The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of Biography by C. S. Nicholls
This biographical dictionary contains 10,000 biographies, of people from Torquemada to Tarantino, Garbo to Gingrich and Havel to Hawking, supplemented with 2,000 quotations chosen to reveal what major figures thought about themselves and what others thought about them. It also contains 800 reading lists to guide readers through the biographies and memoirs.