Podcasts by New Books in Biography
Interviews with Biographers about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography
Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
All episodes
On Frederick Douglass from 2022-08-15T08:00
When Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818, it was illegal for him to learn the alphabet. Slave masters feared the power of a literate slave, so Douglass vowed to read. He became one of ...
ListenNasser Rahmaninejad, "A Man of the Theatre: Survival as an Artist in Iran" (New Village Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nasser Rahmaninejad’s A Man of the Theatre: Survival as an Artist in Iran (New Village Press) provides a fascinating glimpse into the political and artistic life of Iran. This memoir discusses the ...
ListenAlbert Gurganus, “Kurt Eisner: A Modern Life” (Camden House, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though Germany was convulsed by violent unrest in the weeks following the end of the First World War, one of the few places where a new republican government was established peacefully was Munich. ...
ListenCarolyn Burke, “No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf” (Knopf, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Edith Piaf’s story is rife with drama. The daughter of an acrobat and a singer, she was the first French superstar and sang with wild abandon in a voice that rivaled Judy Garland’s. And yet, so of...
ListenChristopher Bonanos, "Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous" (Henry Holt, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the middle of the twentieth century, a newspaper photographer who went by the name of Weegee took memorable pictures of New York City’s street life that appeared everywhere from tabloid newspape...
ListenHalifu Osumare, “Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir” (UP of Florida, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Combining memoir with auto-ethnography, historical study and sociocultural analysis, Halifu Osumare draws on her decades of experience to explore the complexities of black dance in the United State...
ListenJohn Bloom, “There You Have It: The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Howard Cosell” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Howard Cosell was fond of saying that American television in the 1970s was dominated by three C’s, representing each of the broadcast networks: revered CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, NBC’s late-n...
ListenFrank Dimatteo, "Lord High Executioner: The Legendary Mafia Boss Albert Anastasia" (Citadel, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though not as well known today as many of his contemporaries, few American mob bosses were as feared as Albert Anastasia. As head of “Murder Inc.”, Anastasia presided over the contract killing of h...
ListenMark I. Lurie, “Galantière: The Lost Generation’s Forgotten Man” (Overlook Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though he never enjoyed the publishing success and fame of such friends as Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, Lewis Galantière made a considerable contribution to literature over the course of...
ListenMia Bay, “To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells” (Hill and Wang, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I can’t remember when I first saw one of those horrible photographs of a lynching, with crowds of white people, kids included, laughing and pointing at the mangled black body hanging from a tree. I...
ListenSohrab Ahmari, "From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith" (Ignatius Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Youthful arrogance. Hipster alienation. A lot of reading. A lot of drinking. Struggles to adjust to a land radically different from the one that one has left in youth. Intense wrestling with nearly...
ListenJonathan Boff, “Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There has been historiographical revolution in the literature of the war on the Western Front in the past thirty years. In Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Fron...
ListenVincent Carretta, “Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage” (University of Georgia Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few people can claim to have created a literary genre… Phillis Wheatley did. By the time she was twenty, her name- taken from the slave ship that carried her to America and the family that bought h...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 5: The Slavonic Josephus from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, we focus on one of Eisler’s most controversial works, a reconstruction of the 1st-century Roman Jewish historian Josephus’ account of the events surrounding the death of Jesus and ...
ListenJenny Coleman, “Polly Plum: A Firm and Earnest Woman’s Advocate, Mary Ann Colclough, 1836–1885” (Otago UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Polly Plum: A Firm and Earnest Woman’s Advocate, Mary Ann Colclough, 1836–1885 (Otago University Press, 2017), Jenny Coleman, a senior lecturer and Director of Academic Programmes ...
ListenAmanda Smith, “Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson” (Knopf, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“When your grandmother gets raped, put it on the front page.” That was the Medill family editorial policy and Eleanor Medill “Cissy” Patterson embraced it enthusiastically. The granddaughter of the...
ListenHonorée Fanonne Jeffers, "The Age of Phillis" (Wesleyan UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jennifer J. Davis speaks with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, about The Age of Phillis (Wesleyan UP, 2020), Jeffers’s latest collection of poems centere...
ListenEthan L. Menchinger, “The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ethan L. Menchinger‘s The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif (Cambridge University Press, 2017) traces the life and career of Ahmed Vasif (ca. 1735-1806), a promi...
ListenAdrian Burgos, Jr., “Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball” (Hill and Wang, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The integration of baseball is most often cast in terms of black and white, but biographer Adrian Burgos, Jr.— a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign– is out to change that. In...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 4: Women’s Coats and Beach Cabanas from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, we examine the rivalry/friendship between Eisler and the great scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem and reassess Eisler’s infamous meeting with Scholem and Walter Benjamin i...
ListenGillian B. Fleming, “Juana I: Legitimacy and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Castile” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Labeled in history as “mad,” Juana of Castile was in fact a complex figure whose sometimes emotional nature was exploited by the men around her as a way of limiting her ability to exercise her powe...
ListenRandy Roberts, “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yale UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“I’m sure if it wasn’t for Joe Louis,” acknowledged Jackie Robinson, “the color line in baseball would not have been broken for another ten years.” To Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis was an inspiration and...
ListenJames M. Lundberg, "Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During his nearly four decades as a newspaper editor and politician, Horace Greeley embraced a range of controversial causes. In his book Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of America...
ListenColin G. Calloway, “The Indian World of George Washington” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this sweeping new biography, Colin G. Calloway, John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College, uses the prism of George Washington’s life to bring f...
ListenJean H. Baker, “Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion” (Hill and Wang, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Forty-five years after her death, the reproductive rights activist Margaret Sanger remains a polarizing figure. Conservatives attack her social liberalism while liberals shy away from her perceived...
ListenZachary Carter, "Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Keynes was not only an economist but the preeminent anti-authoritarian thinker of the 20th century, one who devoted his life to the belief that art and ideas could conquer war and deprivation. As a...
ListenJason Linkins, “Schoolhouse Wreck: The Betsy DeVos Story” (Strong Arm Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Schoolhouse Wreck: The Betsy DeVos Story (Strong Arm Press, 2018), Jason Linkins delivers a searing critique of controversial Trump administration Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The book tr...
ListenStacy Schiff, “Cleopatra: A Life” (Back Bay Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Aside from being aesthetically equated to Elizabeth Taylor, Cleopatra has not fared well in history. In her riveting biography Cleopatra: A Life (Back Bay Books, 2011), which is now out in paperbac...
ListenYitzhak Lewis, "Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity" (SUNY Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Hasidic leader R. Nachman of Braslav (1772–1810) has held a place in the Jewish popular imagination for more than two centuries. Some see him as the (self-proclaimed) Messiah, others as the for...
ListenSteven L. Ossad, “Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI General, 1893-1981” (University of Missouri Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Steven L. Ossad joins New Books at Military History to talk about his award-winning biography, Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI General, 1893-1981 (University of Missouri Press, 2017). Following ...
ListenFrank Wcislo, “Tales of Imperial Russia: The Life and Times of Sergei Witte, 1849-1915” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When it comes to Russia’s great reformers of the nineteenth century, Count Sergei Witte looms large. As a minster to both Alexander III and Nicholas II, Witte presided over some of the most importa...
ListenFrançois Clemmons, "Officer Clemmons: A Memoir" (Catapult, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Officer Clemmons: A Memoir (Catapult, 2020), François Clemmons tells the story of how he became the first ever African-American recurring character on a children’s television when he took on the...
ListenCatherine Layton, “The Life and Times of Mary, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland” (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the thrice-married widow of one of the richest dukes in Victorian Britain, Mary Mitchell lived a life often at variance with the expectations of propriety for her time. In The Life and Times of ...
ListenKitty Kelley, “Oprah: A Biography” (Three Rivers Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When she emerged triumphant in a legal battle with the Texas beef industry, Oprah Winfrey took to the steps of the Amarillo court house and declared: “Free speech rocks!” She was likely a little le...
ListenAnya Jabour, "Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America" (U Illinois Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sophonisba Breckinridge's remarkable career stretched from the Civil War to the Cold War. She took part in virtually every reform campaign of the Progressive and New Deal eras and became a national...
ListenAlison B. Hirsch, “City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America” (U Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Lawrence Halprin, one of the central figures in twentieth-century American landscape architecture, is well known to city-watchers for his work on San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, Seattle’s Freew...
ListenRonald Reng, “A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke” (Yellow Jersey Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On November 10, 2009, Robert Enke stepped in front of an express train at a crossing in the German village of Eilvese. At age 32, Robert left behind a young family: he and his wife, Teresa, had jus...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 3: Eisler vs. the Flat Earth from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, we talk with Michael Gubser about the pioneering art historian Alois Riegl, one of Eisler’s teachers in Vienna and a major influence on his thought. Then we look at Eisler’s first ...
ListenJoshua Parens, “Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy” (U Rochester Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In today’s episode, I am joined by Joshua Parens to discuss his innovative and engaging book Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy (University of Rochester Press, 2016). Whi...
ListenCharles J. Shields, “And So It Goes. Kurt Vonnegut, A Life” (Henry Holt, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The public image of Kurt Vonnegut is that of a crusty, irascible old man. Someone with whom one would want to drink, but never ever fall in love. The Vonnegut we meet in Charles J. Shields’s insig...
ListenShana Redmond, "Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke University Press, 2020), Shana Redmond explores the ways in which Paul Robeson, silenced by state repression in his lifetime, still sp...
ListenMax Boot, “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam” (Liveright, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Counterinsurgency doctrine, the Vietnam War, and the vagaries of politics all come together in Max Boot‘s latest work, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (Liver...
ListenRosamund Bartlett, “Tolstoy: A Russia Life” (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I vividly recall a time in my life–especially my late teens and early twenties–when I thought I could be anyone but had no idea which anyone to be. For this I blame (or credit) my liberal arts educ...
ListenPhilip A. Craig, "The Bond of Grace and Duty in the Soteriology of John Owen" (Founders Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Philip A. Craig’s new book on John Owen, the premier puritan theologian, demonstrates how carefully his subject tracked the influence of antinomianism in his writing. Craig’s book roots Owen’s idea...
ListenKimberly A. Francis, “Teaching Stravinsky: Nadia Boulanger and the Consecration of a Modernist Icon” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pedagogue, composer, and conductor Nadia Boulanger was a central figure in Igor Stravinsky’s life during the middle part of his career, providing him with support, advice, and a discerning analytic...
ListenAlan Nadel, “August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle” (University of Iowa Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many scholars consider August Wilson to be the premier American playwright of the 20th Century. Alan Nadel is surely one of their number. In the early 1990s, he focused our attention on Wilson’s pl...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 2: Value Theory from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode (# 2), we discuss Eisler’s early years as a member of the Jewish bourgeoisie in turn-of-the-century Vienna with historian Steven Beller. We also hear from the closest living relativ...
ListenKatrin Paehler, “The Third Reich’s Intelligence Service: The Career of Walter Schellenberg” (Cambridge University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who was the spymaster of the Third Reich? How did Nazi ideology influence intelligence collection? Katrin Paehler answers these questions with the first analysis of Office VI of the Reich Security ...
ListenJonathan Steinberg, “Bismarck: A Life” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the role of personality in shaping history? Shortly before the beginning of the First World War, the German sociologist Max Weber puzzled over this question. He was sure that there was a ki...
ListenImre Salusinszky, "The Hilton Bombing: Evan Pederick and the Ananda Marga" (Melbourne UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"Every morning of my life in the past few years I would wake with the thought, I’m a murderer. I have no right to enjoy life.” Evan Pederick speaking to psychiatrist William Barclay in prison about...
ListenJune Purvis, “Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite her prominent role in the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain, Christabel Pankhurst has not received the same degree of attention from scholars that had been given to her mother Emme...
ListenMegan Marshall, “The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism” (Houghton Mifflin, 2005) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This interview is re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast.] Author Megan Marshall has recently written a well-received biography of Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody: The Peabo...
ListenNandini Patwardhan, "Radical Spirits: India’s First Woman Doctor and Her American Champions" (Story Artisan Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1883, a young woman named Anandi Joshi set out from her native India to the United States to study medicine. To do so, as Nandini Patwardhan describes in her book Radical Spirits: India’s First ...
ListenThomas Weber, “Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi” (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few would dispute that Hitler’s ideas led to war and genocide. Less clear however, is how and when those ideas developed. In his latest book, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (Basic Books, 201...
ListenCarol Bundy, “The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-64” (FSG, 2005) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
[This interview is re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] At a time when the country’s attention is focused on the ever-expanding list of American war dead, Carol Bundy‘s biogr...
ListenDeepra Dandekar, “The Subhedar's Son” (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This book is a translation and study of The Subhedar's Son (Oxford University Press, 2019), an award-winning Marathi biographical novel written in 1895 by Rev. Dinkar Shankar Sawarkar, who writes a...
ListenBonnie Anderson, “The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a believer in free thought, a campaigner for women’s rights, and as a supporter of abolition, Ernestine Rose had no shortage of causes to advocate. In The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Ros...
ListenBenjamin Binstock, “Vermeer’s Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice” (Routledge, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ben Binstock‘s Vermeer’s Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice (Routledge, 2009) is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. It does what all good history books s...
ListenAna María Reyes, "The Politics of Taste: Beatriz González and Cold War Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Politics of Taste: Beatriz González and Cold War Aesthetics (Duke University Press, 2019), Ana María Reyes examines the ways Colombian artist Beatriz González and Argentine-born art critic M...
ListenSandra E. Greene, “Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition” (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In today’s podcast we talked to Dr. Sandra Greene about her book Slave Owners of West Africa. Decision Making in the Age of Abolition published in 2017 by Indiana University Press. In this book Dr....
ListenJ. Arch Getty, “Ezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s Iron Fist” (Yale UP, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When you think of the Great Terror, Stalin immediately comes to mind, and rightly so.But what of Nikolai Ezhov, the man who as head of the NKVD prosecuted Stalin reign of terror? We’ve learned a lo...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 1: Man into Wolf from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, we discuss how I discovered Robert Eisler’s Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy and unpack the book’s argument that modern humans...
ListenAlexander Orwin, “Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi” (U Penn Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950) a philosopher who wrote on politics, metaphysics, and logic as well as mathematics, psychology, and music, was known by Jews, Christians, and Muslims as the “se...
ListenCatherine Epstein, “Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The term “totalitarian” is useful as it well describes the aspirations of polities such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (at least under Stalin). Yet it can also be misleading, for it suggests ...
ListenTanya Harmer, "Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tanya Harmer’s new biography, Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), explores how a young Chilean woman pursued her political co...
ListenAndrew Lees, “Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment” (Notting Hill Editions, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill Editions, 2017) is a fascinating account by one of the world’s leading and most decorated neurologists of the profound influence...
ListenThomas Weber, “Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Here’s something interesting. If you search Google Books for “Hitler,” you’ll get 3,090,000 results. What’s that mean? Well, it means that more scholarly attention has probably been paid to Hitler ...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenJean R. Freedman, “Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics” (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When folklorist Jean Freedman first met Peggy Seeger in 1979, Freedman was an undergraduate on her junior year abroad in London, while her American compatriot had been living in the UK for two deca...
ListenAbbott Gleason, “A Liberal Education” (TidePool Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I fear that most people think that “history” is “the past” and that the one and the other live in books. But it just ain’t so. History is a story we tell about the past, or rather some small portio...
ListenAnthony Valerio, "Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor" (Zantedeschi Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today. In his book Anthony Valerio’s Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor (Zantedeschi Boo...
ListenSterling Murray, “The Career of an Eighteenth-Century Kapellmeister: The Life and Music of Antonio Rosetti” (U Rochester Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though he never enjoyed the fame of his contemporaries Mozart and Haydn, Antonio Rosetti was a successful composer whose works received a wide audience. In his book, The Career of an Eighteenth-Cen...
ListenAram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” (University of California, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But no dunks! Russell’s opponents in college and the NBA...
ListenAndrei Kushnir, "Epic Journey: Life and Times of Wasyl Kushnir" (Academic Studies Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Epic Journey: Life and Times of Wasyl Kushnir (Academic Studies Press, 2020), Andrei Kushnir documents the story of his father, Wasyl Kushnir, who was born in the western part of Ukraine in 1923...
ListenDavid Weinstein, “The Eddie Cantor Story: A Jewish Life in Performance and Politics” (Brandeis UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Eddie Cantor was once among the most popular performers in the United States. He was influential and innovative on stage, radio, and film from the early twentieth century though the early 1960s. He...
ListenThomas Kessner, “The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh & the Rise of American Aviation” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Try to imagine having never seen an airplane. It’s hard. Aircraft are an ordinary part of our daily experience. Just look up and you’ll probably see one, or at least its vapor trails. Go to your lo...
ListenMichael Braddick, "The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As historical topics, political revolutions come in and out of fashion. At the moment the American Revolution as an ideological struggle engages the public, but historians are less sure. Books that...
ListenDaniel B. Schwartz, “The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image” (Princeton UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Benedito/Baruch/Benedict Spinoza (1623-1677) lived at the crossroads of Dutch, scholastic, and Jewish worlds. Excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam at 23, his works would later be p...
ListenRuth Harris, “Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century” (Henry Holt, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re like me (and I hope you aren’t), the “Trial of the Century” involved a washed-up football star, a slowly moving white Bronco, an ill-fitting glove, and charges of racism. I watched every ...
ListenMitchell Nathanson, "Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Dr. Mitchell Nathanson, author of the book Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Nathanson, a professor of law at the Jeffrey S. Moora...
ListenSaladin Ambar, “American Cicero: Mario Cuomo and the Defense of American Liberalism” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
American Cicero: Mario Cuomo and the Defense of American Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a compelling exploration of the political life of Governor Mario Cuomo as well as the concepts...
ListenNicholas Thompson, “The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War” (Henry Holt, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I met George Kennan twice, once in 1982 and again in about 1998. On both occasions, I found him tough to read. He was a very dignified man–I want to write “correct”–but also quite distant, even cer...
ListenM’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrated their studies of North Africa on colonial vi...
ListenJeffrey Stewart, “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Through his work as a scholar and critic, Alain Locke redefined African American culture and its place in American life. Jeffrey Stewart‘s book The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford Univer...
ListenJennifer Burns, “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right” (Oxford UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I was in high school I had several friends who went to Wichita’s only prep school. They were nice guys, played D&D, andsaid they were “Libertarians.”I thought that “Libertarian” might have som...
ListenBrandon K. Winford, "John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights" (UP Kentucky, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Hervey Wheeler (1908–1978) was one of the civil rights movement's most influential leaders. In articulating a bold vision of regional prosperity grounded in full citizenship and economic power...
ListenJennifer Frost, “Producer of Controversy: Stanley Kramer, Hollywood Liberalism and the Cold War” (UP of Kansas, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While Stanley Kramer is considered a successful producer and director of many films as Hollywood moved out of the studio era, he also was criticized for his lesser skills as a director, as well as ...
ListenMatthew Algeo, “Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip” (Chicago Review Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Memorial day is coming up, and maybe you are going to take a little car trip. It might even be a “road trip,” one of the great American enterprises (which isn’t to say other folks don’t take them, ...
ListenDerek Penslar, "Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The life of Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) was as puzzling as it was brief. How did this cosmopolitan and assimilated European Jew become the leader of the Zionist movement? How could he be both an arti...
ListenJames Delbourgo, “Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane” (Allen Lane, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
James Delbourgo‘s new book Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane (Allen Lane, 2017) tells the fascinatingly complex and controversial story of Hans Sloane, the man whose colle...
ListenJames Mann, “The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War” (Viking, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ronald Reagan was a odd fellow. Nobody seems to know what to make of him. He started as a Democrat and then became a Republican. Then he broke ranks with his party by running for president against ...
ListenChris Fleming, "On Drugs" (Giramondo Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"After I’d finished my rapid-fire history of self-justification he paused and then said, deadpan and rural-Australian-slow: 'Right. Ok. So how is that all working out for you?'" On Drugs (Giramondo...
ListenBrian Jenkins, “Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War” (McGill-Queens UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Described upon his death in 1887 as the ideal diplomatist, Richard Lyons served Great Britain in a variety of roles over the course of a long and distinguished career. In Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in ...
ListenKees Boterbloem, “The Fiction and Reality of Jan Struys: A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Globetrotter” (Palgrave-McMillan, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When we speak of the “Age of Discovery,” we usually mean the later fifteenth and sixteenth century. You know, Columbus, Magellan and all that. But the “Age of Discovery” continued well into the sev...
ListenNancy Mattina, "Uncommon Anthropologist: Gladys Reichard and Western Native American Culture" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Protégé of Elsie Clews Parsons and Franz Boas, founder and head of Barnard College's anthropology department, and a trailblazer in Native American linguistics and anthropology, Gladys Reichard (189...
ListenPeter Hempenstall, “Truth’s Fool: Derek Freeman and the War over Cultural Anthropology” (U Wisconsin Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The debate over Margaret Mead’s and Derek Freeman’s conflicting ethnographic reports has gone on for decades. While no longer a hot topic, Mead-Freeman stands as a testament to the power and, somet...
ListenSimon Morrison, “The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years” (Oxford UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the Soviet Union, artists lived lives that were at once charmed and cursed. Though relatively poor, the USSR poured resources into the arts. The Party created a large, well-funded cultural elite...
ListenLisa Balabanlilar, "The Emperor Jahangir: Power and Kingship in Mughal India" (I. B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite a reign that lasted for over two decades, the Mughal emperor Jahangir has often been regarded as a weak ruler who was hobbled by his addictions and dominated in his later years by his wife ...
ListenKyle Longley, “LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America’s Year of Upheaval” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It was a year that at times left Lyndon Johnson feeling as though he was living in a continuous nightmare. Yet as Kyle Longley describes in his book LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency ...
ListenDonald Worster, “A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir” (Oxford UP, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you study pre-modern history in any depth, one of the most startling things you will discover is that “traditional” societies usually had an adversarial relationship with “nature.” They fought t...
ListenKwasi Konadu, "In Our Own Way In this Part of the World" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book In Our Own Way In this Part of the World: Biography of an African Community, Culture and Nation (Duke University Press, 2019), Kwasi Konadu tells the story Kofi Donko (1913-1995) an...
ListenMichael Patrick Cullinane, “Theodore Roosevelts Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon” (LSU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
That Theodore Roosevelt remains one of America’s most recognizable presidents nearly a century after his death is due in no small measure to the flamboyant image he presented. Yet as Michael Patric...
ListenJoyce Tyldesley, “Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt” (Basic Books, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Swords and Sandals” movies always amaze me. You know the ones I’m talking about: “Spartacus,” “Ben-Hur,” “Gladiator,” and the rest. These movies are so rich in detail–both narrative and physical–t...
ListenCarl Rollyson, "The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934" (UVA Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a novelist, short story author, screenwriter, and Nobel laureate, William Faulkner looms large in modern American literature. Yet the very range of his work and the sources for his rich literary...
ListenNoam Zadoff, “Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back” (Brandeis UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From B...
ListenTimothy Snyder, “The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke” (Basic Books, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tim Snyder has written a great book. It’s called The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (Basic, 2008). Of course it’s thoroughly researched. Tim’s read all the literature and visit...
ListenMartha Ackmann, "These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson" (Norton, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After a life lived in obscurity, Emily Dickinson emerged after death as one of the greatest poets of her time. In These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson (W. W. Nor...
ListenHendrik Meijer, “Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a United States senator in the 1930s and 1940s, Arthur Vandenberg was one of the leading Republican voices shaping the nation’s foreign policy. Though initially a staunch isolationist, as Hendri...
ListenColin Grant, “Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey” (Oxford UP, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are happy to have Colin Grant on the show. Colin is that rare breed of writer who is also an excellent historian. Or is that “rare breed of historian who is also an excellent writer?” I’m ...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenRichard Carwardine, “Lincoln’s Sense of Humor” (Southern Illinois UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For many people today, the name Abraham Lincoln conjures up a mental image of a solemn but kindly statesman. Yet to his contemporaries, one of Lincoln’s defining traits was his humor, which he depl...
ListenAbigail Foerstner, “James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles” (University of Iowa Press, 2007) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This week we feature an interview with Abigail Foerstner about her new book, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles (University of Iowa Press, 2007). Dr. Foerstner teaches news writing and ...
ListenMargaret Randall, "I Never Left Home: Poet, Feminist, Revolutionary" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Margaret Randall’s new memoir, I Never Left Home: Poet, Feminist, Revolutionary was published by Duke University Press in March 2020. Randall, born in New York City in 1936, lived in Mexico, Cuba, ...
ListenCrawford Gribben, “John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though the preeminent English theologian of the 17th century, there is much about John Owen’s life which remains obscured to us today. One of the achievements of Crawford Gribben‘s new book John O...
ListenDavid Kettler and Thomas Wheatland, "Learning From Franz L. Neumann" (Anthem Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Franz Neumann was a member of a generation that saw the end of the Kaiserreich and the beginnings of a democratic republic carried by the labor movement. In Neumann's case, this involved a practica...
ListenVanya E. Bellinger, “Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of On War” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of On War (Oxford University Press, 2016) is an important and fascinating book that not only tells the story of a remarkable woman’s life during th...
ListenCharles J. Holden, "Republican Populist: Spiro Agnew and the Origins of Donald Trump’s America" (UVA Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today Spiro Agnew is best known for his resignation from the vice presidency of the United States as part of a plea bargain deal related to a legal case involving bribes he took as a public officia...
ListenCharlotte DeCroes Jacobs, “Jonas Salk: A Life” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Polio was a scourge that terrified generations of people throughout the United States and the rest of the world until Jonas Salk’s vaccine provided the first effective defense against it. In Jonas ...
ListenChristopher Tomlins, "In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1831, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed fifty-five whites, mostly women and children. After more than two months in hiding, Turner was captured, and q...
ListenScott Kaufman, “Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party: A Political Biography of Gerald R. Ford” (University Press of Kansas, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Catapulted into the Oval Office by an unusual set of circumstances, Gerald Ford remains a unique figure in American presidential history. In Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party: A Political Biography o...
ListenFrederick Crews, "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" (Picador, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies on Hysteria, the good doctor from Vienna conti...
ListenCynthia Orozco, "Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist" (U Texas Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist (University of Texas Press, 2020), Cynthia E. Orozco traces the life of Adela Sloss-Vento, a twentie...
ListenBrett L. Abrams, “Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Brett L. Abrams, author of the book Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). It is part of a series called Sports Icon...
ListenVictoria Phillips, "Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. Victoria Phillips adeptly tells the story of Martha Graham's role as diplomat, arts innovator, and dancer. Her book Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy (Oxford UP, 2019) i...
ListenGreat Books: Nicholas Johnson on Samuel Beckett from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Another heavenly day” is the opening line of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days (1961), where Winnie sits buried to her waist in sand, with her husband Willie stuck a few feet away from her … but la...
ListenBob Batchelor, “Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), cultural historian and biographer Bob Batchelor examines the life of Marvel’s Stan Lee one of the most iconic figur...
ListenJeremy Black, "George III: Madness and Majesty" (Penguin, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
King of Britain for sixty years and the last king of what would become the United States, George III inspired both hatred and loyalty and is now best known for two reasons: as a villainous tyrant f...
ListenTim Rooney, "John Beilein at Michigan: A Basketball Revival" (McFarland, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When John Beilein arrived at University of Michigan in 2007, the once-proud men's basketball program was adrift after the fallout from a scandal and failing to reach the NCAA Tournament for nine st...
ListenJoshua Rubenstein, “The Last Days of Stalin” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On March 4, 1953, Soviet citizens woke up to an unthinkable announcement: Joseph Stalin, the country’s all-powerful leader, had died of a stroke. In The Last Days of Stalin (Yale University Press, ...
ListenAndre E. Johnson, "No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner' (UP Mississippi, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
No Future in this Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner by Andre E. Johnson, an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies at the University of Memphis, and Director...
ListenTom Chaffin, "Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship that Helped Forge Two Nations" (St. Martins, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Of the many thousands who participated in the American and French revolutions in the late 18th century, only a handful played roles in both events. Among that select number were Thomas Jefferson an...
ListenPaul Magid, “The Gray Fox: George Crook and the Indian Wars” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the end of the Civil War, George Crook’s decision to continue serving in the United States Army meant reverting to a lower rank and assuming a command in the Pacific Northwest. Yet, as Paul Ma...
ListenLuke A. Nichter, "The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Making of the Cold War" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few have ever enjoyed the degree of foreign-policy influence and versatility that Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the grand-son of Woodrow Wilson’s senatorial antagonist, did. In the postwar era, perhaps on...
ListenGreat Books: Denis Hollier on Lévi-Strauss' "Tristes Tropiques" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Claude Lévi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques is one of the great books of the 20th century: intellectually bold, morally capacious, and it aims to understand nothing less than the elemental workings of t...
ListenNikki M. Taylor, “Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio” (Ohio U. Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
You may know Toni Morrison’s famed novel Beloved, but do you know much about the true story of the woman depicted in that story? You will know about the real story and more, by reading her biograph...
ListenCharlotte Eubanks, "The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2019) examines the relations between art and politics in transwar Japan, exploring these via a mi...
ListenJeff Forret, "William’s Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jeff Forret is the author of William’s Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. William’s Gang explores the career of promine...
ListenStephen F. Williams, “The Reformer: How One Liberal Fought to Preempt the Russian Revolution” (Encounter Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Reformer: How One Liberal Fought to Preempt the Russian Revolution (Encounter Books, 2017), written by legal scholar Stephen F. Williams, uses a biographic account of the life and career of Vas...
ListenKat D. Williams, "Isabel 'Lefty' Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban American Baseball Star" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For many of its participants, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) offered them an opportunity to change their lives, yet few were as transformed as that of Isabel “Lefty” A...
ListenKimberly A. Hamlin, "Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener" (Norton, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kimberly A. Hamlin is an award-winning historian and associate professor in American studies at Miami University of Ohio. Her book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Ha...
ListenLaura E. Smith, “Horace Poolaw: Photographer of American Indian Modernity” (U. Nebraska Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Horace Poolaw, Photographer of American Indian Modernity (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), Laura E. Smith, Assistant Professor of Art History at Michigan State University, unravels the compe...
ListenJin Y. Park, "Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iry?p" (U of Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iry?p (University of Hawaii Press, 2017) by Jin Y. Park, professor of philosophy and religion at American university, is an account of the Kor...
ListenVanda Krefft, “The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox” (Harper, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though not a figure in the public imagination today, William Fox is a man whose legacy is visible in the numerous media enterprises that bear his name. Vanda Krefft‘s biography The Man Who Made the...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenJoseph Lelyveld, “His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt” (Vintage Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In November 1944 Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States, despite suffering from heart disease and other medical issues that contributed to his death s...
ListenJay Weiner, "Professor Berman: The Last Lecture of Minnesota’s Greatest Public Historian" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his latest book, journalist Jay Weiner details the extraordinary life of Professor Hy Berman. Written as an autobiography co-authored by Weiner, Professor Berman: The Last Lecture of Minnesota’s...
ListenDrew Lopenzina, “Through an Indian’s Looking-Glass: A Cultural Biography of William Apess, Pequot” (U. Mass Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Through meticulous archival research, close readings of key works, and informed and imaginative speculation about a largely enigmatic life, Red Ink author Drew Lopenzina provides a vivid portrait o...
ListenNancy Sinkoff, "From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History" (Wayne State UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History (Wayne State University Press, 2020) is the first comprehensive biography of Dawidowicz (1915-...
ListenAnthony Chaney, “Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anthony Chaney teaches history and writing at the University of North Texas at Dallas. His book Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness (University of No...
ListenAlan Taylor, "Thomas Jefferson’s Education" (W. W. Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alan Taylor is the author of Thomas Jefferson’s Education published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2019. Thomas Jefferson’s Education tells the story of how Jefferson’s vision for educating the next ...
ListenAdi Gordon, “Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn” (Brandeis UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Not very many intellectuals really change their minds about anything. They have a big idea, often become well known because of it. Then their big idea becomes an integral part of their identity and...
ListenElizabeth Goldring, "Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Limning – the painting of miniature portraits – was an important art form in 16th-century Europe. Among its greatest practitioners was Nicholas Hilliard, who enjoyed an international reputation for...
ListenMarie Alohalani Brown, “Facing the Spears of Change: The Life and Legacy of John Papa Ii” (U. Hawaii Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s not often that a single person’s life can reveal the dramatic social and political shifts of a community. From his youth, John Papa I’i, an important statesman and author, played a pivotal rol...
ListenJohn Hardman, "Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who was the real Marie-Antoinette? She was mistrusted and reviled in her own time, and today she is portrayed as a lightweight incapable of understanding the events that engulfed her. In this new a...
ListenWilliam J. Cooper, “The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics” (Liveright, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over the course of a public career that stretched from the Washington administration to the Mexican-American War, John Quincy Adams became a living link to America’s revolutionary generation. In Th...
ListenAl Posamentier, "Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians" (Prometheus, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked to Alfred S. Posamentier, a co-author (with Christian Spreitzer) of Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians (Prometheus, 2020). This charming book is more than j...
ListenLaura Lee, “Oscar’s Ghost: The Battle for Oscar Wilde’s Legacy” (Amberley, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Laura Lee’s Oscar’s Ghost: The Battle for Oscar Wilde’s Legacy (Amberley Publishing, 2017) offers a detailed investigation of a conflict involving the writer and his two friends with whom he mainta...
ListenLarry Wolff, "Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where the victorious Allied powers met to reenvision the map of Europe in the aftermath of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson's influence on the remapping of ...
ListenMarion Deshmukh, “Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany (Routledge 2015), Marion Deshmukh, the Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History Emeritus at George Mason University, examines the life an...
ListenRebecca E. Zietlow, "The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though the story of emancipation is well known in American history, the roles of many of the key figures involved in it are often overlooked. Among them is James Mitchell Ashley, the Ohio congressm...
ListenRobert W. Cherny, “Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art” (U. Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Best remembered today for his work as a muralist, the Russian-American artist Victor Arnautoff lived a life worthy of Hollywood. In Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (University of Illinois ...
ListenMort Zachter, "Red Holzman: The Life and Legacy of a Hall of Fame Basketball Coach" (Sports Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many books have been written about Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusscherre and the other great players on the New York Knicks championship teams of the 1970s, though much less at...
ListenBarry W. Holtz, “Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud” (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.E., Rabbi Akiva was the greatest rabbi of his time and one of the most important influences on Judaism as we know it today. Traditional sources tell ...
ListenSarah Abrevaya Stein, "A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), Sarah Abrevaya Stein weaves a narrative tapestry whose threads are drawn from the archives of ...
ListenDeanne Stillman, “Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill” (Simon & Schuster, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the summer of 1885, the Lakota Sioux holy man Sitting Bull toured North America as a member of Buffalo Bill Cody’s famous “Wild West” show. His participation, as Deanne Stillman explains in her ...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenPaige Bowers, “The General’s Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France” (Chicago Review Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Charles de Gaulle issued his famous call in June 1940 for the French people to continue fighting Nazi Germany, among those within Occupied France who took up the cause was his young niece Gene...
ListenSohaira Siddiqui, "Law and Politics Under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her intimidatingly brilliant new book Law and Politics Under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Sohaira Siddiqui conducts a masterful analys...
ListenWas Presidential Leadership Decisive in Determining the Outcome of the Civil War? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the third podcast of Arguing History, historians William J. Cooper and Richard Carwardine address the question of the role presidential leadership played in determining the outcome of the Americ...
ListenJames N. Green, "Exile Within Exiles: Herbert Daniel Gay Brazilian Revolutionary" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Exile Within Exiles: Herbert Daniel Gay Brazilian Revolutionary (Duke University Press, 2018), James N. Green tells the story of Herbert Daniel, a significant and complex figure in Brazilian lef...
ListenJoanna Dee Das, “Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (Oxford U...
ListenAlistair Sponsel, "Darwin’s Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. Alistair Sponsel talks about Darwin’s experiences on HMS Beagle and his early career as a naturalist. His close reading of Darwin’s journals and letters reveals insights about the man that woul...
ListenTracy A. Thomas, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundations of Family Law” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this podcast I talk with Tracy A. Thomas about her book Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundations of Family Law (New York University Press, 2016). Professor Thomas is the John F. Seibe...
ListenCarol Zaleski, "The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings" (FSG, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Starting in the early 1930s, a small group of academics and writers met weekly in a pub in Oxford, England to discuss literature, religion, and ideas. Known as the Inklings, it was in part from the...
ListenTamara Plakins Thornton, “Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
To remember Nathaniel Bowditch today primarily for his famous navigational textbook is to acknowledge only one of his many achievements. As Tamara Plakins Thornton demonstrates in her book Nathanie...
ListenRupert Lewis, "Marcus Garvey" (UP of West Indies, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rupert Lewis has written a biography of Marcus Garvey published by the University Press of the West Indies in 2018. His book Marcus Garvey documents the forging of Garvey’s remarkable vision of pan...
ListenT. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, “Bricktop’s Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars (SUNY Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Dorothy Sterling wrote her book about nineteenth-century black women in America, she stated in the introduction that the book was not a definitive history of black women but a sourcebook to le...
ListenMario T. García, "Father Luis Olivares, A Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the leader of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles during the 1980s, Father Luis Olivares brazenly defied local Catholic authorities and the federal government by publicly offering sanctuary to...
ListenMitch Kachun, “First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory (Oxford University Press, 2017) explores how Crispus Attucks’ death in the 1770 Boston Massacre led to his achieving mythic significance ...
ListenPeter J. Boettke, "F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I spoke with professor Peter J. Boettke the author of a great new book on Friedrich August von Hayek. Dr. Boettke is University Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Director of the F. A. Ha...
ListenMarcia Walker-McWilliams, “Reverend Addie: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality (U. Illinois Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Addie Wyatt stands at the intersection of unionism, feminism, and civil rights activism in post-World War II America. In Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equa...
ListenAlan Gallay, "Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire" (Basic Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sir Walter Ralegh was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. She showered him with estates and political appointments. He envisioned her becoming empress of a universal empire. She gave him the opportunity...
ListenRosalind Rosenberg, “Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rosalind Rosenberg‘s book Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a multi-layered and rich biography of Pauli Murray, an activist, lawyer and Episcopal priest whose l...
ListenChristian J. Koot, "A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake" (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Labels on a map: Surrey. Lower Norfolk. The Isle of Wight. Northumberland. Middlesex. Not a map England, but of the British colonies of Virginia and Maryland published in 1673. This is a map that p...
ListenJoyce Salisbury, “Rome’s Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Empire” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The daughter of the emperor Theodosius I, Galla Placidia successfully navigated the tumultuous politics of the late Roman Empire to rule as regent for her son Valentinian III. In Rome’s Christian E...
ListenD. J. Taylor, "The Lost Girls: Love and Literature in Wartime London" (Pegasus Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who were the Lost Girls? All coming from broken or failed Upper-middle Class families; the Lost Girls were all chic, glamorous, and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonett...
ListenNaoko Wake, “Private Practices: Harry Stack Sullivan, the Science of Homosexuality, and American Liberalism” (Rutgers UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The influential yet controversial psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan was pioneering in his treatment of schizophrenia however the way he lived privately did not always correspond to the theoretical...
ListenPeter Bergamin, "The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology” (I. B. Tauris, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Peter Bergamin’s, new book, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology (I. B. Tauris, 2019), is an intellectual biography of one of the most important propagators of the...
ListenElias Sacks, “Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism” (Indiana UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The work of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), one of Judaism’s great philosophers and defenders, has nonetheless defied easy categorization or definitive depiction. While advocating for the granting o...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenKief Hillsbery, “Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kief Hillsbery‘s Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) follows the career of Nigel Halleck, an English tax assessor in employ of...
ListenAndrew R. M. Smith, "No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing" (U Texas Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Andrew R. M. Smith, author of No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing (University of Texas Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed Foreman’s ca...
ListenJon Kukla, “Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty” (Simon and Schuster, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
To remember Patrick Henry for his defiant declaration “Give me liberty or give me death!” is to overlook a long career spent as an advocate for the rights of Americans, first as colonists and then ...
ListenJames D. Bratt, "A Christian and a Democrat: A Religious Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt" (Eerdmans, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when asked at a press conference about the roots of his political philosophy, responded simply, “I am a Christian and a Democrat.” This new book is the story of how the f...
ListenPeter Eisner, “MacArthur’s Spies: The Solider, the Singer, and the Spymaster Who Defied the Japanese in WWII” (Viking, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The conquest of the Philippines in 1942 brought thousands of Americans under the control of the empire of Japan. While most of them were interned or imprisoned for the duration of the war, a remark...
ListenBrian Cervantez, "Amon Carter: A Lone Star Life" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Raised in a one-room log cabin in a small North Texas town, Amon G. Carter (1879–1955) rose to become the founder and publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a seat of power from which he relent...
ListenLeigh Fought, “Women in the World of Frederick Douglass” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Leigh Fought is an assistant professor of history at Le Moyne College. Her book Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers a detailed and rich portrait of Frede...
ListenAndrew Marble, "Boy on the Bridge: The Story of John Shalikashvili’s Remarkable Success" (UP of Kentucky, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When President Bill Clinton nominated John Shalikashvili to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993, it represented the climax of a long journey that began in waning days of the Second...
ListenPatrick N. Hunt, “Hannibal” (Simon and Schuster, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 218 BCE, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca launched an invasion of Italy designed to bring the Roman Republic to its knees. Yet for all of his success in defeating Rome’s legions on the ba...
ListenDr. Alice Collett, "Lives of Early Buddhist Nuns: Biographies as History" (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. Alice Collett’s monograph Lives of Early Buddhist Nuns: Biographies as History (Oxford University Press, 2016) delves into the lives of six of the best-known nuns from the period of early Buddh...
ListenGeoffrey D. Claussen, “Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar” (SUNY Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Sim?ah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (SUNY Press, 2015), Geoffrey D. Claussen provides a thorough study of the life and work of one of the most influential figures i...
ListenEileen Botting, "The Wollstonecraftian Mind" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Eileen Hunt Botting is Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame and co-editor with Sandrine Berges and Alan Coffee of the anthology The Wollstonecraftian Mind (Routledge, 2019). The collection ...
ListenAllan H. Pasco, “Balzac, Literary Sociologist” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Balzac, Literary Sociologist (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Allan H. Pasco explores the talents of the writer whose reputation has been primarily based on his extraordinary gift to compose captivat...
ListenTobias Boes, "Thomas Mann's War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Thomas Mann's War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters (Cornell University Press, 2019), Tobias Boes traces how the acclaimed and bestselling author became one of America's m...
ListenMichael J. Hogan, “The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Biography” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As president John F. Kennedy enjoyed a remarkable degree of popularity, and in the decades since his assassination his standing has only grown in the public imagination. In The Afterlife of John Fi...
ListenBrendan Simms, "Hitler: A Global Biography" (Basic Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Every generation returns to the titanic heroes and villains of the 20th century. And every generation produces a new set of biographies--often immense--in an effort to understand the role of that e...
ListenMitchell Stephens, “The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th Century Journalism” (St. Martin’s, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mitchell Stephens‘s new book, The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th Century Journalism (St. Martins Press, 2017), could be described, in part, as an entertaining book of sto...
ListenYaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the world was at hand. As Jews everywhere rejected...
ListenDavid Kushner, “Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D and D” (Nation Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D and D (Nation Books, 2017) by David Kushner and illustrated by Koren Shadmi is a gorgeous depiction of the late E. Gary Gygax’s life and...
ListenChristopher Lovins, "King Ch?ngjo: An Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea" (SUNY Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though traditionally regarded as a monarch who failed to arrest the gradual decline of his kingdom, the Korean king Ch?ngjo has benefited in recent decades from a wave of new scholarship which has ...
ListenMichael Witwer, “Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons and Dragons” (Bloomsbury, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons and Dragons (Bloomsbury, 2015) by Michael Witwer is an exceptional biography of the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, E. Gary Gygax. Wi...
ListenFrederick Beiser, "Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The eminent scholar of Neo-Kantianism, Frederick Beiser, has struck again, this time bringing his considerable analytical powers and erudition to the task of intellectual biography. For those of yo...
ListenBrad Gooch, “Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love” (Harper, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ever since their composition in the 13th century the poems of the Persian writer Rumi have enthralled millions of readers around the world. In Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love (Ha...
ListenAbdulhamid Sulaymon o’g’li Cho’lpon, "Night and Day: A Novel" (Academic Studies Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Christopher Fort’s new translation of Abdulhamid Sulaymon o’g’li Cho’lpon’s Night and Day: A Novel (Academic Studies Press, 2019) (Kecha va Kunduz) gives readers a chance to dive into the world of ...
ListenWilliam Walsh, “Forty-Four American Boys: Short Histories of Presidential Childhoods” (Outpost19, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Whether you’re on the right or the left of the political spectrum, I’ll bet that lately the Office of the President isn’t far from your mind. Every day, it seems, I encounter one, two, three, four ...
ListenAdele Lindenmeyr, "Citizen Countess: Sofia Panina and the Fate of Revolutionary Russia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Once one of the wealthiest members of the Russian aristocracy, Sofia Panina spent her final years living on a pension while in exile from her homeland. Adele Lindenmeyr’s book Citizen Countess: Sof...
ListenBruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch, “Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Public scholarship takes many forms, from op-eds to activism to blog posts. In their new book, Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family (Columbia University Press, 2017), Associa...
ListenAlex Lichtenstein, "Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid" (Indiana UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alex Lichtenstein, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, discusses his new book with co-author Rick Halpern, Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid (Indiana University Pres...
ListenSusan Rubenstein DeMasi, “Henry Alsberg: The Driving Force Behind the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over the course of a long and adventurous life, Henry Alsberg was guided by the constancy of his passion for radical causes. This focus, as Susan Rubenstein DeMasi makes clear in Henry Alsberg: The...
ListenReider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-brother Sir Charles Stewart has received far le...
ListenMichael J. Turner” Radicalism and Reputation: The Career of Bronterre O’Brien” (Michigan State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From humble beginnings James Bronterre O’Brien became one of the leading figures in British radical politics in the first half of the 19th century, thanks in no small measure to his skills as a jou...
ListenMiriam Kalman Friedman, "Rivers of Light: The Life of Claire Myers Owens" (Syracuse UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Growing up in a conservative, middle-class family in Texas, Claire Myers Owens sought adventure and freedom at an early age. At twenty years old, she left home and quickly found a community of like...
ListenBabette Becker, "I Should Have Been Music" (Page Publishing, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. Babette Becker’s memoir I Should Have Been Music (Page Publishing, 2018) recounts her experience as a patient in four different mental hospitals from 1957 to 1960. It was a time when little was...
ListenClyde Farnsworth, “Tangled Bylines: A Father and Son Cover the Twentieth Century” (U. Missouri Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Journalists intentionally leave themselves out of the stories they cover. In Clyde H. Farnsworth‘s book Tangled Bylines: A Father and Son Cover the Twentieth Century (University of Missouri Press, ...
ListenTom Boniface-Webb, "Modern Music Masters: Oasis" (MMM, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the first book in the Modern Music Masters series, Tom Boniface-Webb examines the Manchester band Modern Music Masters-Oasis (MMM, 2020). Founded in 1994 and playing together until their spectac...
ListenAmy Aronson, "Chrystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Amy Aronson is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Fordham University and former editor at Working Woman and Ms. magazines. Her biography Chrystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Lif...
ListenPaul Youngquist, “A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism” (U. Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The legendary band leader Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on Earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the d...
ListenJ. A. Ball and T. Burroughs, "A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable's Malcolm X" (Black Classic Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This is part of our Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, correcting...
ListenWilson Jeremiah Moses, "Thomas Jefferson: A Modern Prometheus" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Greek mythology Prometheus is the trickster Titan who gives fire to humanity. As Wilson Jeremiah Moses explains in his book Thomas Jefferson: A Modern Prometheus (Cambridge University Press, 201...
ListenJohn Bohrer, “The Revolution of Robert Kennedy: From Power to Protest after JFK” (Bloomsbury, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the moment he entered politics as the manager of John F. Kennedy’s 1952 Senate campaign, Robert Kennedy’s political career was subsumed into that of his older brother. With President Kennedy’s...
ListenEdwin Wilson, "Magic Time, a Memoir: Notes on Theatre & Other Entertainment" (Smith & Kraus, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Edwin Wilson's book Magic Time, a Memoir: Notes on Theatre & Other Entertainment (Smith & Kraus, 2020) is a spirited memoir of a long and fruitful career in the American theatre. Wilson was the the...
ListenAsher Price, "Earl Campbell: Yards After Contact" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Earl Campbell was a force in American football, winning a state championship in high school, rushing his way to a Heisman trophy for the University of Texas, and earning MVP as he took the Houston ...
ListenPatrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist” (Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the Civil War Father James Sheeran served as a Catholic chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry. Between his various responsibilities Sheeran kept a journal in which he recounted his experi...
ListenBen Bland, "Man of Contradictions: Joko Widodo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia" (Penguin, 2021) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Joko Widodo, or “Jokowi”, as he is popularly known, famously rose from a riverside shack to become president of Indonesia in 2014. In a country better known for decades of authoritarian rule, Jokow...
ListenLesley Chamberlain, "Ministry of Darkness: How Sergei Uvarov Created Conservative Modern Russia" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Count Sergey Semyonovich Uvarov, once proclaimed by Aleksandr Herzen as a ‘Prometheus of our day’, has in the past 160 years become something of an also-ran in Russian History. Notwithstanding his ...
ListenLinda Heywood, “Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen” (Harvard University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the capital of the African nation of Angola today stands a statue to Njinga, the 17th century queen of the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms. Its presence is a testament to her skills as a diplomat, w...
ListenDaniel S. Lucks, "Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump" (Beacon Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ronald Reagan is regarded today as one of the most consequential presidents of the postwar era, yet many aspects of his legacy are largely unappreciated. In Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republican...
ListenAlberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...
ListenAmir Engel, “Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography (University of Chicago Press, 2017) , Amir Engel, a lecturer in the German Department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, positions Gershom Scholem’...
ListenDouglas Morris, "Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler's Germany" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the mid-1930s, Germans opposed to Adolf Hitler had only a limited range of options available to them for resisting the Nazi regime. One of the most creative and successful challengers in thi...
ListenKathryn Holliday, "The Open-Ended City: David Dillon on Texas Architecture" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It may only be a slight exaggeration to say that one of David Dillon's career accomplishments was to put the words "Dallas" and "architecture" in the same sentence again. After a screed in 1980 ent...
ListenTara H. Abraham, “Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch’s Transdisciplinary Life in Science” (MIT Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Fueling his bohemian lifestyle and anti-authoritarian attitude with a steady diet of ice cream and whiskey, along with a healthy dose of insomnia, Warren Sturgis McCulloch is best known for his fou...
ListenJustin Gifford, "Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver" (Lawrence Hill, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver (Lawrence Hill Books, 2020) is a remarkable biography that examines the notorious Black revolutionary meticulously within the context of his changi...
ListenKerry Driscoll, "Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples (University of California Press, 2018; paperback edition, 2019) is the first book-length study of the writer’s evolving views regarding the...
ListenRebe Taylor, “Into the Heart of Tasmania: A Search For Human Antiquity” (Melbourne UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, Into the Heart of Tasmania: A Search For Human Antiquity (Melbourne University Press, 2017), Rebe Taylor, the Coral Thomas Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, explores the ...
ListenSusan M. Reverby, "Co-Conspirator for Justice: The Revolutionary Life of Dr. Alan Berkman" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alan Berkman (1945–2009) was no campus radical in the mid-1960s; he was a promising Ivy League student, football player, Eagle Scout, and fraternity president. But when he was a medical student and...
ListenMalcolm Woollen, "Erik Gunnar Asplund: Landscapes and Buildings" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, weaving together art, philosophy, history, and literature, this book investigates the landscapes and buildings of Swedish architect Erik Gunnar Asplund. Throug...
ListenSarah Bracey White, “Primary Lessons: A Memoir” (CavanKerry Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As an African-American child growing up in the segregated pre-Civil Rights South, Sarah Bracey White pushed against the social conventions that warned her not to rock the boat, even before she was ...
ListenTimothy Hampton, "Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work" (Zone Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcen...
ListenKathleen Sheppard, "The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman’s Work in Archaeology" (Lexington, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After Napoleon occupied Egypt, Europeans became obsessed with the ancient cultures of the Nile. In Britain, the center of Egyptology research was University College London (UCL). At the heart of th...
ListenTania Munz, “The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language” (U of Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tania Munz‘s new book is a dual biography: both of Austrian-born experimental physiologist Karl von Frisch, and of the honeybees he worked with as experimental, communicating creatures. The Dancing...
ListenM. T. Mulder and G. Marti, "The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry (Rutgers UP, 2020), Mark Mulder and Gerardo Marti offer a compelling look at the rise and fall ...
ListenLaura K. T. Stokes, "Fanny Hensel: A Research and Information Guide" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nineteenth-century composer Fanny Hensel is the subject of more published research than any other woman of the period, with the possible exception of Clara Schumann. A prolific composer, salon host...
ListenWilliam Kolbrener, “The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition” (Indiana UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition (Indiana University Press, 2016), William Kolbrener, professor of English at Bar Ilan University in Israel, explores the life and thoug...
ListenDinyar Patel, "Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the wake of a rise in nationalism around the world, and its general condemnation by liberals and the left, we have put together this series on Third World Nationalism to nuance the present disco...
ListenAndrew Roberts, "Leadership in War: Lessons From Those Who Made History" (Allen Lane, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Andrew Roberts is one of our most distinguished biographers and historians, and the author of the magisterial work, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (2018). Today we talk to Andrew about his most re...
ListenKathleen Collins, “Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Kathleen Collins presents an extensive history of the woman who is arguably the most famous tel...
ListenCarl Rollyson, "The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarming Paradox, 1935-1962" (U Virginia Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
By 1935 William Faulkner was well established as an author of critically praised novels, yet the low volume of his sales forced him to seek work in Hollywood. As Carl Rollyson details in The Life o...
ListenRichard F. Thomas, "Why Bob Dylan Matters" (Dey Street, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could the world’s most prestigious book prize be ...
ListenSteven M. Avella, “Charles K. McClatchy and the Golden Era of American Journalism” (U. Missouri Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Charles K. (CK) McClatchy was a towering figure in the making of Sacramento and the inland empire he liked to call Superior California. As editor of the Sacramento Bee from 1883 to 1936, McClatchy ...
ListenClayborne Carson, "Malcolm X: The FBI File" (Skyhorse, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This is a Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. We delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Nationalism, correcting the fundamentally mistake...
ListenPeter Kerasotis, "Alou: My Baseball Journey" (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
All aficionados of baseball are familiar with the pathbreaking role of Jackie Robinson in reintegrating the game back in 1947. What many fans are less familiar with are the issues that Latinos of c...
ListenDean Kotlowski, “Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR” (Indiana UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the rising stars in American politics during the 1930s was Paul Vories McNutt. As governor of Indiana, McNutt refashioned the state government to address its citizens needs during the Great ...
ListenTom Rastrelli, "Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abuse, and Scandal in the Catholic Seminary" (U Iowa Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tom Rastrelli is a survivor of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse who then became a priest in the early days of the Catholic Church’s ongoing scandals. Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Lo...
ListenRoland De Wolk, "American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With a name associated with the famous university in Palo Alto, Leland Stanford is among the best-known of the famous “robber barons” of the 19th century. Yet as Roland De Wolk explains in American...
ListenHolly Hurlburt, “Daughter of Venice: Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus and Woman of the Renaissance” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Caterina Corner lived a life that was composed of a mixture of adventure, power, and tragedy. The daughter of a Venetian patrician and merchant, she was married to the king of Cyprus while barely a...
ListenDavid Adjmi, "Lot Six" (Harper, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Lot Six (Harper 2020) is a moving and hilarious memoir from playwright David Adjmi. The book traces Adjmi’s search for his identity, during which he becomes an observant yeshiva student, a club kid...
ListenLian Xi, "Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China" (Basic Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1960, a poet and journalist named Lin Zhao was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sent to prison for re-education. Years before, she had –at approximately the same time– converted to b...
ListenJames McGrath Morris, “Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press” (Amistad, Reprint Edition, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his acclaimed biography Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad, Reprint Edition, 2017), James McGrath Morris explores the fascinating life of pioneering bla...
ListenCharles Halperin, "Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, Dr. Charles Halperin provides a new analysis of Ivan’s reign, as well as valuable syntheses of previou...
ListenStephen H. Grant, “Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Henry and Emily Folger were linked together not just by their love for one another, but their shared passion for the works of William Shakespeare. In Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and ...
ListenRichard J. Bernstein, "Why Read Hannah Arendt Now" (Polity, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nobody should feel excited about the renewed relevance of Hannah Arendt's work today. Her foresight about the fragility of democratic life is relevant for the worst possible reasons: populism, whit...
ListenGarrison Nelson, “John William McCormack: A Political Biography” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John William McCormack served as Speaker of the House of Representatives throughout most of the 1960s, during which time he shepherded the legislation of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program thro...
ListenDavid Hayton, "Conservative Revolutionary: The Lives of Lewis Namier" (Manchester UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Acclaimed after the Second World War as England's greatest historian, Sir Lewis Namier was an eastern European immigrant who came to idealise the English gentleman and enjoyed close friendship with...
ListenDamion Searls, “The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing” (Crown, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and The Power of Seeing (Crown, 2017), Damion Searls presents the first biography of Hermann Rorschach and the history of the Rorsc...
ListenWendy Wickwire, "At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging" (UBC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The history of anthropology remembers James Teit as a field assistant and man-on-the spot for Franz Boas. But in At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging (University of British Co...
ListenLeilah Danielson, “American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the 20th Century” (U. Penn Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During a life that stretched from the Progressive era to the 1960s, A. J. Muste dedicated himself to fighting against war and the exploitation of working Americans. In American Gandhi: A. J. Muste ...
ListenDouglas R. Egerton, "Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America" (Basic Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace. When John Quincy Adams died in 1848, so began the slow decline of the family’s p...
ListenDavid Curtis Skaggs, “William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812” (JHU Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though best remembered today for his brief tenure as the ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison’s most significant contribution to American history was his service as a genera...
ListenRobert Mann, "Becoming Ronald Reagan: The Rise of a Conservative Icon" (Potomac Book, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Throughout much of his career as an actor in Hollywood, Ronald Reagan identified as a passionate New Deal Democrat, yet by the time he turned to a career in politics in the 1960s he was a conservat...
ListenRichard Etulain, “The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Calamity Jane was a celebrity of the 19th century American West, yet the woman portrayed in the newspapers and dime novels was one very different from the actual person. In The Life and Legends of ...
ListenPaul Mendes-Flohr, "Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale University Press, 2019), Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem...
ListenRichard Crockatt, “Einstein and Twentieth-Century Politics: A Salutary Moral Influence,” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Richard Crockatt is an Emeritus Professor in the School of American Studies at the University of East Anglia. His book, Einstein & Twentieth-Century Politics: ‘A Salutary Moral Influence‘ (Oxford U...
ListenJohn Launer, "Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein" (Henry N. Abrams, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Launer's Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein (Henry N. Abrams, 2017) manages to supplant (and given the power of the visual image, this is no mean feat) the picture you...
ListenSteve Tripp, “Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many scholars of baseball and American sports have focused on Ty Cobb as an integral and controversial character in the history of baseball. However, scholars have ignored the ways in which the sto...
ListenNoelle Giuffrida, "Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Noelle Giuffrida’s book, Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America (University of California Press, 2018), tells the history of collecting and exhibi...
ListenAlexandra Deutsch, “A Woman of Two Worlds: Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte” (Maryland Historical Society, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte was a celebrity in 19th century America thanks in no small measure to her brief marriage to Napoleon Bonaparte’s youngest brother Jerome. In A Woman of Two Worlds: Eli...
ListenJohn Shelton Reed, "Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s" (LSU Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Shelton Reed, William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of sociology (emeritus) at the University of North Carolina, has been observing the South for decades. This week he and Al Zambone talk about New...
ListenTim Brady, “His Father’s Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr.” (NAL, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tim Brady’s book His Father’s Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr. (NAL, 2017) is not just the biography of the eldest son and namesake of America’s 26th president, but an account of a life ...
ListenLewis H. Siegelbaum, "Stuck on Communism: Memoir of a Russian Historian" (Northern Illinois UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This memoir by one of the foremost scholars of the Soviet period spans three continents and more than half a century?from the 1950s when Lewis Siegelbaum's father was a victim of McCarthyism up thr...
ListenHelen Rappaport, “Victoria: The Heart and Mind of a Young Queen” (Harper Design, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The term historical fiction covers a wide range from what the mystery writer Josephine Tey once dubbed “history with conversation” to outright invention shading into fantasy. But behind every story...
ListenErica Armstrong Dunbar, "She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman" (37 Ink, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing str...
ListenPaul McKenzie-Jones, “Clyde Warrior: Tradition, Community, and Red Power” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Clyde Warrior was a Ponca Indian who in the 1960s was one of the founders of the “Red Power” movement for the rights of Native Americans. While his name may not be as well-known as that of other ci...
ListenAlexander L. Hinton, "Man or Monster?: The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Can justice heal? Must there be justice in order to heal? Is there such a thing as justice, something to be striven for regardless of context? Alexander L. Hinton thinks through these questions in ...
ListenMelissa Sweet, “Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Readers of all ages know E. B. White’s work. Charlotte’s Web is the first book many children are read aloud. Elements of Style remains an essential reference book. Almost everyone has a favorite wr...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenDavid Shafer, “Antonin Artaud” (Reaktion/U Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Artaud lived with his neck placed firmly in the noose.” -Bauhaus* David Shafer’s new biography, Antonin Artaud (Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press, 2016), situates the life of th...
ListenWang Gungwu, "Home is Not Here" (NUS Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Wang Gungwu has long been recognized as a world authority on the history of China and the overseas Chinese. His work has been inspired by his own experience growing up Chinese in Southeast Asia, bu...
ListenOwen McGee, “Arthur Griffith” (Merrion Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the founder of Sinn Fin and a leading architect of Irish independence, Arthur Griffith ranks as one of the founding fathers of modern Ireland. In his book Arthur Griffith (Merrion Press, 2015), ...
ListenJoseph F. O'Callaghan, "Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While monarchs throughout history used their power to make laws as a tool for governing their realms, rarely did they undertake the long and detailed work of drawing up an entire legal code. One of...
ListenMatt Houlbrook, “Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook” (U. of Chicago Press 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How should we understand the interwar years in Britain? In Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook (University of Chicago Press, 2016) Matt Houlbrook, Profe...
ListenElijah Millgram, "John Stuart Mill and the Meaning of Life" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
According to an intuitive view, lives are meaningful when they manifest a directedness or instantiate a project such that the disparate events and endeavors “add up to” a life. John Stuart Mill’s ...
ListenBill V. Mullen, “W.E.B. Du Bois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line,” (Pluto Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Born just five years after the abolition of slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois died the night before Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington in 1963. In the ma...
ListenW. Caleb McDaniel, "Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her ...
ListenJane Eppinga, “Henry Ossian Flipper: West Point’s First Black Graduate” (Wild Horse Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The remarkable story of Henry Ossian Flipper, a young man born into slavery on the eve of the Civil War, and his struggle for recognition left its mark on our nations history. Through extensive res...
ListenNicholas Buccola, "The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nicholas Buccola’s new book, The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America (Princeton University Press, 2019), uses the iconic debate between Baldw...
ListenJeremy Adelman, “Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman” (Princeton UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Although defined throughout his professional career as a development economist, Albert O. Hirschman’s intellectual scope defied classification. In Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirs...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenColin Holmes, “Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce” (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the Second World War millions of Britons tuned in nightly to hear the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw coming from Nazi Germany. Though the label was broadly applied to a number of English-speakin...
ListenBrenna Wynn Greer, "Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined American Citizenship" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brenna Wynn Greer’s new study Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined American Citizenship (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), provides a fascinating look at a trio of black imagema...
ListenScott Donaldson, “The Impossible Craft” Literary Biography” (Penn State UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Admiring books that appeal to our hearts and souls, rather often we want to know more about the writers who create them. If a book is a dialogical and communal entity–as readers we also participate...
ListenLorena Oropeza, "The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Lorena Oropeza, Professor of History at the University of California at Davis, sheds new light on one of Chicano history’s most notorious figures in her new book, The King of Adobe: Reies López Tij...
ListenMichelle Markel, “Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead/Brave Girl” (Balzer + Bray, 2016,2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Michelle Markel, an award-winning author and former journalist who has written for The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, talks about books she’s written about two strong and brave women Cl...
ListenHenning Melber, "Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the Decolonisation of Africa" (Hurst, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dag Hammarskjold was such a dynamic secretary-general that for years, the motto about him was simply “Leave it to Dag.” Only the second person to hold that post when he was elected, Hammarskjold di...
ListenDaniel Moran,”Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers” (U. of Georgia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Daniel Moran’s Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers (University of Georgia Press, 2016) provides a compelling investigation of how O’Connor’s initial reputation of a...
ListenNicole C. Kirk, "Wanamaker’s Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"On Christmas Eve, 1911, John Wanamaker stood in the middle of his elaborately decorated department store building in Philadelphia as shoppers milled around him picking up last minute Christmas pre...
ListenJames D. Boys, “Hillary Rising: The Politics, Persona, and Policies of a New American Dynasty” (Biteback Publishing, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
James D. Boys is the author of Hillary Rising: The Politics, Persona, and Policies of a New American Dynasty (Biteback Publishing, 2016). Boys is an associate professor of international political s...
ListenKathryn E. O’Rourke, "O’Neil Ford on Architecture" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
O’Neil Ford on Architecture (University of Texas Press, 2019) brings together Ford’s major professional writings and speeches for the first time. Revealing the intellectual and theoretical underpin...
ListenJohn Bew, “Clement Attlee: The Man Who Made Modern Britain” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As Labour Party leader, member of Winston Churchill’s governing coalition during the Second World War, and prime minister of the epochal postwar government that established the welfare state, Cleme...
ListenJeremy Black, "England in the Age of Shakespeare" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jeremy Black’s impressive new book offers an enormously wide-ranging account of the social, political and religious cultures in which England’s greatest dramatist was formed and found success. Engl...
ListenClaudia Kalb, “Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Mind of History’s Great Personalities” (Natl Geographic, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
All humans endure their private struggles, but rarely do we know what troubles our most famous public figures until now. In her recent book, Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Mind of History’s ...
ListenGeoffrey Parker, "Emperor: A New Life of Charles V" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From his accession to the Spanish throne in 1516 until his abdication in 1556, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V dominated Europe in a way that no ruler had since Charlemagne. In Emperor: A New Life...
ListenRobert Matzen, “Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe” (GoodKnight Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jimmy Stewart has a well-deserved reputation as one of the major stars of the classic film era. Yet his life was greatly affected by his experiences as a bomber pilot in World War II. Robert Matzen...
ListenSara Georgini, "Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sara Georgini is a historian and series editor for The Papers of John Adams at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family (Oxford University Press...
ListenApril Dammann, “Corita Kent: Art and Soul: The Biography” (Angel City Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sister Mary Corita, IHM (1918-1986), was a beloved artist and teacher whose role as the rebel nun continues to inspire contemporary audiences. Corita joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of M...
ListenMark Burford, "Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mahalia Jackson, the great mid-twentieth century gospel singer, thought of herself as an embodiment of the history of African Americans in the United States. She understood that her family’s backgr...
ListenDebbie Levy, “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark” (Simon and Schuster, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spent a lifetime disagreeing with inequality, arguing against unfair treatment, and standing up for what’s right for people everywhere. I Dissent: Ruth...
ListenAlex J. Kay, "The Making of an SS Killer: the Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alex Kay’s The Making of an SS Killer: the Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905-1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) is a must read for those interested in the Third Reich, the Holocaust, and Wo...
ListenThomas Aiello, “The Battle for the Souls of Black Folk: W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, and the Debate that Shaped the Course of Civil Rights” (ABC-CLIO, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thomas Aiello is associate professor of history and African American studies at Valdosta State University. In The Battle for the Souls of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and the D...
ListenElizabeth D. Carney, "Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the wife of a Macedonian king and the mother of three sons who would succeed him, Eurydice played an important role in Macedonia at an important moment in the kingdom’s history. In Eurydice and ...
ListenGail Hornstein, “To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann” (Other Books, 2005) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The life of the German-born, pioneering American psychoanalyst, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, is intriguing enough in itself, but in the biography, To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life o...
ListenKate Kirkpatrick, "Becoming Beauvoir: A Life" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kate Kirkpatrick a lecturer in Religion, Philosophy and Culture at King’s College London and author of Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). Kirkpatrick has given us a biography th...
ListenRichard Bourke, “Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Richard Bourke, Professor in the History of Political Thought in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London, began developing his history of Edmund Burke’s political thought in 1991. ...
ListenMatthew Crow, "Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked to Matthew Crow about his book Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Crow studies how Jefferson’s associatio...
ListenMarc Raboy, “Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Our modern networked world owes an oftentimes unacknowledged debt to Guglielmo Marconi. As Marc Raboy demonstrates in Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World (Oxford University Press, 2016), it wa...
ListenMark Braude, "The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Empire to Exile" (Penguin Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I must’ve been a kid when I first heard the palindrome “Able I was ere I saw Elba”. Napoleon didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. “Elba” meant even less. Decades later, I had learned a little more ...
ListenJames Carl Nelson, “I Will Hold: The Story of USMC Legend Clifton B. Cates, From Belleau Wood to Victory in the Great War” (NAL, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Best remembered as the nineteenth commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Clifton B. Cates began his long and distinguished military career as a second lieutenant in World War I. In I Will Hold: The S...
ListenWilliam M. Gorvine, "Envisioning A Tibetan Luminary: The Life of a Modern Bonpo Saint" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Envisioning A Tibetan Luminary: The Life of a Modern Bonpo Saint (Oxford University Press, 2018), William M. Gorvine provides a multifaceted analysis of Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen (185...
ListenLiam Brockey, “The Visitor: Andre Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia” (Harvard UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The transmission of a religion closely connected to a particular culture into a very different religious and cultural environment is a difficult act of translation in which a balance must be struck...
ListenGraham Thompson, "Herman Melville: Among the Magazines" (U Massachusetts Press 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"What I feel most moved to write, that is banned?it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the otherway I cannot." Herman Melville wrote these words as he struggled to survive as a failing novelist. ...
ListenLoki Mulholland, et.al. “She Stood for Freedom: The Untold Story of a Civil Rights Hero, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland” (Shadow Mountain, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Anyone can make a difference. Find a problem, get some friends together, and go fix it. Remember you don’t have to change the world, just change your world.” –Joan Trumpauer Mulholland In the ear...
ListenJ. C. D. Clark, "Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are few better guides to the “long eighteenth century” that J. C. D. Clark, emeritus professor of history at the University of Kansas, whose sequence of ground-breaking books have contested p...
ListenMatthew Pierce, “Twelve Infallible Men: The Imams and the Making of Shiism” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of the martyrdom of Husayn, the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, is recounted annually around the world. More broadly, the communal retelling of the lives of Shia imams has played an importan...
ListenDavid Philip Miller, "The Life and Legend of James Watt" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For all of his fame as one of the seminal figures of the Industrial Revolution, James Watt is a person around whom many misconceptions congregate. In The Life and Legend of James Watt: Collaboratio...
ListenEllen Fitzpatrick, “The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ellen Fitzpatrick is professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. Her book The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency (Harvard University Press, 2016) provides...
ListenAndrew Wright Hurley, "Ludwig Leichhardt’s Ghosts: The Strange Career of a Traveling Myth" (Camden House, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Andrew Wright Hurley talks about the life and afterlife of the Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, a man whose reputation has shifted to reflect the changing cultures of Australia and Germany over...
ListenCharles Strozier, “Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln: The Enduring Friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Abraham Lincoln wrote that the better part of one’s life consists of his friendships, it is likely that he had in mind his friendship with Joshua Speed. Starting as roommates in Springfield, t...
ListenAndrius Gališanka, "John Rawls: The Path to a Theory of Justice" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is hard to overestimate the influence of John Rawls on political philosophy and theory over the last half-century. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and he is one of the few phil...
ListenCarol McCabe Booker, ed. “Alone Atop the Hill: The Autobiography of Alice Dunnigan” (U. of Georgia Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Carol McCabe Booker is a Washington, D.C. attorney and former journalist. In the 1960s and 70s, she covered civil rights for the Voice of America, freelanced articles for The Washington Post, Reade...
ListenAmy Collier Artman, "The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity" (Eerdmans, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On October 15, 1974, Johnny Carson welcomed his next guest on The Tonight Show with these words: “I imagine there are very few people who are not aware of Kathryn Kuhlman. She probably, along with ...
ListenRobert K. Elder, et. al. “Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park” (Kent State UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Before the war, before the novels, before the four marriages and the safaris, the plane crashes and the bullfighting fascination, Ernest Hemingway was simply a young boy growing up in Oak Park, Ill...
ListenAshley Robertson, "Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State" (The History Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mary McLeod Bethune was often called the "First Lady of Negro America," but she made significant contributions to the political climate of Florida as well. From the founding of the Daytona Literary...
ListenCarol Gignoux, “Your Innovator Brain: The Truth About ADHD” (Balboa Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What exactly is ADHD, and is it time to update our ideas about it? In her new book, Your Innovator Brain: The Truth About ADHD (Balboa Press, 2016), Carol Gignoux turns our ideas about Attention De...
ListenWilliam F. Trimble, "John S. McCain and the Triumph of Naval Air Power" (Naval Institute Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The carrier task force—the symbolic and physical manifestation of the United States’ ability to project naval and air power across the globe—came of age during the Second World War. Fighting the Im...
ListenAnne Mac Lellan, “Dorothy Stopford Price: Rebel Doctor” (Irish Academic Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Among the achievements of Irish medicine in the twentieth century was ending the persistent epidemic of tuberculosis throughout the island, and one of the central figures in that effort was Dorothy...
ListenCourtney Pace, "Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall (University of Georgia Press, 2019) is the first full-length critical study of Rev. Dr. Prathia Laura Ann Hall (1940–2002), an undersung leader in...
ListenStephen Lee Naish, “Create or Die: Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper” (Amsterdam UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Stephen Lee Naish first became aware of Dennis Hopper watching David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, jumpstarting what would become a long examination of Hopper’s ambitions and creative output as an actor, fi...
ListenDavid Slucki, "My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons" (Wayne State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (Wayne State University Press, 2019), David Slucki, Assistant Professor in the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program at the College of Charl...
ListenPatricia Buckley Ebrey, “Emperor Huizong” (Harvard UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Song Chinese emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1126 CE) has long been regarded as a failure due to his dynasty’s defeat in their war against the Jurchens. In Emperor Huizong (Harvard University Press, 2...
ListenEmilie Le Beau Lucchesi, "This Is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines" (Chicago Review Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, This Is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines (Chicago Review Press, 2019), Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi presents the largely unknown sto...
ListenWilliam S. Belko, “Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican in King Andrew’s Court” (U. of Alabama Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though not a household name today, Philip Pendleton Barbour was a leading political and judicial figure in antebellum America. In Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican i...
ListenAlexandra Popoff, "Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Memory and truth are malleable and nowhere more so than in the Soviet Union. To be a writer in that country was to face an ongoing dilemma: conform to State-mandated topics and themes, or consign ...
ListenRichard L. Davis, “From Warhorses to Ploughshares: The Later Tang Reign of Emperor Mingzong” (Hong Kong UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ruling as he did during the Five Dynasties period of Chinese history, the emperor Mingzong (r. 926-933) has not received the same degree attention from historians as have many of his counterparts. ...
ListenSophia Shalmiyev, "Mother Winter: A Memoir" (Simon and Schuster, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of where we come from is such an important aspect of our personal sense of self, the forefront of many conversations about national identity, community, and belonging. In a country like t...
ListenRobert O’Kell, “Disraeli: The Romance of Politics” (U. of Toronto Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Benjamin Disraeli was unique among British prime ministers in the 19th century in many ways, but perhaps none more so than for his career as a novelist. Whereas many scholars have treated Disraeli’...
ListenLynn Downey, "Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World" (U Massachusetts Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nearly every consumer today is familiar with the name Levi Strauss thank to the jeans that bear his name. As Lynn Downey explains in her book Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World ...
ListenJohn Freed, “Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For all of his importance as a medieval ruler, there are surprisingly few biographies in English of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa (c. 1122-1190). John Freed fills this gap with his new bo...
ListenMelvin C. Johnson, "Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses of the American West" (Greg Kofford Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses of the American West (Greg Kofford Books, 2019) narrates the wide-ranging life of John Hawley’s search for an authentic Mormon faith. Melvin C...
ListenJames K. Libbey, “Alben Barkley: A Life in Politics” (U. Press of Kentucky, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Known as the Iron Man of politics, Alben Barkley enjoyed a career that took him from rural Kentucky to the vice-presidency of the United States of America. In his book Alben Barkley: A Life in Poli...
ListenM. L. Mitma and J. P. Heilman, "Now Peru is Mine: The Life and Times of a Campesino Activist" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Now Peru is Mine: The Life and Times of a Campesino Activist (Duke University Press, 2016), tells the remarkable story of a campesino and indigenous political activist whose career spanned much of ...
ListenDermot Meleady, “John Redmond: The National Leader” (Merrion Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though in many ways the forgotten man of Irish politics, John Redmond came closer to achieving the long-sought goal of Home Rule for Ireland than had his more illustrious predecessors Daniel O’Conn...
ListenPaul J. Croce, "Young William James Thinking" (John Hopkins UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul J. Croce, professor of history at Stetson University. Young William James Thinking (John Hopkins University Press, 2018) offers a developmental biography of the famous pragmatist. James’s matu...
ListenReza Zarghamee, “Discovering Cyrus: The Persian Conqueror Astride the Ancient World” (Mage Pub, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From his modest beginnings in southern Iran, the Persian king Cyrus II went on to conquer three of the dominant kingdoms of the ancient Near East those of the Medians, the Lydians, and the Babyloni...
ListenAnthony J. Badger, "Albert Gore, Sr.: A Political Life" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1956 Albert Gore, Sr. received national attention as one of only three senators from the states of the former Confederacy who refused to sign the infamous “Southern Manifesto” opposing the racia...
ListenJessa Crispin, “The Dead Ladies Project: Exiles, Expats, and Ex-Countries” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Biography is a genre of largely unexamined power: a literary field that preserves stories of lived lives and, through them, perpetuates notions that there are certain ways lives can be lived. This ...
ListenPauline W. Chen, "Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality" (Vintage, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Too often keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping them as they approach death. Dr. Pauline Chen shares her experiences as a medical student and transplant surgeon and how they’ve shaped t...
ListenNorman L. Macht, “The Grand Old Man of Baseball: Connie Mack in His Final Years, 1932-1956” (U. of Nebraska Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the start of The Grand Old Man of Baseball: Connie Mack in His Final Years, 1932-1956, the third volume of Norman L. Macht’s biography of baseball legend Connie Mack, the Philadelphia A’s which ...
ListenReema Zaman, "I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir" (Amberjack, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since its inception in 2017, the viral #MeToo movement has called more cultural attention to abusive behavior, creating a much-needed public space for women to speak up about the violence they have...
ListenDavid Potter, “Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thanks to the writings of Procopius and other detractors, the Byzantine empress Theodora (c. 495-548 CE) has long been viewed as a depraved and spiteful woman who was a negative influence on her hu...
ListenAlexandra M. Nickliss, "Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life of Power and Politics" (Bison Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though not as well known today as her husband George or her son William Randolph, Phoebe Apperson Hearst was a woman who rose beyond the gender norms of her age to exert considerable influence both...
ListenMarlene Trestman, “Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin” (Louisiana State UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a trailblazing attorney, Bessie Margolin lived a life of exceptional achievement. At a time when the legal profession consisted almost entirely of men, she earned the esteem of her colleagues an...
ListenShennette Garrett-Scott, "Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Think running an insurance company or a bank is hard? Try doing it as an African-American woman in the Jim Crow South. Shennette Garrett-Scott's new book, Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. ...
ListenThomas Knock, “Rise of a Prairie Statesman: The Life and Times of George McGovern” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
George McGovern is largely remembered today for his dramatic loss to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential campaign, yet he enjoyed a long career characterized by many remarkable achievements. In ...
ListenSharon Kirsch, "Gertrude Stein and the Reinvention of Rhetoric" (U Alabama Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Sharon Kirsch (she/hers)--Associate Prof. of English and rhetorical studies in the New College at...
ListenEd Berlin, “King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few composers dominate a genre of music as completely as did Scott Joplin. From the publication of his iconic Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 onward his ragtime compositions came to serve as the soundtrack ...
ListenAnne Cushman, "The Mama Sutra: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Path of Motherhood" (Shambala, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sutra is the Sanskrit name for a short spiritual teaching, and it comes from the same root as the English word suture, or stitch. This story of motherhood as a path to awakening is, says yoga and m...
ListenSteve Kemper, “A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham” (W. W. Norton, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham (W. W. Norton, 2016), freelance journalist Steve Kemper details the adventurous, wandering life of the man who later inspired th...
ListenMatilda Rabinowitz, "Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman: A Memoir from the Early Twentieth Century" (ILR Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s quite common these days to hear young people being urged to collect and record the stories of their grandparents or parents in order to learn and preserve their family’s history. For a few for...
ListenRoger Daniels, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road to the New Deal, 1882-1939” (U Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For all that has been written about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, many misconceptions about the man and his achievements continue to persist. Roger Daniels seeks to correct these in a new two-volume b...
ListenHarvard S. Heath, "Confidence Amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951-1970" (Signature Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The diaries of the ninth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are a collaboration between David O. McKay and his long-time secretary Clare Middlemiss. During the day Middlem...
ListenBrooke Hauser, “Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Women’s history, if they had any, consisted in their being beautiful enough to become events in male lives,” the feminist academic Carolyn R. Heilbrun noted in a series of 1997 lectures, suggestin...
ListenDannel Jones, "An African in Imperial London: The Indomitable Life of A.B.C. Merriman-Labor" (Hurst, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1919 a man named Ohlohr Maigi died of tuberculosis in London, in deep poverty. He had arrived over a decade before in the imperial capital bearing different name, seeking education, fame and for...
ListenMel Scult, “The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan” (Indiana UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Indiana University Press, 2013), Mel Scult, professor emeritus at Brooklyn College, explores the ways in which Mordecai Kaplan, the only rabbi...
ListenBrian Cremins, "Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia" (UP of Mississippi, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Cremins' book Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) explores the history of Billy Batson, a boy who met a wizard that allowed him to transform into a...
ListenMichael Broer, “Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny” (Pegasus, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most biographers writing about the life and achievements of Napoleon Bonaparte have focused on his dramatic personality or his military campaigns. In Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny (Pegasus, 2015) th...
ListenJohn West, "Dryden and Enthusiasm: Literature, Religion and Politics in Restoration England" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Dryden is often regarded as one of the most conservative writers in later seventeenth-century England, a time-serving “trimmer” who abandoned his early commitments to the English Republic to b...
ListenIngrid Carlberg, “Raoul Wallenberg: The Biography” (MacLehose Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What makes a person? What makes an act heroic? And what determines a person’s fate? These are the questions driving the narrative in Ingrid Carlberg‘s new book, Raoul Wallenberg: The Biography (Mac...
ListenErika Dyck, "Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked with historian Erika Dyck about Aldous Huxley, Humphry Osmond and their correspondence over a ten year period. Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond (...
ListenPeter L. Laurence, “Becoming Jane Jacobs” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Peter L. Laurence is an associate professor of urban design, history and theory at Clemson University School of Architecture. His book Becoming Jane Jacobs (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) ...
ListenBarbara K. Gold, "Perpetua: Athlete of God" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the first and most famous of Christian martyrs was Perpetua, who died in Carthage in the early 3rd century CE. Though there is no record of her life beyond the details contained in a single ...
ListenHarlan Lebo, “Citizen Kane: A Filmmakers Journey” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Considered by many to be the greatest American film ever made, Citizen Kane was the product of Orson Welles, who made a movie that is still groundbreaking today. In his new book Citizen Kane: A Fil...
ListenLinda M. Grasso, "Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe and Twentieth-Century Feminism" (U New Mexico Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Linda M. Grasso's Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe & Twentieth-Century Feminism (University of New Mexico Press, 2017) provides an in-depth look at O'Keeffe's ambivalent relationship with femi...
ListenKate Bolick, “Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own” (Crown, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“There still exists little organized sense of what a woman’s biography or autobiography should look like,” Carolyn G. Heilbrun wrote in her 1988 classic, Writing A Woman’s Life, noting, “Even less ...
ListenQuincy D. Newell, "Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"Dear Brother," Jane Manning James wrote to Joseph F. Smith in 1903, "I take this opportunity of writing to ask you if I can get my endowments and also finish the work I have begun for my dead .......
ListenShai Held, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence” (Indiana UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (Indiana University Press, 2013), Shai Held, Co-Founder, Dean and Chair in Jewish Thought at Mechon Hadar, offers a sympathetic, yet critical, e...
ListenStephen Fritz, "The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader (Yale University Press, 2018), Stephen Fritz professor of history at East Tennessee State University reexamines Hitler as a military ...
ListenJulie Des Jardins, “Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man” (Oxford University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In anticipation of Super Bowl 50, Sports Illustrated and WIRED magazines teamed up to speculate about the state of football fifty years from now, at the time of Super Bowl 100. Of course, the big q...
ListenJohn W. Tweeddale, "John Owen and Hebrews: The Foundation of Biblical Interpretation" (T and T Clark, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Owen is one of the most significant seventeenth-century Protestant theologians. He is often discussed by historians of politics and religion in terms of his contributions to the national churc...
ListenSarah Maza, “Violette Noziere: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris” (U. of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On August 21, 1933, the teenaged Violette Noziere attempted to kill both her parents. At first, seemingly so clearcut, the case ultimately came to be characterized by a “troubling ambiguity” that ...
ListenNico Slate, "Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind" (U Washington Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Nico Slate, professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, about the intersections between diet, spirituality, health, and politics for one of ...
ListenJohn Allen Paulos, “A Numerate Life” (Prometheus Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Allen Paulos, who has accomplished the unheard-of double of writing best-sellers about mathematics and inserting a word (‘innumeracy’) into the language, has attempted another ambitious feat –...
ListenMatthew W. King, "Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After the fall of the Qing empire, amid nationalist and socialist upheaval, Buddhist monks in the Mongolian frontiers of the Soviet Union and Republican China faced a chaotic and increasingly uncer...
ListenMegan Marshall, “Margaret Fuller: A New American Life” (Mariner Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Megan Marshall is the Charles Wesley Emerson College Professor in writing, literature and publishing. Her book Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Mariner Books, 2013) won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize...
ListenPeter B. Josephson and R. Ward Holder, "Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and Democracy in America in the Twenty-First Century" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Peter Josephson and Ward Holder collaborated on their second book on theologian and political theorist Reinhold Niebuhr in producing this new book, specifically focusing on the questions of “why Ni...
ListenJames E. Strick, “Wilhelm Reich, Biologist” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Life must have a father and mother…Science! I’m going to plant a bomb under its ass!” The author of the line above – who scrawled it in his private diary in the midst of a series of experiments i...
ListenHarold J. Cook, "The Young Descartes: Nobility, Rumor, and War" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Harold J. Cook talks about the travels and trials of the young Descartes, a man who spent as much time traveling and fighting as he did studying philosophy. Cook is John F. Nickoll Professor of His...
ListenMinghui Hu, “China’s Transition to Modernity: The New Classical Vision of Dai Zhen” (U of Washington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Minghui Hu‘s new book takes Dai Zhen as a case study to look at broader transformations in classical scholarship, technical methodologies, politics, and their relationships in the Qing period. This...
ListenNikolai Krementsov, "With and Without Galton: Vasilii Florinskii and the Fate of Eugenics in Russia" (Open Book Publishers, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With and Without Galton: Vasilii Florinskii and the Fate of Eugenics in Russia (Open Book Publishers, 2018), Professor Nikolai Krementsov’s recent history of Russian eugenics, reflects on a broad p...
ListenKecia Ali, “The Lives of Muhammad” (Harvard UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Muhammad is remembered in a multitude of ways, by both Muslims and non-Muslims. And through each retelling we learn a great deal not only about Muhammad but about the social milieu of the authors. ...
ListenWilliam Poole, "Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost" (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) is widely recognised as the greatest epic poem in the English language – and it is buried in the commentary of thousands of other texts. William Poole, who is Joh...
ListenDaisy Hay, “Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli: A Strange Romance” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As I imagine most any biographer will tell you, one of the great joys and privileges of biographical research is using archives. This is where one encounters tangible pieces of the subject’s life- ...
ListenJoan Watts, "The Collected Letters of Alan Watts" (New World Library, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alan Watts (1915-1973) was one of the first to interpret Eastern wisdom for a Western audience. Joan Watts, Alan's eldest daughter, is the co-editor (along with her sister, Anne) of the new volume,...
ListenDonald Dewey, “Lee J. Cobb: Characters of an Actor” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Lee J. Cobb: Characters of an Actor (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014),Don Dewey discusses Lee J. Cobb’s career, both from his importance as a character actor and follower of the Method...
ListenJeffrey S. McDonald, "John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America" (Pickwick, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most important trends within evangelicalism over the last half-century has been a renewal of Reformed theology. In this important new book, Jeffrey S. McDonald, who is a Presbyterian pas...
ListenSally G. McMillen, “Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life” (Oxford University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sally G. McMillen is the Mary Reynolds Babcock professor of history at Davidson College. In her book Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life (Oxford University Press, 2015) McMillen has given us a rich bi...
ListenAnne Watts, "The Collected Letters of Alan Watts" (New World Library, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anne Watts is one of the co-editors of the new book, The Collected letters of Alan Watts, released in January 2018 from New World Library. Anne Watts is a facilitator and educator who is committed ...
ListenMeryle Secrest, “Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography” (Knopf, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As Meryle Secrest notes in the introduction to her new book, Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography (Knopf, 2014),”The most extraordinary fashion designer of the twentieth century is now just a name on a p...
ListenKenneth I. Helphand, "Lawrence Halprin" (Library of American Landscape History, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During a career spanning six decades, Lawrence Halprin (1916–2009) became one of the most prolific and outspoken landscape architects of his generation. He took on challenging new project types, de...
ListenMichael Leggiere, “Blucher: Scourge of Napoleon” (U Oklahoma Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I have really enjoyed Michael Leggiere‘s earlier work, including the excellent Napoleon and Berlin : The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813 (2002), like this work, part of the Campaigns and...
ListenPu Wang, "The Translatability of Revolution: Guo Moruo and Twentieth-Century Chinese Culture" (Harvard Asia Center, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With questions over how ideas are translated across borders and between languages as acute as ever today, it is sometimes easy to forget that our efforts to understand each other are mediated throu...
ListenThomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thomas Kemple‘s new book is an extraordinarily thoughtful invitation to approach Max Weber (1864-1920) as a performer, and to experience Weber’s work by attending to his spoken and written voice. I...
ListenRené Weis, "The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis" (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though she died in 1847 at a young age, Marie Duplessis inspired one of the greatest operas ever composed. In The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis (Oxford University Press, 2015), René We...
ListenNick Wilding, “Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge” (U Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nick Wilding‘s new book is brilliant, thoughtful, and an absolute pleasure to read. Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and The Politics of Knowledge (University of Chicago Press, 2014) takes an ...
ListenHarold Holzer, "Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French" (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Harold Holzer has written a biography of one of America’s greatest public artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Daniel Chester French. In Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel ...
ListenJustin Martin, “Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians” (Da Capo Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Biography is, both etymologically and in its conventional forms, the writing of a life. But what is the role of place within that? And how do the stories of lives- some of them well known, others l...
ListenAnand Prahlad, "The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir" (U Alaska Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, is his story. For the first four years of his li...
ListenAlina Garcia-Lapuerta, “La Belle Creole” (Chicago Review Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the fundamental functions of biography is the preservation of stories. But it also acts to resurrect the stories that may have fallen from view, reinvigorating the tales of people who, with ...
ListenRobert Matzen, "Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II" (GoodKnight Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Audrey Hepburn was justly known for her long acting career, yet her early life is largely unknown. In his book, Robert Matzen describes how she lived during the World War II period in Nazi-occupied...
ListenGeorges Nzongola-Ntalaja, “Patrice Lumumba” (Ohio University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Patrice Lumumba was a leader of the independence struggle, as well as the country’s first democratically elected prime minister, in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After a meteo...
ListenMargaret Leslie Davis , "The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey" (TarcherPerigee, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Of the millions of books that have been published, few are as renowned or as coveted today by collectors as the famous Bible printed in the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg. In The Lost Gutenberg...
ListenJames Mace Ward, “Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia” (Cornell UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his biography of Jozef Tiso, Catholic priest and president of independent Slovakia (1939-1944), James Ward provides a deeper understanding of a man who has been both honored and vilified since h...
ListenKelly J. Beard, "An Imperfect Rapture" (Zone 3 Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many of you listening to this now probably recall growing up in a household of faith. You may have fond memories of the familiar rituals, the holidays, the shared family values. A weekly service at...
ListenS. Duncan Reid, “Cal Tjader: The Life and Recordings of the Man Who Revolutionized Latin Jazz” (McFarland, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
S. Duncan Reid has written a meticulously researched and detailed account of the performances and recording career of Bay Area-raised and small group Latin-jazz innovator and vibraphonist Cal Tjade...
ListenMickey and Dick Flacks, "Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mickey and Dick Flacks' new book Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers UP, 2018) is a chronicle of the political and personal li...
ListenJanet Sims-Wood, “Dorothy Porter Wesley at Howard University” (The History Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There was once a notion that black people had no meaningful history. It’s a notion Dorothy Porter Wesley spent her entire career debunking. Through her 43 years at Howard University, where she help...
ListenPatrick Sharma, "Robert McNamara’s Other War: The World Bank and International Development" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Robert McNamara is best remembered today for his momentous term as Secretary of Defense in the 1960s. Often overlooked because of this is his even longer tenure as president of the World Bank, one ...
ListenErnest Harsch, “Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary” (Ohio UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thomas Sankara, often called the African Che Guevara, was president of Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in Africa, until his assassination during a military coup that brought down his gov...
ListenBruce Van Orden, "We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout: The Life and Times of W. W. Phelps" (BYU, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a Latter Day Saint, you’ve probably heard of W. W. Phelps, and no doubt, you’ve probably sung some of his hymns. But did you know that he printed the Book of Commandments and other early ...
ListenRebecca Rogers, “A Frenchwoman’s Imperial Story” (Stanford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the early 1830s, the French school teacher Eugénie Luce migrated to Algeria. A decade later, she was a major force in the debates around educational practices there, insisting that not only wer...
ListenJoseph Vogel, "James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
By the 1980s, critics and the public alike considered James Baldwin irrelevant. Yet Baldwin remained an important, prolific writer until his death in 1987. Indeed, his work throughout the decade pu...
ListenKaren Abbott, “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War” (Harper, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If group biography is one of the exciting new trends in life-writing (and some say it is), Karen Abbott– the historian, not to be confused with the novelist-proves one of its deftest practitioners-...
ListenKurt Raaflaub, "The Landmark Julius Caesar: The Complete Works" (Pantheon, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
That the Roman leader Gaius Julius Caesar is so well remembered today for his achievements as a general is largely due to his skills as a writer. In The Landmark Julius Caesar: The Complete Works (...
ListenAdam Phillips, “Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst” (Yale UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For those who are savvy about all things psychoanalytic, be they analysts, analysands, or fellow travelers, the existence, presence, work, writing, and imprimatur of Adam Phillips is given long, as...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...
ListenJames Carter, “Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth-Century Monk” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jay Carter‘s new book follows the life of one man as a way of opening a window into the lived history of twentieth-century China. Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth-Cen...
ListenKent Blansett, "A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and Red Power" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Richard Oakes was a natural born leader whom people followed seemingly on instinct. Thus when he dove into the icy San Francisco Bay in the fall of 1969 on his way to Alcatraz Island, he knew other...
ListenTina Santi Flaherty, “What Jackie Taught Us” (Perigree Paperback, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Originally, particularly in American writings, one of the explicit purpose of biography was to teach readers how to live. As Scott E. Caspar writes in Constructing American Lives (1999), in ninetee...
ListenRichard Drake, "Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the first half of the 20th century the American historian Charles Austin Beard enjoyed both professional success and a national prominence that suffered with his outspoken opposition to the ...
ListenDonna-Lee Frieze, “Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin” (Yale UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s hard to overestimate the role of Raphael Lemkin in calling the world’s attention to the crime of genocide. But for decades his name languished, as scholars and the broader public devoted thei...
ListenSusan Carlile, "Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind" (U Toronto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though not as well known today as some of her literary contemporaries, Charlotte Lennox wrote numerous works during the mid-18th century that won her critical acclaim and influenced subsequent gene...
ListenLucy Hughes-Hallett, “Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War” (Knopf, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Winner of the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize, Lucy Hughes-Hallett‘s biography of Gabriele d’Annunzio is a book with a big mission: to write inventively about the life of someone with whom most everyone ...
ListenAmy Stanley, "Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World" (Scribner, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“To mother, from Tsuneno (confidential). I’m writing with spring greetings. I went to Kanda Minagawa-ch? in Edo—quite unexpectedly—and I ended up in so much trouble!” This letter, hidden in an arch...
ListenRonald L. Lewis and Robert L. Zangrando, "Walter F. White: The NAACP’s Ambassador for Racial Justice" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though overshadowed today by more celebrated figures, Walter Francis White was one of the most prominent campaigners for civil rights in mid-20th-century America. As Ronald L. Lewis and Robert L. Z...
ListenJonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, “HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton” (Crown Publishers, 2014). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes are the co-authors of authors of HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton (Crown Publishers 2014). Allen is White House bureau chief at Bloomberg; Parnes...
ListenJulius Margolin, "Journey Into the Land of the Zeks and Back: A Memoir of the Gulag" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Julius Margolin was a Polish Jew caught between the twin 1939 invasions of Poland by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. He spent the years 1940-1945 in Soviet labor camps, finally returning to his fam...
ListenFred S. Naiden, "Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Macedonian king Alexander III is best remembered today for his many martial accomplishments and the empire he built from them. Yet as Fred S. Naiden details in Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life ...
ListenWill Swift, “Pat and Dick: The Nixons, an Intimate Portrait of a Marriage” (Threshold Editions, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In America, biographies of Presidents and First Ladies are a staple of the genre, but the relationship that exists between the two receives surprisingly less exploration, as though the biographies ...
ListenRonald Grigor Suny, "Stalin: Passage to Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ronald Suny’s recent biography of the young Stalin, Stalin: Passage to Revolution (Princeton UP, 2020) covers “Soso” Jughashvili’s life up to the 1917 Revolution. Suny provides a wealth of detail a...
ListenRobin Wallace, "Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery" (UChicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Music lovers and researchers alike have long been fascinated by the story of Ludwig van Beethoven who became profoundly deaf as an adult and could not hear some of his most famous compositions incl...
ListenTimothy Shenk, “Maurice Dobb: Political Economist” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb is now largely forgotten. That’s too bad for a number of reasons. He was a brilliant thinker who wrote some of the most insightful analyses of the develop...
ListenMark Glancy, "Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend (Oxford University Press, 2020) tells the incredible story of how a sad, neglected boy became the suave, glamorous star many know and idolize. The first...
ListenMark T. Calhoun, "General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U.S. Army" (UP of Kansas, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Even now, eighty years after its beginning in Europe, the Second World War continues to exert tremendous cultural and social influence on American historical writing. Perhaps one of the best testam...
ListenRobert Neer, “Napalm: An American Biography” (Harvard UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Just as there is no one way to write a biography, nor should there be, so there is no rule dictating that biography must be about the life of a person. In recent years, the jettisoning of this trad...
ListenV. Nesfield and P. Smith, "The Struggle for Understanding: Elie Wiesel's Literary Works" (SUNY Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
An in-depth look at Elie Wiesel’s writings, from his earliest works to his final novels. Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) was one of the most important literary voices to emerge from the Holocaust. The Nazi...
ListenJulian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "greatest Englishman In history", then Charles de ...
ListenMichael O’Brien, ed., “The Letters of C. Vann Woodward” (Yale UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few historians have influenced their field the way that C. Vann Woodward (1908-99) changed the writing of southern history. First at Johns Hopkins and then at Yale, Woodward’s books, reviews, and m...
ListenTobias Harris, "The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan" (Hurst, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Abe Shinz? is seen today through many lenses: as the longest-serving prime minister in the history of Japan; as a pragmatic leader with a consistent policy vision and a commitment to the art of sta...
ListenDavid Dayen, "Fat Cat: The Steve Mnuchin Story" (Strong Arm Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did a Wall Street executive and “foreclosure king” like Steve Mnuchin become the Treasury Secretary for a populist like Donald Trump, and what is he doing to the country now that he’s there? Da...
ListenAdam Henig, “Alex Haley’s Roots: An Author’s Odyssey” (2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alex Haley’s 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family still stands as a memorable epic journey into the history of African Americans during the enslavement period and after. The 1977 televis...
ListenJon Hoover, "Ibn Taymiyya" (Oneworld, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ibn Taymiyya is one of the most prolific and influential Islamic thinkers to date, and was even the only pre-modern Muslim author cited in the 9/11 Report. His supporters and detractors alike have ...
ListenAndrew R. Murphy, "William Penn: A Life" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While William Penn’s name is one familiar to many Americans thanks to his founding of the Pennsylvania colony, this accomplishment can overshadow both his role as a leading 17th-century English Qua...
ListenPatricia Ebrey, “Emperor Huizong” (Harvard University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Patricia Ebrey‘s beautifully written and exhaustively researched new book introduces readers to an emperor of China as artist, collector, father, ruler, scholar, patron, and human being. Emperor Hu...
ListenCraig Keener, "Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels" (Eerdmans, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Are the canonical Gospels historically reliable? The four canonical Gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of these Gospels were intentional in how they handled hi...
ListenNicholas Bauch, "Geography of Digestion: Biotechnology and the Kellogg Enterprise" (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While most people in the US are familiar with the ubiquitous Kellogg cereal brand, few know how it relates to US geography, science and technology around the turn of the 20th century. In A Geograph...
ListenLauren Coodley, “Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Everybody knows the author of The Jungle was Upton Sinclair (or, if they’re a little confused, they might say Sinclair Lewis). As Lauren Coodley shows in her new biography Upton Sinclair: Californ...
ListenJohn Lobell, "Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy" (Monacelli Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For everyone interested in the enduring appeal of Louis Kahn, this book demonstrates that a close look at how Kahn put his buildings together will reveal a deeply felt philosophy. Louis I. Kahn is ...
ListenJoe Jackson, "Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary" (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Black Elk witnessed some of the most monumental moments in the history of the Lakota and the Northern Great Plains: Red Cloud’s War, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the murder of Crazy Horse, Wou...
ListenClare Mulley, “The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville” (St. Martin’s, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s almost a cliché by now to say that we need stories of strong women, but that doesn’t lessen the fact that we do. And biography is a field uniquely poised to transmit such stories- of compelli...
ListenBonny H. Miller, "Augusta Browne: Composer and Woman of Letters in Nineteenth-Century America" (U Rochester Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Born around 1820, Augusta Browne was a pianist, organist, composer, music pedagogue, entrepreneur, music critic, and writer. In Augusta Browne: Composer and Woman of Letters in Nineteenth-Century A...
ListenLindsey Fitzharris, "The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine" (Scientific American, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Joseph Lister changed the world of medicine. In her book The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine (Scientific American, 2017), Dr. Lindsey Fitzh...
ListenXolela Mangcu, “Biko: A Life” (Tauris, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Host Jonathan Judaken speaks with Xolela Mangcu, biographer of Anti-Apartheid leader Steve Biko, about the life and murder of Steve Biko, as well as the struggle for equality in South Africa under ...
ListenEllen Wayland-Smith, "The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ellen Wayland-Smith is an associate professor of writing at University of Southern California. Her book The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America (Universi...
ListenAndrew S. Curran, "Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely" (Other Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Denis Diderot has long been regarded as one of the leading figures of the French Enlightenment, thanks to his editorship of the influential multi-volume Encyclopédie. As Andrew S. Curran explains i...
ListenNeil McKenna, “Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England” (Faber & Faber, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There is no one way to write a biography, nor should there be. It’s a statement that seems obvious enough and yet one which is still, to some degree, casually combative. For biography has long bee...
ListenMaria Hinojosa, "Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America" (Atria Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly thirty years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media—from tales of hope in th...
ListenR. David Cox, "The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee" (Eerdmans, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most recent additions to the well-known and highly regarded Eerdmans series, the Library of Religious Biography, is The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee (Eerdmans, 2017), by R. David Cox,...
ListenLawrence J. Friedman, “The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet” (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Erich Fromm, one of the most widely known psychoanalysts of the previous century, was involved in the exploration of spirituality throughout his life. His landmark book The Art of Loving, which sol...
ListenMorris Ardoin, "Stone Motel: Memoirs of a Cajun Boy" (UP of Mississippi, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the summers of the early 1970s, Morris Ardoin and his siblings helped run their family's roadside motel in a hot, buggy, bayou town in Cajun Louisiana. The stifling, sticky heat inspired them to...
ListenJames R. Rush, "Hamka's Great Story: A Master Writer’s Vision of Islam for Modern Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From Indonesia’s declaration of independence in 1945 up until today, the relationship between Indonesian nationalism, Islam, and modernity has been a key subject of debate. One of the central figur...
ListenBrian Jay Jones, “Jim Henson: The Biography” (Ballantine Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the field of children’s programming, few people- with the possible exception of Fred Rogers- are as beloved as Jim Henson, a contributor to Sesame Street and Saturday Night Live, but most famous...
ListenBernice Lerner, "All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One was a teenage Jewish girl, forcibly transported from her home in Hungary to a Nazi concentration camp. The other was a British doctor, whose experiences serving in two world wars could not comp...
ListenAndrew Roberts, "Churchill: Walking With Destiny" (Viking, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For all of the books written about Winston Churchill, much remains to be said about his extensive life and career. In Churchill: Walking With Destiny(Viking, 2018), Andrew Roberts takes advantage o...
ListenThurston Clarke, “JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John F. Kennedy remains one of the most remembered and most enigmatic presidents in American history, perhaps precisely because, as Thurston Clarke writes in the preface of his new biography JFK’s ...
ListenErnest Freeberg, "A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and animal alike. The industrial city brought suffering, but it also inspired a co...
ListenPatricia O'Toole, "The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made" (Simon and Schuster, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Whether you love him or hate him, it is indisputable that few, if any, other 20th-century American presidents were as historically consequential as Woodrow Wilson. Historian Patricia O’Toole explor...
ListenPeter Savodnik, “The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union” (Basic Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For many people, the most important questions about the Kennedy assassination are “Who killed Kennedy?” and, if Lee Harvey Oswald did, “Was Oswald part of a conspiracy?” This is strange, because we...
ListenCharles F. Walker, "Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Charles F. Walker’s Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, 2020, is part of Oxford University Press’ Graphic History Series, which takes serious archival resear...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenMark R. Cheathem, “Andrew Jackson, Southerner” (Louisiana State University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do most Americans know about Andrew Jackson, apart from that he’s on the $20 bill and that he apparently had great hair? Probably not much. Maybe that he was a two-term president who pioneered...
ListenMelissa Valentine, "The Names of All the Flowers: A Memoir" (The Feminist Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Set in rapidly gentrifying 1990s Oakland, this memoir explores siblinghood, adolescence, and grief in a family shattered by loss. Melissa Valentine and her older brother Junior grow up running arou...
ListenDiarmaid MacCulloch, "Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life" (Viking, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite ranking among the most influential people in English history, Thomas Cromwell has long eluded biographers and historians. In Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life (Viking, 2018), though, Di...
ListenJeremy Dauber, “The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem” (Schocken, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The first comprehensive biography of famed Yiddish novelist, story writer and playwright Sholem Aleichem, Jeremy Dauber‘s welcome new book The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Aft...
ListenJerry Gershenhorn, "Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
James West speaks with Jerry Gershenhorn, Julius L. Chambers Professor of History at North Carolina Central University, about Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom S...
ListenAlec Nevala-Lee, "Astounding" (Dey Street Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alec Nevala-Lee’s Astounding is the first comprehensive biography of John W. Campbell, who, as a writer and magazine editor, wielded enormous influence over the field of science fiction in the mid-...
ListenElizabeth Winder, “Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953” (Harper, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is a struggle sometimes in biography to find new ways to write about subjects about whom many biographies have been written. This is particularly pronounced in the case of iconic figures of the ...
ListenIan Kumekawa, "The First Serious Optimist: A. C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics" (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The work of Alfred Charles Pigou may not be as well known to people today as that of his contemporary John Maynard Keynes, but as Ian Kumekawa details in his book The First Serious Optimist: A. C. ...
ListenPeter Zinoman, “Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung” (U California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over the course of the 1930s, Vietnamese author V? Tr?ng Ph?ng published eight novels, hundreds of works of narrative nonfiction, stories, plays, essays and articles. He was a best-selling writer i...
ListenSteven Usitalo, “The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov: A Russian National Myth” (Academic Studies Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mikhail Lomonosov is a well known Russian figure. As poet, geographer, and physicist, Lomonosov enjoyed access to the best resources that 18th century Russia had to offer. As a result, his contribu...
ListenD. Benge and N. Pickowicz, "The American Puritans" (Reformation Heritage Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival in the new world of the Mayflower, Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz have written a lively and accessible account of America’s earliest English immigr...
ListenJonathon Earle, “Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical Imagination in Africa” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical Imagination in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Dr. Jonathon Earle illustrates the rich and diverse in...
ListenSarah Churchwell, “Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of the Great Gatsby” (Virago, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One phenomenon of movies made of classic novels is that the movie often says a lot more about the time of its making than about the time of the novel. And so Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is more...
ListenLaura J. Arata, "Race and the Wild West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After Laura Arata first visited Virginia City, Montana in graduate school, she became fascinated by the story of one historical figure—Sarah Bickford, a former slave, who migrated to this frontier,...
ListenHoward W. Rosenberg, “Ty Cobb Unleashed: The Definitive Counter-Biography of the Chastened Racist” (Tile Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Howard W. Rosenberg, author of Ty Cobb Unleashed: The Definitive Counter-Biography of the Chastened Racist (Tile Books, 2018). In this deeply researched volume, Rosenberg ach...
ListenKees Boterbloem, “Moderniser of Russia: Andrei Vinius, 1641-1716” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you can read in any Russian history textbook, a series of seventeenth-century tsars culminating in Peter the Great attempted to “modernize” Russia. This is not false: the Romanovs did initiate a...
ListenAdriaan C. Neele, "Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706): Text, Context, and Interpretation" (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Adriaan Neele, who is director of the doctoral programme and Professor of Historical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, has edited an outstanding collection of essays on Petrus van ...
ListenPatrick Fuliang Shan, “Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal” (UBC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When he was elected president of China in 1912, Yuan Shikai was hailed as his nation’s George Washington, yet four years later he would die as the leader of a country in turmoil after a failed bid ...
ListenReza Aslan, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” (Random House, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Christians in the United States and around the world have varying images of Jesus, from one who turns the other cheek to one who brings the sword. Reza Aslan, in his highly popular and beautifully ...
ListenAnais Angelo, "Power and the Presidency in Kenya: The Jomo Kenyatta Years" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anais Angelo, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Vienna has written an exceptional book entitled Power and the Presidency in Kenya: The Jomo Kenyatta ...
ListenSue Prideaux, “I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche” (Tim Duggan Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Like most philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is better known for his ideas than for the life he led. In I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche (Tim Duggan Books, 2018), Sue Prideaux details the events ...
ListenCharlene M. Boyer Lewis, “Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is a celebrity? And how has the definition of celebrity changed over the course of American history? Those questions are central to Charlene M. Boyer Lewis‘s book Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte...
ListenRoman Deininger, "Markus Söder: The Shadow Chancellor" (Droemer Knauer, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Next year, Germany goes to the polls. For the first time in 15 years, Angela Merkel will not be a candidate for chancellor. Although a leadership election is underway inside Merkel’s Christian Demo...
ListenRoland Philipps, “A Spy Named Orphan: the Enigma of Donald Maclean” (W.W. Norton, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Donald Maclean was one of the most treacherous and productive – for Moscow spies of the Cold War era and a key member of the infamous “Cambridge Five” spy ring, yet the complete extent of this shy,...
ListenGayle K. Brunelle and Annette Finley-Croswhite, “Murder in the Metro: Laetitia Toureaux and the Cagoule in 1930s France” (LSU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The stories of individual lives are endlessly complex, weaving together the contemporary events, the surrounding culture, and incorporating random factual odds and ends. This is one of the challeng...
ListenJody A. Forrester, "Guns Under the Bed: Memories of a Young Revolutionary" (Odyssey Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is 1969 and Jody A. Forrester is in her late teens, transitioning from a Sixties love child to pacifist anti-Vietnam War activist to an ardent revolutionary. Guns Under the Bed: Memories of a Yo...
ListenKathryn Fuller-Seeley, “Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy” (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jack Benny was one of the first crossover stars in broadcast comedy, rising from the vaudeville circuit to star in radio, film, and television. Kathryn Fuller-Seeley chronicles Benny’s career in he...
ListenRobert Gerwarth, “Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich” (Yale UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few history books sell better than biographies of Nazi leaders. They attract anyone even tangentially interested in World War Two or Nazi Germany. It’s not surprising, then, that there are dozens ...
ListenAnne García-Romero, "The Fornes Frame" (U Arizona Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Fornes Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of Maria Irene Fornes (University of Arizona Press, 2016) playwright and theatre scholar Anne García-Romero traces the career and...
ListenDavid Pietrusza, “TR’s Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy” (Lyons Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Teddy Roosevelt had one of the most colorful lives in the American history, but few have deeply explored his final years. Historian David Pietrusza does just that in TR’s Last War: Theodore Rooseve...
ListenAmanda MacKenzie Stuart, “Empress of Fashion: Diana Vreeland, A Life” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The title says it all: Diana Vreeland was, in fact, that Empress of Fashion, reigning over Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute for half a century. As a re...
ListenMeg Heckman, "Political Godmother: Nackey Scripps Loeb and the Newspaper That Shook the Republican Party" (Potomac Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite her nearly two decades as the publisher of the largest newspaper in a politically pivotal state, the role of Nackey Scripps Loeb in American political and media history has been unjustly fo...
ListenPaul Bjerk, “Julius Nyerere” (Ohio University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Bjerk’s compact biography Julius Nyerere, published as part of the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series follows closely on the heels of his monograph on the same subject – Building a Peaceful...
ListenLogan Beirne, “Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency” (Encounter Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
You sometimes see bumper stickers that say “What would Jesus do?” It’s a good question, at least for Christians. You don’t see bumper stickers that say “What would Washington do?” But that, Logan ...
ListenPostscript: Shirley Chisholm as Principled Political Strategist from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America. “I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. “...
ListenDavid Stuttard, “Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Among the many personages associated with the Peloponnesian War, none are as colorful as the Athenian general Alcibiades. In Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens (Harvard University Press, 20...
ListenMichael Burlingame, “Abraham Lincoln: A Life” (Paperback; Johns Hopkins UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What can be gained from another biography of Abraham Lincoln? A lot, it turns out. Michael Burlingame has been researching the life and times of Abraham Lincoln during his entire career as a histor...
ListenTamar Herzig, "A Convert’s Tale: Art, Crime, and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance Italy" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Tamar Herzig, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, the Director of Tel Aviv University’s Morris E Curiel Institute for Europea...
ListenRuth Gamble, “Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism: The Third Karmapa and the Invention of a Tradition” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ruth Gamble’s Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism: The Third Karmapa and the Invention of a Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a thorough and accessible study on reincarnation, the tulku tr...
ListenJonathan Rauch, “Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul” (The Atlantic Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nature or nurture? Inborn or learned? Genetic or extra-genetic? Humans are so complicated that in many cases we can’t really know what is “in us” from the beginning and what is “acquired” as we lea...
ListenJoanna Stingray, "Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground" (Doppelhouse Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground (Doppelhouse Press, 2020) is Joanna Stingray’s autobiographical account of her time on the underground music scene in the USSR and Russia in th...
ListenWilliam Anthony Hay, “Lord Liverpool: A Political Life” (Boydell Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If Lord Derby was the ‘forgotten Prime Minister’ and Andrew Bonar-Law was the ‘Unknown Prime Minister’ then Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who was Britain’s longest serv...
ListenKathryn Livingston, “Lilly: Palm Beach, Tropical Glamour, and the Birth of a Fashion Legend” (Wiley, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s rare that a person’s name comes to represent an object, but such is the case with Lilly Pulitzer. Just say ‘Lilly’ and it conjures images of simple sheath dresses in vivid colors. But what of ...
ListenAudrey Truschke, “Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For many, the history of the Mughal empire looms heavy over contemporary South Asian social imaginaries. The lightning rod figure within modern day myths about the past is the Mughal emperor Aurang...
ListenBrian D. Laslie, “Architect of Air Power: General Laurence S. Kuter and the Birth of the U.S. Air Force” (UP of Kentucky, 2017. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We have all seen pictures of the “Big Three” (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) at their historic meeting Yalta in February 1945. The three leaders command the viewer’s attention, naturally, but in the...
ListenJohn E. Joseph, “Saussure” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pretty much everyone who’s done a linguistics course has come across the name of Ferdinand de Saussure – a name that’s attached to such fundamentals as the distinction between synchrony and diachro...
ListenMarion Bower, "The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. She came to prominence in the world of psychoanalysis as Freud’s favorite translator and Melanie Klein’s earlie...
ListenJonathan W. White, “Lincoln on Law, Leadership, and Life” (Cumberland House, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan W. White, an associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, is the author of Lincoln on Law, Leadership, and Life (Cumberland House, 2015). In this work White r...
ListenJennifer Keishin Armstrong, “Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted” (Simon & Schuster, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Forty years after its debut, The Mary Tyler Moore Show remains one of the most beloved and successful television sitcoms of all time. But Jennifer Keishin Armstrong‘s Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted...
ListenCrawford Gribben, "An Introduction to John Owen: A Christian Vision for Every Stage of Life" (Crossway, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though theology is often regarded as dealing primarily with abstract issues of belief, the prolific 17th-century English Puritan John Owen focused much of his attention on the role of Christian fai...
ListenSeymour M. Hersh, “Reporter: A Memoir” (Knopf, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In about 1978, I found myself in my high school library. I don’t know why I was there except to say I was probably on detention; I didn’t do a lot of reading in those days. In any event, I was wand...
ListenLisa Chaney, “Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a reader, biography offers not simply an opportunity to read about the life of another, but also an invitation to ponder the choices that are available in life, the choices that comprise a life....
ListenVictoria de Grazia, "The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy (Belknap Press), Dr. Victoria de Grazia takes the story of Attilio Teruzzi and explores the social hi...
ListenMarc Leeds, “The Vonnegut Encyclopedia” (Delacorte Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Originally published in 1994, Marc Leeds’ The Vonnegut Encyclopedia (Delacorte Press, 2016) was initially conceived of as a comprehensive A-Z guide to the expansive oeuvre of the American author Ku...
ListenCarl Rollyson, “Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews” (University Press of Mississippi, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dana Andrews was one of the major films stars of the 1940s, and yet he was never nominated for an Academy Award. The posterboy for the ‘male mask’ archetype that typified the decade, Andrews portra...
ListenCharisse Burden-Stelly, "W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History" (ABC-CLIO, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why is the scholarship and advocacy work of W.E.B. Du Bois so relevant for 21st century politics? Does his unique combination of both serve as a possible template for today’s freedom movements? Dr....
ListenRichard A. Billows, “Before and After Alexander: The Legend and Legacy of Alexander the Great” (The Overlook Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The achievements of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great are often presented as primarily the work of a singular genius. As Richard A. Billows demonstrates in his book Before and After Alex...
ListenLois Rudnick, “The Suppressed Memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan” (University of New Mexico Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The art salon is sadly less prevalent in our day than in days past, but it is far from obsolete. In its heyday, the salon provided people- particularly women Natalie Barney, orPerle Mesta)- with an...
ListenAlicia Turner, "The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Buddhism has always been a world religion, but its popularity in the West really dates only from the late nineteenth century, when much of the Buddhist world was subject to European colonial rule. ...
ListenBrian Abrams, “Obama: An Oral History, 2009-2017” (Little A, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Abrams interviewed more than 100 people – Democrats, Republicans, cabinet officials, White House aides, campaign operatives, congresspeople and activists – to piece together a comprehensive o...
ListenChip Bishop, “The Lion and the Journalist: The Unlikely Friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Bucklin Bishop” (Lyons Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s a great advantage of a dual biography that one can draw attention to a significant life that might otherwise be unexamined by linking it to the life of someone famous. Such is the case with Ch...
ListenJ. E. Zelizer, "Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party" (Penguin, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican party. What many people forget, however, is tha...
ListenJenny Hale Pulispher, “Swindler Sachem: The American Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, and Conned the King of England” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Swindler Sachem: The American Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, and Conned the King of England (Yale University Press, 2018), Brigham Young University Associate Professor J...
ListenBob Spitz, “Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child” (Knopf, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I confess I knew nothing about Julia Child prior to reading Bob Spitz‘s new book. And yet, from the dramatic opening passages through its 500+ pages, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child (Kno...
ListenThomas A. Schwartz, "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography" (Hill and Wang, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised--and reviled--public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worker" for his peacemaking in the Middle East, purs...
ListenBob Brody, “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age” (Heliotrope Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There comes a time in every man’s life when he’s got to grow up. Personally, I found growing up very hard. I went to college and fell in love with it. And what’s not to love? You meet really intere...
ListenJean Zimmerman, “Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The portrait is startling. Painted by John Singer Sargent, “Mr. and Mrs. I.N. Phelps Stokes” depicts a woman dressed casually, almost masculinely, save a voluminous white skirt. Her hand is held br...
ListenA. Meleagrou-Hitchens, "Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anwar al-Awlaki was, according to one of his followers, “the main man who translated jihad into English.” By the time he was killed by an American drone strike in 2011, he had become a spiritual le...
ListenDuane W. Roller, “Cleopatra’s Daughter: And Other Royal Women of the Augustan Era” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For the most part women in the classical world have suffered from what Duane W. Roller terms “near-invisibility,” obscuring the consequential roles that at times they played in government and polit...
ListenCory MacLauchlin, “Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces” (Da Capo, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’ve spent any time in New Orleans, you can appreciate the challenge of putting the city’s joie de vivre into words.However, as a New Orleans native, John Kennedy Toole was steeped in the trad...
ListenVanessa Valdés, “Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg” (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As every scholar of African Americans knows, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is an essential resource for black history. But who was Schomburg? In Diasporic Blackness: The L...
ListenPaul Gutjahr, “Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I was in Seminary I was assigned many theological tomes to read and one was especially difficult to get through. It was Systematic Theology by Charles Hodge. This work was dense, long, and I m...
ListenSteven C. Smith, "Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to ...
ListenJoanna M. Williams, “Manchester’s Radical Mayor: Abel Heywood, The Man Who Built the Town Hall” (The History Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today, the Neo-Gothic Manchester Town Hall stands as one of the notable architectural features of England’s second city. It also serves, however, as a towering monument to the career of Abel Heywoo...
ListenDave Oliphant, “KD: A Jazz Biography” (Wings Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Texas poet/author/historian Dave Oliphant‘s KD: A Jazz Biography (Wings Press, 2012) is a poetic tribute to the life of Jazz trumpeter and one of the original Jazz Messengers, Kenny Dorham. Dorham,...
ListenBenjamin Talton, "In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics" (Pennsylvania UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press) by Benjamin Talton is a transnational history that explores the influence of African America...
ListenMirjam Zadoff, “Werner Scholem: A German Life” (U Penn Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Werner Scholem: A German Life (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Mirjam Zadoff, Director of the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, presents a biography of ...
ListenKate Buford, “Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe” (Bison Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you watched the U.S. broadcast of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, you may have heard Matt Lauer and Bob Costas mention Jim Thorpe during Sweden’s entrance. Thorpe, arguably the b...
ListenLucas E. Morel, "Lincoln and the American Founding" (SIUP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Four score and seven years ago…” Those are some of the most famous words in American history. Most of us know that President Abraham Lincoln spoke them in what is now known as the Gettysburg Addre...
ListenJohn Mackay, “The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Riches in the American West” (Scribner, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Mackay’s life began humbly, immigrating as a child from an impoverished Irish household to New York City where he worked selling newspapers in the streets. Within four decades, he was a stakeh...
ListenAnne Sebba, “That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor” (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor is more often than not presented as a great love story: she is the woman for whom the King gave up the throne. It’s precisely this oversimplifica...
ListenDuane Tananbaum, "Herbert H. Lehman: A Political Biography" (SUNY Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over the course of three decades of public service, Herbert Lehman dedicated himself tirelessly to advances the causes in which he believed. In Herbert H. Lehman: A Political Biography (SUNY Press,...
ListenPhil Proctor and Brad Shreiber, “Where’s my Fortune Cookie?” (Blurb, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Firesign Theatre co-founder Phil Proctor shares stories from his life and career in his new memoir, Where’s My Fortune Cookie? (Blurb, 2017) co-written with Brad Shreiber. In Where’s My Fortune Coo...
ListenElizabeth Goldsmith, “The King’s Mistresses” (PublicAffairs, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As Elizabeth Goldsmith writes in The King’s Mistresses: The Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna, and Her Sister Hortense, Duchess Mazarin (PublicAffairs, 2012), the Mazarin sisters w...
ListenRae Linda Brown, "Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1933, the Chicago Symphony performed the Symphony in E Minor by Florence B. Price. It was the first time a major American orchestra played a composition by an African American woman. Despite her...
ListenRobert Dallek, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life” (Viking, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Although commonly regarded as one of the three or four greatest Presidents and certainly the greatest of the 20th century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has not had as much attention devoted to his lif...
ListenNancy Hargrove, “T.S. Eliot’s Parisian Year” (University of Florida Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When it comes to writers and artists, biography plays a provocative role–yielding insight into both artistic influences and origins. This is especially true with the modernists, in particular T.S. ...
ListenPolly E. Bugros McLean, "Remembering Lucile: A Virginia Family's Rise from Slavery and a Legacy Forged a Mile High" (UP of Colorado, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1918 Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Jones received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, becoming its first female African American graduate (though she was not allowed to "walk" at g...
ListenFrank L. Holt, “The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most studies of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander III focus on the military aspects of his life and reign. Yet Alexander’s campaigns would not have been possible had it not been for the enormous p...
ListenSally Bedell Smith, “Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch” (Random House, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The second-longest reigning British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II has always remained an elusive figure, a monumental accomplishment given the media attention focused upon her family. In her new book...
ListenBarry Witham, "From Red-Baiting to Blacklisting: The Labor Plays of Manny Fried" (SIU Press 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From Red-Baiting to Blacklisting: The Labor Plays of Manny Fried (SIU Press 2020) collects three plays by Manny Fried alongside a thorough explanation of his work and life by theatre scholar Barry ...
ListenRoger Biles, “Mayor Harold Washington: Champion of Race and Reform in Chicago” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Harold Washington’s election as mayor of Chicago in 1983 sent a shockwave through the politics of America’s third largest city, one that reverberated for decades afterward. Yet as Roger Biles descr...
ListenGregory McNamee, “The Only One Living to Tell: The Autobiography of a Yavapai Indian” (University of Arizona Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Late in 1872, as the United States sought to clear the newly incorporated Southwest of its indigenous inhabitants, a company under Capt. James Burns came upon an encampment of Kwevkepayas (a branch...
ListenAmy Von Lintel, "Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime Texas Letters" (Texas A&M UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O’Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art teacher for the newly organized Amarillo Public S...
ListenSimon Kerry, “Lansdowne: The Last Great Whig” (Unicorn Publishing Group, 2018). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite having been Foreign Secretary, Secretary of State for War, Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India, Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne is one of th...
ListenKathryn Lofton, “Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In December of 2011, Oprah Winfrey appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about her new big plans and her inspirations for the future. Oprah replied, “For me at this particular time in my life I recog...
ListenNozomi Naoi, "Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan" (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nozomi Naoi’s Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020) is the first book-length English-language study of one of Japan’s iconic twenti...
ListenDenise Von Glahn, “Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life” (U Illinois Press, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are few living American classical composers for whom an academic biography has been published, but Libby Larsen deserves this type of study. At the opening of her book, Libby Larsen: Composin...
ListenEllen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr., “Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind” (Taylor Trade Publishing, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Much ink has been spilled in telling the story of the making of Gone With the Wind– be it the book, the movie, or the subsequent musicals and merchandise. So it’s not only refreshing but downright ...
ListenRussell J. A. Kilbourn, "The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino: Commitment to Style" (Wallflower Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Russell J. A. Kilbourn’s The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino: Commitment to Style (Wallflower Press, 2020) is the first comprehensive study published in the English-speaking world on one of the most com...
ListenNatalie Robins, “The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling (Columbia University Press, 2017), Natalie Robins examines the life of writer and socialite Diana Trilling (1905-1996). Trilling wrot...
ListenManning Marable, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” (Penguin, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nearly 50 years after his death, Malcolm X remains a controversial figure. An 8th grade dropout (he ditched school when a white teacher told him it was unrealistic for a black kid to dream of being...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 9: Vanity of Vanities from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, I look at Eisler’s last days in England, where he found that the Oxford readership he had been promised before being sent to Dachau was taken by someone else, a paper shortage had ...
ListenVictor Li, “Nixon in New York: How Wall Street Helped Richard Nixon Win the White House” (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1962 Richard Nixon suffered a humiliating defeat in the California gubernatorial election, one that led him to declare an end to his career in politics. What followed was one of the most remarka...
ListenPaul Dickson, “Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick” (Walker & Company, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mention the name Bill Veeck to a baseball fan and what will likely come to mind is the back-and-white image of three-foot, seven-inch Eddie Gaedel at the plate of a Major League game, swimming in h...
ListenTheresa Kaminski, "Dr. Mary Walker's Civil War: One Woman's Journey to the Medal of Honor and the Fight for Women's Rights" (Lyons Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Among the tens of thousands of Americans who volunteered their services during the Civil War was Mary Walker, a daring young woman who was one of the handful of female doctors in the nation at that...
ListenHans-Lukas Kieser, “Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a graduate student, I spent quite a bit of time explaining to people how we needed to pay much more attention to the history of World War One in the East. What I didn’t realize is that we neede...
ListenRobert K. Fitts, “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are three Americans in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. One is Horace Wilson, the professor of English who brought his students outside for a game in 1872, thus introducing baseball to Jap...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 8: A Very Difficult Man to Kill from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March of 1938, Robert Eisler wrote to Oxford asking about being appointed to the Wilde Readership in Comparative and Natural Religion, thereby...
ListenJacqueline Jones, “Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical” (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The award-winning author Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History at the University of Texas. Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical (Basic...
ListenLeslie Brody, “Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford” (Counterpoint Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For years, biographers have been fascinated by the Mitfords, a quiet aristocratic British family with six beautiful daughters, nearly all of them famous for their controversial and stylish lives. ...
ListenAri Linden, "Karl Kraus and The Discourse of Modernity" (Northwestern UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Karl Kraus and The Discourse of Modernity (Northwestern University Press, 2020), Ari Linden analyzes Karl Kraus’s oeuvre while engaging in the conversation about modernism and modernity, which i...
ListenWilliam E. Ellis, “Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of an American Humorist” (UP of Kentucky, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today Irvin S. Cobb is remembered primarily as an author of humorous tales about life in Kentucky. Yet as William E. Ellis describes in his book Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of an American Humo...
ListenKaren Abbott, “American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee” (Random House, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a whole, the genre of biography trends towards linear narratives–wherein the events of a subject’s life are tracked in the order that they occurred. This makes sense, as it’s how we live our liv...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 7: The Christ Vision from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Robert Whitehead of London, a self-described “Business Man” who was “no Churchman and not a Jesus worshipper, much as I admire him,” wrote to Robert Eisler on New Year’s Eve of 1929, asking “if it ...
ListenLisa Walters, “Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science, and Politics” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a 17th-century noblewoman who became the first duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the writer and philosopher Margaret Cavendish has often been viewed as a royalist and a conservative within the con...
ListenWilliam Kuhn, “Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books” (Anchor Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nearly twenty years after the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, biographers are not only continuing to tell her story but finding provocative new ways to do so. In particular, a big bravo to Wil...
ListenA Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 6: Negative Interest from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Warning: Economics. In this episode, we begin with Eisler’s testimony before the skeptical Senators of the Committee on Banking and Currency in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 1934, in which he pro...
ListenRonald P. Loftus, “The Turn Against the Modern: The Critical Essays of Taoka Reiun (1870-1912)” (Association for Asian Studies, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Taoka Reiun (1870-1912) was a literary critic and thinker who was active from the early 1890s in Meiji period Japan. Not satisfied with the meaning of bunmei kaika (“civilization and enlightenment”...
ListenRobert F. Barsky and Noam Chomsky, “Zellig Harris: From American Linguistics to Socialist Zionism” (MIT Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Zellig Harris’s name is famous in linguistics primarily for his early work on transformational grammar and his influence on his most famous student, Noam Chomsky. However, much of his linguistic wo...
ListenAbigail Foerstner, “James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles” (University of Iowa Press, 2007) from 2008-02-27T00:12:12
This week we feature an interview with Abigail Foerstner about her new book, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles (University of Iowa Press, 2007). Dr. Foerstner teaches news writing and ...
ListenAbigail Foerstner, “James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles” (University of Iowa Press, 2007) from 2008-02-27T00:12:12
This week we feature an interview with Abigail Foerstner about her new book, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles (University of Iowa Press, 2007). Dr. Foerstner teaches news writing and ...
Listen