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
Yosie Levine, "Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate" (Littman Library, 2024)
My recent interview with Rabbi Dr. Yosie Levine about his book, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate (Littman Library…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Andrew Holter, ed., "Going Around: Selected Journalism / Murray Kempton" (Seven Stories Press, 2025)
From 1949 until his death in 1997, Murray Kempton was a distinct presence in New York City journalism. Peddling around town on a three-speed bicycle wearing a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Michael A. Meyer, "Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler" (CCAR Press, 2025)
Reform Judaism looks different today than it did a century ago. There are a lot of factors that lead to that change, but among these is Rabbi Alexander…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Noel Rubinton, "Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee" (Princeton UP, 2025)
John McPhee has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1965 and has written more than thirty acclaimed books that began on the magazine's pages. But few…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mayukh Sen, "Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star" (Norton, 2025)
In 2022, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. But she wasn’t the first actress of Asian origin to be…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Marc Shapiro, "Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New: The Unique Vision of Rav Kook" (Littman Library, 2025)
Rav Kook’s Vision: Halakhah, Secular Knowledge, and the Renewal of Judaism. Those of us who know something about Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook’s life and…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Annie Zaleski, "I Got You Babe: A Celebration of Cher" (Running Press Adult, 2025)
Covering her life and sixty-year career from Sonny & Cher to show-stopping solo performer, award-winning actress, fashion icon, and beyond, this is a glorious…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, "Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Gospel singer and seven-time Grammy winner Andraé Crouch (1942-2015) hardly needs introduction. His compositions--"The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power,"…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Elaine Pagels, "Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesus" (Doubleday, 2025)
Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Nechama Birnbaum, "The Redhead of Auschwitz: A True Story" (Amsterdam Publishers, 2021)
Rosie was always told her red hair was a curse, but she never believed it. She often dreamed what it would look like under a white veil with the man of her…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
John Lee Hooker Jr., "From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) is powerful memoir of redemption from the son of blues…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jerome Powell: “We don't think you're a straight shooter"
More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by…
New Books in Biography & MemoirJanet Yellen: “She had a view that the world was on fire”
More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates…
New Books in Biography & MemoirBen Bernanke: “Like being a paleontologist”
More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates…
New Books in Biography & MemoirAlan Greenspan: “The man who knew”
More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Alexandra Popoff, "Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century" (Yale UP, 2019)
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…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Chris Stowers, "Shoot, Ask...and Run" (Earnshaw Books Ltd, 2025)
Chris Stowers, longtime photographer, credits a fellow journalist for the title of his latest memoir, Shoot, Ask...and Run (Earnshaw, 2025). The journalist’s…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-brother…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)
In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, ed., "We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn" (U Notre Dame Press, 2025)
We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (U Notre Dame Press, 2025) brings together ten of Nobel Prize–winner Aleksandr…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Kayla E.'s "Precious Rubbish" (Fantagraphics Books, 2025)
Kayla E.’s Precious Rubbish (Fantagraphics, 2025), is an experimental graphic memoir drawn in a style that references the aesthetics of mid-century children’s…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Erica Stern, "Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story" (Barrelhouse Inc., 2025)
Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story (Barrelhouse Inc., 2025) is a genre-bending expedition into childbirth. Seamlessly blending memoir, fiction, and research…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Martha A. Sandweiss, "The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West" (Princeton UP, 2025)
A haunting image of an unnamed Native child and a recovered story of the American West In 1868, celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner traveled to…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Ulf Zander, "Raoul Wallenberg: Life and Legacy" (Lund UP, 2024)
Raoul Wallenberg: Life and Legacy (Lund UP, 2024) examines important events in the life of the Swedish diplomat, but this is not a traditional biography…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mark Doyle, "John Cale's Paris 1919" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of the Watergate…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Karen A. Frenkel, "Family Treasures: Lost & Found" (Post Hill Press, 2025)
In this captivating memoir, journalist Karen A. Frenkel unravels her parents' and sole surviving grandparent's secret, riveting stories of survival during…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Stephen J. Campbell, "Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Loretta Vandi, "Eufrasia Burlamacchi" (Getty Publications, 2025)
Eufrasia Burlamacchi (Getty Publications, 2025) by Dr. Loretta Vandi is a timely exploration of the skilful illuminated manuscripts of Sister Eufrasia…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Seán Creagh, "Republican Solipsist: The Life and Times of Joseph Mcgarrity, 1874-1940" (Peter Lang, 2025)
Seán Creagh was born in County Monaghan in 1977. He attended Our Lady’s Secondary School in Castleblayney and later on Dundalk Institute of Technology. After…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Michael Backus, "The Heart Is Meat: An 80s Memoir" (Oil on Water Press, 2025)
In the early 80s, New York City’s Gansevoort Meatpacking District, a small irregular patch of the West Village, was a wild confluence of meat market workers…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Martha S. Jones, "The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir" (Basic Books, 2025)
Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones’s right…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Miriam Haughton, "The Theatre of Louise Lowe" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Louise Lowe is a theatre and performance director, writer, choreographer, dramaturge, and, more recently, a television director and short film writer/director…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jason Cannon, "A Time for Reflection: The Parallel Legacies of Baseball Icons Willie McCovery and Billy Williams" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
Professional baseball has featured a bevy of superstars over the past century and a half, but only a few of them have impacted their sport and cities as deeply…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Letizia Osti, "History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writing the Past in Medieval Arabic Literature" (I. B. Tauris, 2024)
Abu Bakr al-Suli was an Abbasid polymath and table companion, as well as a legendary chess player. He was perhaps best known for his work on poetry and…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mikhail Goldis, "Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
What was it like to work as a Jewish district attorney in provincial Soviet Ukraine in the post-Stalinist eras? What role did antisemitism and Holocaust…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Donna Besel, "The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family" (U Regina Press, 2021)
In this NBN episode host Hollay Ghadery talks to bestselling author Donna Besel about her staggering memoir, The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Lincoln A. Mitchell, "Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco" (U Nevada Press, 2025)
Those who recognize Mayor George Moscone's name may think of him as the career politician who was assassinated along with Harvey Milk, but there was much more…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Simon Morrison, "Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer" (Yale UP, 2024)
Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Heather Akou, "Afterthought: A Family Story" (Indiana U Libraries, 2025)
Afterthought: A Family Story (Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Publishing, 2025) by Dr. Heather Akou focuses on the life of her grandmother, Lila…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jon Chapple, "Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer" (Blazing Sapphire Press, 2024)
Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer is an in-depth, spiritual biography of a British fighter pilot (WW I), Ronald Nixon (1898-1965). Raised in an…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Andrew Janiak, "The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2024) introduces the work and legacy of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Douglas Field, "Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father and I" (Manchester UP, 2024)
A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Patrick Beldio, "The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga" (Lexington Books, 2024)
The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga (Lexington Books, 2024) analyzes the contributions of the Mother (née Mirra Alfassa…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, "Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult" (Ibidem Press, 2014)
Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (Ibidem Verlag, 2014) is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Ariane Sherine, "The Real Sinéad O'Connor" (White Owl, 2024)
Sinéad O'Connor, renowned for her angelic voice and activism, overcame a tumultuous upbringing to become a global protest singer and advocate for social…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Rachelle Bergstein, "The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us" (Atria, 2024)
Everyone knows Judy Blume. Her books have garnered her fans of all ages for decades and sold tens of millions of copies. But why were people so drawn to them?…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa" (Chicago UP, 2023)
This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped shape the new…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Elizabeth T. Craft, "Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage" (Oxford UP, 2024)
George M. Cohan was one of those rare Broadway figures who was a composer, lyricist, playwright, performer, director, theater owner, and star actor. He could…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerbated…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, "Bong Joon Ho" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
Successful cult films like The Host and Snowpiercer proved to be harbingers for Bong Joon Ho's enormous breakthrough success with Parasite. In Bong Joon Ho (U…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Michael Visontay, "Noble Fragments: The Gripping Story of the Antiquarian Bookseller Who Broke Up a Gutenberg Bible" (Scribe, 2024)
One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg Bible, and…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Paul Lisicky, "Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell" (HarperOne, 2025)
Paul Lisicky remembers when he first heard Joni Mitchell on the radio, and when he found one of her records in a bin at Korvettes. He was inspired by her…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Isabel Moreira, "Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint" (Oxford UP, 2024)
This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Florence Martin, "Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) unfolds and analyzes the work of Moroccan director, producer, and scriptwriter Farida…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Blanche Bendahan, "Mazaltob: A Novel" (Brandeis UP, 2024)
Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mary Flannery, "Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
For over six centuries, Chaucer has epitomized poetic greatness, though more recent treatments of The Canterbury Tales’ lively and often risqué style have made…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Susan Tate Ankeny, "American Flygirl" (Citadel Press, 2024)
In 1931, Hazel Ying Lee, a nineteen-year-old American daughter of Chinese immigrants, sat in on a friend’s flight lesson. It changed her life. In less than a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Janet Sherfund, "Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me" (Worth, 2024)
Adoption is often painted as a happy, inspirational act—a baby finds a family and lives happily ever after. But the truth is that adopted children experience…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker
Our book is: The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) by Dr. Amy Reading, which is a lively and intimate biography of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Xian Wang, "Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs (U Michigan Press, 2025) takes readers on a journey through the…