The biography I return to most often is not a literary biography but a scientific one: The Double Helix by James Watson. I know Watson's history and I'm not recommending the man. I'm recommending the book, which is one of the most unusual scientific memoirs ever written because Watson is completely unsentimental about the process of discovery. He is competitive, petty, jealous of colleagues, excited by the puzzle.

The portrayal of Rosalind Franklin in the original edition is a significant problem and Watson has never fully reckoned with it. The book is diminished by this in ways that matter. But the account of what it actually feels like to be in the room where a major discovery is made, of the way ideas compete with each other before they resolve — that is rendered accurately in a way that more polished scientific accounts don't manage.

I read it alongside Brenda Maddox's Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. Together they are a more complete picture than either alone.