevant problems like as social and gender equality, and he has left-wing leanings.

Sundri written by Bhai Vir Singh’s. Sundri is a symbolic representation of that atmosphere, based on a famous folk song and set in the historical period of Mir Manu, which is notorious for large-scale Sikh massacres. The Nawabs’ courtiers were hell-bent on exterminating the Sikhs. The rulers were oppressive and lusty.

Vir Singh was a Sikh revivalist poet, scholar, and theologian who was instrumental in the revival of Punjabi literature. Singh’s efforts were so significant and prominent that he was granted the title of Bhai, a Sikh honorific given to individuals who could be considered saints.

6. Eho Hamara Jeevan

In this storey, Dalip Kaur Tiwana aimed to depict the terrible life of an ordinary oppressed Indian (Punjabi) woman. Even in a small village, she lives on an island of social outcasts. She doesn’t belong to anyone. However, she does not ‘exist’ socially or individually; she just ‘floats.’

Dalip Kaur Tiwana, who began writing in the early 1960s, has released more than a half-dozen novels, but Eh Hamara Jiwana, a poignant storey about an impoverished peasant girl who becomes a victim of wild human passion, is her most notable work to date. In this storey, she used the Malwa regional dialect to portray profound interior thoughts with minimal usage of words.

7. Lahu Mitti

Sant Singh Sekhon’s Lahu Mitti (Blood and Soil) tells the narrative of a Punjab peasant in the midst of massive agricultural and economic transformation. The short storey is Sekhon’s most important contribution to Punjabi fiction. Jaswant Singh Kanwal, like Nanak Singh, is a prolific writer who is emotional in his storytelling and a devout Marxist.

8. PUNJABIAT

Kartar Singh Duggal, also known as K.S., is a Punjabi actor. Duggal was born in Dhamyal village in the Greater Punjab district of Rawalpindi (now Pakistan). He wrote books in Punjabi, his mother tongue. Short tales, novels, dramas, plays, and memoirs are among his most notable works. His works have been translated into several Indian and international languages. He wrote in Urdu, Hindi, and English on a regular basis.

In 1988, the Government of India bestowed the Padma Bhushan upon Mr. Duggal. He received the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, India’s National Academy of Letters’ highest honour. He was the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Member of Parliament. He worked for All India Radio and the National Book Trust of India. In New Delhi, he was the President of the Punjabi Sahit Sabha.

9. Maharani Jinda

Sohan Singh Seetal is a Punjabi poet, lyricist, and author. After 1947, he moved into literature and published several novels, some of which deal with women’s issues in Punjabi society. Sheetal portrays the lives of people in rural Punjab in a very vivid and authentic manner.

10. Ranjit Singh – Punjab Da Maharaja

Khushwant Singh portrays Ranjit Singh in his true form. This is a remarkable description of the splendour and brilliance of the Sikh monarchy during the height of its strength, and a lively depiction of one of India’s most colourful individuals, based on Persian, Punjabi, and English sources, as well as diaries and memoirs of European travellers.

Khushwant Singh will go down in Indian literary history as one of the best historians and novelists, as well as a frank political commentator and a superb observer and social critic.

The President of India gave Khushwant Singh the Padma Bhushan in 1974, but he returned it in 1984 in protest of the Union Government’s siege of the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

11. Tufanan Da Shah Aswar Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha

A new on Shaheed Kartar Singh sarabha Authored by Sikh Historian Bhai Ajmer Singh. It clearly depict the fight of Sikhs against freedom.

Ajmer Singh Aulakh was one of the most creative and influential writers and playwrights in the history of the revolutionary movement in Punjab and India, and his legacy will be remembered for generations. In 2006, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award.

12. Midhe Hoe Phul by Nanak Singh

Famous Punjabi Noveist Nanak Singh’s novel very emotional.

Loona is a Kissa song from the hill region’s folklore. Shiv Kumar, a well-known Punjabi poet, has written in his own unique style.

14. Rasidi Ticket

15. Garib Di Duniya

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‘The Blues Brothers’ was gloriously dumb. It still matters.

A new book delves into the crazy true story behind the making of a film that became a cult classic and turned john belushi and dan aykroyd into screen legends.

Does “ The Blues Brothers ” deserve a book? In the pantheon of gloriously dumb movie comedies derived from “Saturday Night Live” and the National Lampoon, the 1980 John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd R&B farce sits a notch below “Animal House,” “Caddyshack” and “Ghostbusters.” Maybe two notches. An absurdist demolition derby of a film, it’s most memorable for spotlighting soul-music legends like Aretha Franklin and James Brown and providing a loving portrait of Chicago at its smoggiest and seediest.

But is it book-worthy? Arguably not. Still, Daniel De Visé makes the case in his subtitle, “ The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic ,” that his book isn’t just about a movie.

It’s a triple-helixed biography of the main contributors to the counterculture comedy revolution of the post-’60s: SNL, the Lampoon, and the Second City comedy troupe in all its stage and TV iterations. It’s a tale of Hollywood excess — both budgetary and pharmaceutical — that beggars belief. And, at its essence, it’s the story of a great American bromance, a partnership that was kept alive by one man’s creative discipline before crashing on the rocks of another man’s addictions.

De Visé, a journalist and the author of books on B.B. King and Greg LeMond, leans heavily on previously published group biographies: Bob Woodward’s 1984 Belushi bio “Wired”; Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s 2002 “Live From New York: An Uncensored History of ‘Saturday Night Live’”; and two books by Belushi’s widow, Judith Belushi Pisano, among others. But De Visé has gone back and talked to many of the principals as well as the secondary and tertiary figures, and he’s read and listened to every interview. This is a well-researched book.

Better, it’s a well-told story, one that rarely loses its focus on the larger picture — the many forces that came together to create comedy by the baby boom generation for the baby boom generation — while engaging the reader in a close-up view of two very different, very funny men.

“The Blues Brothers” goes back to its star duo’s beginnings: Belushi’s Chicago childhood as the class-clown son of Albanian immigrants, and Aykroyd’s early years in Ottawa, where Tourette’s syndrome made him the target of bullies. Both men rose through local comedy groups to star in their respective Second City outposts of Chicago and Toronto, but Belushi was tagged early on as a comic force of nature. By the time he met Aykroyd, he was scouting Second City Toronto for “The National Lampoon Radio Hour,” where he’d already become a breakout talent. On their first meeting, Aykroyd told a radio interviewer, he felt “the jump you get when you see a beautiful girl. It was a pit-of-the-stomach feeling.”

Belushi brought the manic slapstick to the first “SNL” cast, and Aykroyd brought the inspired weirdness — remember the “Bass-o-Matic”? — and a deep, abiding love for American R&B, which he quickly imparted to his new best friend. By the time “The Blues Brothers” movie came together in 1979, Belushi had become a movie star by way of “National Lampoon’s Animal House”; the two had debuted their fedora-and-shades R&B alter egos, Jake and Elwood Blues, on “SNL”; and Belushi’s intake of cocaine and other substances had swollen to frightening proportions.

Indeed, everything about the “Blues Brothers” shoot, which forms the detailed heart of De Visé’s book, seems staggering even today. Originally budgeted at $5 million, under director John Landis the production ballooned to over six times that much. Shooting the car chase through the shopping mall alone cost nearly a million dollars. The film set a record for the number of automobiles destroyed in a single film: 103.

Was it worth it? Your mileage may vary. For the most part, critics in 1980 hated “The Blues Brothers,” but audiences embraced it, and it remains a peculiar artifact of Hollywood overkill, funny in its baffling too-muchness. The musical numbers are still the best part, and De Visé is wise to address the accusations, then and now, that the movie and the accompanying Blues Brothers concert tours and hit records represented White cultural appropriation of Black music at its most blithely entitled. But he also reminds readers that the careers of Franklin, Brown, Ray Charles and Cab Calloway were all in serious decline, and that the film gave them new audiences and renewed success that lasted well beyond the film.

The one thing the author fails to address — and it’s hardly his blind spot alone — is how Belushi was allowed to destroy himself while the entertainment industry watched and fans cheered. The “Blues Brothers” set was awash in cocaine — it literally arrived packed in film-reel canisters — and while the studio hired a former Secret Service agent to babysit Belushi, the comedian had plenty of star-struck crew members and hangers-on to bury him in blow. The picture De Visé paints is of a comic genius hurtling toward oblivion as fast as he can, fueled by misery, drugs and enablement. Many times in this book a reader may pause to wonder why production on “The Blues Brothers” wasn’t simply halted while Belushi got the help he needed. The unwritten answer is that this would have jeopardized the profitability of the movie and its struggling star. The story here isn’t just about a film, a friendship and a comedy generation. It’s about a man who became a commodity until it killed him. But that’s another book.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List.

The Blues Brothers

An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic

By Daniel De Visé

Atlantic Monthly Press. 400 pp. $28

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An Exquisite Biography of a Gilded Age Legend

In Natalie Dykstra’s hands, the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner is a tribute to the power of art.

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By Megan O’Grady

Megan O’Grady is a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is working on a book about art and life.

CHASING BEAUTY: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, by Natalie Dykstra

Bright, impetuous and obsessed with beautiful things, Isabella Stewart Gardner led a life out of a Gilded Age novel. Born into a wealthy New York family, she married into an even wealthier Boston one when she wed John Lowell Gardner in 1860, only to be ostracized by her adopted city’s more conservative denizens, who found her self-assurance and penchant for “jollification” a bit much.

Belle, as she was known, thought nothing of bringing home lion cubs from the zoo to show off at teatime, or of taking a younger lover. The necklines of her couture dresses were low; her trademark rope of pearls — a gift from her devoted (and long-suffering) husband — hung nearly to her knees. Society columnists struck a tone of derisive admiration: One 1894 profile marveled at Gardner’s magnetism, given that her face was “almost destitute of those lines of beauty” appreciated at the time.

Gardner cast a mold for ultrawealthy bohemianism, leaving behind the kind of legacy few Bostonians could match in Fenway Court (now known as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), the palazzo-inspired Gesamtkunstwerk she designed largely herself. She filled it with Old Masters, rare manuscripts and objets d’art. Inviting Boston’s elite to the 1903 opening reception, she greeted them like subjects, serving champagne and doughnuts to the strains of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

A portrait both of a lady and of a glittering era, Natalie Dykstra’s “Chasing Beauty” draws from Gardner’s travelogues, scrapbooks and few surviving letters to track her subject’s expanding sensibilities as an art collector. Dykstra, the author of an acclaimed biography of Clover Adams, astutely situates her subject within Gardner’s growing web of connections: expatriates, artists and scholars.

Privilege didn’t inure the Gardners to tragedy: In 1865, their toddler son, John III, died of pneumonia. Belle’s grief metastasized into severe depression when, following a miscarriage, she was told not to make further attempts to have children. When a doctor suggested she travel abroad, Belle was so frail that she had to be carried onto the boat on a cot. (Ten years later, they would take over guardianship of their three nephews after Jack’s brother, Joe, shot himself; his wife had died in childbirth.)

Among her longstanding friendships was one with Henry James, who may have based several characters on her, wrote her obsequious letters and gossiped about her behind her back — though he was socially generous, introducing her to John Singer Sargent.

Sargent painted two extraordinary portraits of Gardner, the first of which depicts her head-on, wasp-waisted and a little bosomy in a black dress — so risqué, in the context of puritanical Boston, that it was hung in Jack’s private office. After Fenway Court opened, Sargent became its first artist in residence.

Gardner became serious about collecting after attending the impassioned lectures of Charles Eliot Norton, Harvard’s first professor of art history. Norton took Gardner’s intellectual curiosities seriously, advising her to invest in art and rare manuscripts rather than couture and jewels. “He knew, as Belle was beginning to know, how beauty can meet loss, how aesthetic experience assuages,” Dykstra writes, noting that Norton was mourning the death of his wife.

At an 1892 Paris auction, Gardner made her first major acquisition: Vermeer’s 1664 painting “The Concert.” When Gardner brought the painting home, it was only the second Vermeer in the United States and the first in Boston. (Stolen in a notorious 1990 heist, it has never been recovered.)

With the help of Bernard Berenson, the Renaissance specialist, she procured her first Botticelli in 1894; two years later, Berenson helped her obtain Titian’s “The Rape of Europa,” which Rubens had called “the greatest painting in the world.”

After Jack’s 1898 death, Gardner focused her energy on Fenway Court’s construction, modeling the museum after Venice’s Palazzo Barbaro — though she and her architect, Willard T. Sears, placed the arches and balustrades around a central courtyard garden, effectively turning the palazzo inside out.

As Dykstra tells it, Gardner never lost her desire to know more; her growing interest in Impressionism led her to purchase portraits by Manet and Degas, and she badgered friends to introduce her to Monet. Eventually she obtained an early Matisse, the first in an American collection.

Like other wealthy American collectors, Gardner delighted in the thrill of the hunt — and part of the pleasure of this exquisitely detailed and perceptive biography is in imagining which Vermeer we might have bid on in Gardner’s bejeweled shoes, or where in our own homes we’d hang the Rembrandt.

But its deeper revelations have more to do with Gardner’s emerging attunement to the emotional affirmation to be found in art — its joys and consolations, the pleasures of sharing those experiences. And as Gardner (intentionally) left few written traces of her inner life, this is a real feat of biography.

What gives art real power, after all, isn’t its moneyed visionaries, but its ability to inspire impassioned encounters in all of us. And while Gardner, largely alone in her fortress of priceless objects in her later years, strikes a poignant figure, there’s a sense of invincibility, too. In her will, Gardner mandated that nothing could be rearranged in the museum’s galleries; in the end, no one else’s judgment mattered but her own.

CHASING BEAUTY : The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner | By Natalie Dykstra | Mariner | 502 pp. | $37.50

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