LWK.

Lives Worth Knowing

The Tribunal Biographies

We write biographies of extraordinary people who risk being forgotten — scientists, pioneers, artists, and rebels whose contributions shaped the world but whose stories never got the telling they deserved.

Every biography is free forever, released under Creative Commons. Available as long-form web reading, PDF, EPUB, and audiobook. Literary quality, not encyclopedia summaries — narrative prose written to be read, not skimmed.

The bombs fell on Rotterdam three days after Edsger Dijkstra’s tenth birthday. In the space between the rubble and the reconstruction, a boy who would reshape how humanity thinks about computation began, quietly, to think. From the Dijkstra biography — forthcoming

Current Status

We are rebuilding our entire catalog from the ground up through a redesigned editorial pipeline — informed by the actual working methods of Robert Caro, Erik Larson, Ron Chernow, and Hilary Mantel. Forty-two biographies are in production. We chose to take everything offline and do this right rather than publish work that didn’t meet our standard.

Subjects in production

Edsger Dijkstra Pauli Murray Percy Julian Beryl Markham Emmy Noether Josh Gibson Sister Rosetta Tharpe Witold Pilecki and 34 others

Honest

Complexity and contradiction, not hagiography. These were real people who made real choices.

Literary

Written to be read, not referenced. Think Isaacson or Nasar, not Wikipedia.

Free

Every biography, every format, every reader. Forever. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

A life worth knowing