Shows / New Books in Biography & Memoir
New Books in Biography & Memoir
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Caroline Bicks, "Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King" (Hogarth, 2026)
After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maineʼs inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Paul French, "The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City" (St. Martin's Press, 2026)
The life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, often feels like a spectacle—in no small part due to the 1987 Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor. Yet the true…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Why the Roman Empire Fell: On Edward Gibbon with Hugh Liebert
250 years ago when the United States declared independence, Edward Gibbon across the ocean published the first volume of his magisterial series, The Decline…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Bridget Hourican on Frank Callanan's "James Joyce: A Political Life" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The young James Joyce (1882–1941) was forged in the smithy of Irish political controversies, and he took into his European exile a depth of political insight…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Sima Qian–China’s Grand Historian
John Ross chats with repeat guest Tim McGirk about Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BC), the Father of Chinese History. He earned this accolade for his monumental work…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Emma Parker, "Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) examines how autobiographical writing reflects the…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire with Simukai Chigudu
"In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a war in which…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Matthew Pinsker, "Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Norton, 2026)
We know Abraham Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jonathan Cheng, "Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult" (Knopf, 2026)
Of the two Koreas, it is the South which appears much the more Christian today, with all major cities dotted with church spires and illuminated crosses. But a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Abdelwahab Meddeb, "Returns to Marrakesh / Retour à Marrakech" (Syracuse UP, 2026)
Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Returns to Marrakesh, co-translated by Claudia Esposito and Laura Reeck and published by Syracuse University Press in 2026, chronicles…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
The Letters of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provocative…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English" (Yale UP, 2026)
Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed German…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer" (Henry Holt, 2025)
What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with acclaimed cultural…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Gayle F. Wald, "This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A pioneer in…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Sarah Kaminsky, "The Forger of Paris" (Doppelhouse Press, 2025)
The Forger of Paris (Doppelhouse Press, 2025) presents Adolfo Kaminsky’s biography in its only authorized edition, expanded with photographs from Kaminsky's…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Heidegger in Ruins
Martin Heidegger’s sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Rachel Phan, "Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging" (Douglas & McIntyre, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Rachel Phan about her powerful memoir, Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family & Belonging (Douglas &…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill, "Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story" (Da Capo, 2026)
With his shag haircut and white Stratocaster guitar, Jeff Beck was an icon known and loved by millions. Yet somehow, he maintained the ineffable low profile…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Ted Powell, "Churchill and the Crown" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Winston Churchill was born in a palace and was given a funeral worthy of a king. His family had enjoyed an intimate association with the British monarchy…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Rosa Campbell, "The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared: Shere Hite and the Hite Report" (Melville House, 2026)
Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory
In Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory (UNC Press, 2026), historian John Garrison Marks tells the story…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Thomas Paine at the Semiquincentennial: A Conversation with Gregory Claeys
Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (Princeton University Press, 2026) is the first major new edition of Paine’s works, bringing together all his writings in six…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Andrew Wilson, "I Wanna Be Loved By You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Takes" (Grand Central Publishing, 2026)
Publishing one hundred years after her birth, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe, I Wanna Be Loved By You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Takes (Grand…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Christopher de Bellaigue, "The Golden Throne: The Curse of a King" (Bodley Head, 2025)
What does a 16th century ruler reveal about the nature of power, past and present? Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Fred S. Naiden, "Railroaded: A Motorman’s Story of the New York City Subway" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
Fred S. Naiden, professor emeritus of history of at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is an authority on the ancient world. In the 1980s in New…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Thomas S. Mullaney, "How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information" (W. W. Norton, 2026)
This is the third time I have the great fortune of interviewing Tom Mullaney. I can hardly think of a more worthy ambassador for the history discipline, and…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Philip Norman, "Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles" (Da Capo Press, 2026)
Philip Norman's latest biography, Mr. Moonlight (DaCapo Press, 2026) is the definitive, comprehensive biography of Brian Epstein--the man who built the…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Xiaobing Li, "China’s Mahan: Admiral Liu Huaqing and the Rise of the Modern Chinese Navy (Naval Institute Press, 2026)
In 2012, China debuted its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a refurbished Soviet-era ship from Ukraine. The debut of the Liaoning was largely thanks to a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Where Harlem Rests at the Woodlawn Cemetery
A cemetery as open-air museum? Historian and award-winning author of Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Samantha Ellis, "Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture" (Pegasus Books, 2026)
I had the privilege of speaking with writer Samantha Ellis about her deeply moving new book, Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Emily Doucet, "Inventing Nadar: A History of Photographic Firsts" (Duke UP, 2026)
Félix Nadar took the first aerial photograph in 1858, so the story goes. The evidence, Emily Doucet notes, is mixed. In Inventing Nadar: A History of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Colin Flahive, "The Galaxy's Last Ride: Shifting Gears in Rural China" (Earnshaw Books, 2026)
Colin Flahive is an American entrepreneur and writer who has spent more than two decades living and running social enterprises in southwestern China. He is…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Ida Kinalska-Pietruska and Isabella Skrypczak, "A Polish Girl in Siberia: Surviving and Transcending Exile" (Disruption Books, 2026)
A memoir of a child’s forced relocation to Siberia under Stalin’s Gulag system reveals the potential for true human kindness in the face of extraordinary…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
The Legacy of Chaim Grade
Chaim Grade was born in 1910 in Vilna, Poland. In his youth, Grade was a student of the Novaredok Musar Yeshiva and of Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz. He was also a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
“America’s Founding Son”: Author & Musician Bob Crawford on the Life of John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams was the great visionary of America’s post-founding era, a writer and orator of consummate skill who reframed the origins and principles of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Natalia Rogach Alexander, "Growing People: The Enduring Legacy of John Dewey" (Columbia UP, 2025)
John Dewey is among history’s most celebrated thinkers on democracy and education, yet he has often been underappreciated and misunderstood as a philosopher…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Understanding Themistocles: A Discussion with Author Michael Scott
Themistocles is one of the great personages of ancient Athens, known for his heroics in warfare as well as for his overweening and ultimately tragic ambitions…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Andrea Gunraj, "Go-Between Girl: My Indentured Roots as Reclaimed Present" (McClelland & Stewart, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Andrea Gunraj about her collection of essays, Go-Between Girl: My Indentured Roots as Reclaimed…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mollie Barnes, "Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902" (U South Carolina Press, 2026)
In Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902 (U South Carolina Press, 2026), Dr. Mollie Barnes studies…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
A Divine Comedy: On Hollywood, Creativity, and Religion with Rob Long
Here in Episode 9 of Season 5, I interview Mr. Rob Long. A longtime Hollywood professional, he was a writer and producer for the classic sitcom Cheers as well…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me" (37 Ink, 2026)
The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It’s a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not only…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Steven Nadler, "Spinoza, Atheist" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In 1656, a young Amsterdam merchant was excommunicated by his Portuguese-Jewish community in the harshest terms it had ever used. Baruch Spinoza was accused of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Craig Fehrman, "This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)
In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey—having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Annette Gordon-Reed ed., "Jefferson on Race: A Reader" (Princeton UP, 2026)
From The New York Times–bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson’s…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Lauren W. Westerfield, "Woman House: Essays and Assemblages" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)
A compelling and inventive memoir exploring how pain and pleasure are passed down through generations of women For years, Lauren W. Westerfield looked back at…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)
For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this visionary filmmaker…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Tom Meschery, "The Mad Manchurian: From the Internment Camps of Tokyo to the Hardwood Courts of the NBA" (Coffeetown Press, 2025)
I was born in Harbin, Manchuria, (later China), in 1938. At the outbreak of the Second World War my mother, sister and I, along with other non-combatants of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Shannon McKenna Schmidt, "You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her" (Sourcebooks, 2026)
From the author of The First Lady of WWII comes You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Lucy Stewart, "The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden" (Birlinn, 2026)
As detailed in The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden (Birlinn, 2026) by Lucy Stewart, at the turn of the twentieth century, Scottish adventurer Ella…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mary Lucia, " What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
In What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To (U Minnesota Press, 2025) an iconic rock DJ of the Twin Cities tells her harrowing story of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Lerone Martin, "Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr." (Amistad, 2026)
We know who Martin Luther King Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism? Before Martin Luther…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Benjamin Y. Fong and Paul Prescod, "Rustin's Challenge" (2026)
There was no more trenchant and substantive critic of the Left from the Left in the 1960s and 1970s than Bayard Rustin. Some liberals and leftists today…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Nicholas Thompson, "The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports" (Random House, 2025)
In this episode, Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, and University of Puerto Rico professors Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Maritza Stanchich, discuss something…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Nicholas Tochka, "The Musical Lives of Charles Manson: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Invention of the Sixties" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Nicholas Tochka analyzes the role of rock music in the life of Charles Manson, the Family, and the August 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings, which also gives larger…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Roger Frie, "Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Erich Fromm, the prominent twentieth-century public intellectual and psychoanalyst, was recognized for his courageous stand against fascism, racism, and human…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Dylan Baun, "Beirut Radical: A Global Microhistory from the Sixties to the Lebanese Civil War" (I.B. Tauris, 2026)
Imad Yusuf Nuwayhid was born in 1944 in the Lebanese village of Ras al-Matn. He came of age in the 1960s, splitting time between Beirut and Europe. And he died…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Paola De Santo, "The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy" (U Delaware Press, 2026)
Paola de Santo joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy (U Delaware Press, 2026)…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mary Lisa Gavenas, "Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay" (Penguin, 2026)
As detailed in Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay (Penguin, 2026) by Mary Lisa Gavenas, as the only woman in Forbes’ Greatest Business Stories of All…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
William R. Brody, "Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
Today I’m speaking with William R. Brody about his book, Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways (Johns Hopkins University Press…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Douglas Waller, "The Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner" (Penguin, 2026)
Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it. Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials--his work largely hidden…