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
David Tereshchuk, "A Question of Paternity: My Life As an Unaffiliated Reporter" (Envelope Books, 2024)
Today I talked to David Tereshchuk about his memoir A Question of Paternity: My Life As an Unaffiliated Reporter (Envelope Books, 2024) Tereshchuk leapt from a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Sara Glass, "Kissing Girls on Shabbat: A Memoir" (Atria, 2024)
Growing up in the Hasidic community of Brooklyn’s Borough Park, Sara Glass knew one painful truth: what was expected of her and what she desperately wanted…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Janusz Korczak, "How to Love a Child and Other Selected Works" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018)
How to Love a Child and Other Selected Works (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018) is the first comprehensive collection of Korczak's works translated into English. It…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Paul M. Renfro, "The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America" (UNC Press, 2024)
In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Rachel Zimmerman, "Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide" (SFWP, 2024)
Note: This episodes contains references to suicide. When a state trooper appeared at Rachel Zimmerman's door to report that her husband had jumped to his death…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
James M. Bradley, "Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Despite serving as the 8th president of the United States, Martin Van Buren gets little consideration for his impact on American history. In his new biography…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
John Duffus, "Backstage in Hong Kong: A Life with the Philharmonic, Broadway Musicals and Classical Superstars" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)
Today, the Hong Kong Philharmonic is one of the world’s great symphony orchestras. But when John Duffus landed in Hong Kong in 1979 as the Philharmonic’s…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Karine Rashkovsky, "An Improbable Life: My Father's Escape from Soviet Russia" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2024)
From evading the KGB and disassembling a downed American plane to narrowly escaping a life sentence in Siberia, Reuven Rashkovsky’s story is a gripping tale of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Douglas J. Engelman, "A Boy Broken: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Mental Illness, Loss, and a Search for Meaning" (2023)
In A Boy Broken: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Mental Ilness, Loss, and a Search for Meaning (2023), Dr. Douglas J. Engelman takes us through an often…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Avi Shlaim, "Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew" (Oneworld, 2024)
In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing from their beloved Iraq into the new state of Israel. Now the rump of a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mirin Fader, "Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon" (Hachette, 2024)
It’s now the norm for NBA and collegiate teams to have international players dotting their rosters. The Olympics are no longer a gimme for Team USA. Both via…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Phuc Tran, "Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In" (Flatiron Books, 2020)
For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In (Flatiron Books, 2020)…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Richard Schoch, "How Sondheim Can Change Your Life" (Atria Books, 2024)
For fans of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim is one of the true titans – the genius who brought us Sweeney Todd and West Side Story, Into the Woods, and…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Ronald Drabkin, "Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor" (William Morrow, 2024)
Frederick Rutland—”Rutland of Jutland”—was a war hero, renowned World War I aviator…and a Japanese spy. In the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, Rutland shared…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Rajbir Singh Judge, "Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia" (Columbia UP, 2024)
How do traditions and peoples grapple with loss, particularly when it is of such magnitude that it defies the possibility of recovery or restoration? Rajbir…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Sharon Kinoshita, "Marco Polo and His World" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
Sharon Kinoshita talks with Jana Byars about her new book, Marco Polo and His World (Reaktion Press, 2024). A lavishly illustrated tour of the famed…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Bob Frishman, "Edward Duffield: Philadelphia Clockmaker, Citizen, Gentleman, 1730-1803" (APS Press, 2024)
Edward Duffield (1730–1803) was a colonial Philadelphia clockmaker, whose elegant brass, mahogany, and walnut timekeepers stand proudly in major American…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
John Freed, “Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth” (Yale UP, 2016)
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)…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
S. L. Wisenberg, "The Adventures of Cancer Bitch" (Tortoise Books, 2024)
It’s 2006, and S. L. Wisenberg is teaching writing at one of Chicago’s great universities and living a busy life when she’s gobsmacked by a sudden cancer…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Amy Reading, "The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker" (Mariner Books, 2024)
In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker's midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Anne Higonnet, "Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution" (Norton, 2024)
Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, had nothing…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jennifer Lang, "Landed: A Yogi's Memoir in Pieces & Poses" (Vine Leaves Press, 2024)
In her latest memoir, Landed: A Yogi's Memoir of Places & Poses (2024, Vine Leaves Press), American-born Jennifer traces her journey-both on and off the yoga…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Suganya Anandakichenin, "The Monsoon Cloud: Poet Kāḷamēkam and His Irreverent Poetry" (Primus, 2024)
A wordsmith, an extempore poet and a satirist, Kāḷamēkam (also known as Kāḷamēka Pulavar; fifteenth century) is widely known for his taṉippāṭals or…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Oumelbanine Nina Zhiri, "Beyond Orientalism: Ahmad Ibn Qasim Al-Hajari Between Europe and North Africa" (U California Press, 2023)
The first in-depth study of the collaborative intellectual exchange between the European and the Arabic Republics of Letters. Beyond Orientalism: Ahmad Ibn…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jackie Wang, "Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood" (Semiotext(e), 2023)
Jackie Wang is a poet, scholar, multimedia artist, and Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Aliza Arzt, "Turning the Pages: Conversations Through Time with Rabbi Isador Signer" (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024)
Today I talked to Aliza Arzt about Turning the Pages: Conversations Through Time with Rabbi Isador Signer (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024) In 1924, Rabbi Isidor Signer…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Christopher Paul Clohessy, "Half of My Heart: The Narratives of Zaynab, Daughter of Alî" (Gorgias Press, 2020)
Today I talked to Christopher Paul Clohessy about Half of My Heart: The Narratives of Zaynab, Daughter of Alî (Gorgias Press, 2020). As Abû ʿAbd Allâh…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024)
In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action
Today’s book is: Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action (University of Rochester…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav, "Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood" (India Viking, 2024)
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav’s book Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood (Penguin Random House India, 2024) undertakes a systematic…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jane Little Botkin, "The Pink Dress: A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen" (She Writes Press, 2024)
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
William H. F. Altman, "Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic" (Lexington, 2012)
In Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington, 2012), William Altman shines a light on the pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Francis Stevens, "The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories" (MIT Press, 2024)
When three people in Philadelphia inhale dust developed by a scientist who has discovered parallel universes, they are transported into an interdimensional…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jack Palmer, "Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
Jack Palmer’s Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) invites us to reconsider a figure who…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy, "An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer" (Cornell UP, 2024)
In the city of New York from the 1930s to the 1990s, Irish attorney Paul O’Dwyer was a fierce and enduring presence in courtrooms, on picket lines, and in…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Tom Navon, "Radical Assimilation in the Face of the Holocaust: Otto Heller (1897–1945)" (SUNY Press, 2024)
This book explores the confrontation of radically assimilated Jews with the violent collapse of their envisioned integration into a cosmopolitan European…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" (FSG, 2024)
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jack Margolin, "The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army (Reaktion, 2024) exposes the history and the future of the Wagner Group, Russia’s notorious and secretive…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
William H. F. Altman, "The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism" (Lexington Books, 2010)
Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish emigrant to the United States, an author, professor and political philosopher. Born in 1899 in Kirchhain in the Kingdom of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Will Grant, "Populista: The Rise of Latin America's 21st Century Strongman" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Today I talked to Will Grant about his book Populista: The Rise of Latin America's 21st Century Strongman (Bloomsbury, 2021). or more than six decades, Fidel…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Philip Freeman, "Julian: Rome's Last Pagan Emperor" (Yale UP, 2023)
Today I talked to Philip Freeman about his new book Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (Yale UP, 2023). Flavius Claudius Julianus, or Julian the Apostate, ruled…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Grant Olwage, "Paul Robeson's Voices" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Paul Robeson's Voices (Oxford UP, 2023) is a meditation on Robeson's singing, a study of the artist's life in song. Music historian Grant Olwage examines…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Peter Rose, "The Good War of Consul Reeves" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)
Macau was supposed to be a sleepy post for John Reeves, the British consul for the Portuguese colony on China’s southern coast. He arrived, alone, in June…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice president…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Yaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019)
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…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Sara E. Johnson, "Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's Intellectual World" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2023)
If you peer closely into the bookstores, salons, and diplomatic circles of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry is…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Tom Boniface-Webb, "Modern Music Masters: Oasis" (MMM, 2020)
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…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
James M. Scott, "Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb" (Norton, 2024)
In our interview about Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), James M. Scott…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Magdalena J. Zaborowska, "Me and My House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France" (Duke UP, 2018)
The last sixteen years of James Baldwin's life (1971–87) unfolded in a village in the South of France, in a sprawling house nicknamed “Chez Baldwin.” In Me and…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Mark Blake, "Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac" (Pegasus Books, 2024)
An illuminating deep-dive into everything Fleetwood Mac--the songs, the rivalries, the successes, and the failures—Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Jonathan Butler, "Join the Conspiracy: How a Brooklyn Eccentric Got Lost on the Right, Infiltrated the Left and Brought Down the Biggest Bombing Network in New York" (Fordham UP, 2024)
In the shadow of recent turmoil, Join the Conspiracy: How a Brooklyn Eccentric Got Lost on the Right, Infiltrated the Left and Brought Down the Biggest Bombing…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Kostas Kampourakis, "Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Many historical figures have their lives and works shrouded in myth, both in life and long after their deaths. Charles Darwin (1809–82) is no exception to this…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Sanjay Lal, "Gandhi's Thought and Liberal Democracy" (Lexington Books, 2019)
Is religion indispensable to public life? What can Gandhi’s thought contribute to the modern state? With an intense focus on both the depth and practicality of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia" (NYU Press, 2019)
In Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia(New York University Press, 2019), Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Lise Butler, "Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Lise Butler’s Michael Young, Social Science and the British Left, 1945-70 (Oxford UP, 2020) invites us to revisit a figure who, in Butler’s words, is both a…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Ludovico Silva, "Marx's Literary Style" (Verso, 2023)
In Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx’s work results from a failure to…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Christopher Lovins, "King Chŏngjo: An Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea" (SUNY Press, 2019)
Though traditionally regarded as a monarch who failed to arrest the gradual decline of his kingdom, the Korean king Chŏngjo has benefited in recent decades…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Steve Moriarty, "Mia Zapata and the Gits: A True Story of Art, Rock and Revolution" (Ferel House, 2024)
Mia Zapata and the Gits: A True Story of Art, Rock and Revolution (Ferel House, 2024) by Steve Moriarty, shares the story of the Seattle based The Gits and…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Adam Zamoyski, "Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess" (William Collins, 2024)
Princess Izabela Czartoryska was a towering figure of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century European cultural and intellectual life. Married at sixteen…
- New Books in Biography & Memoir
Rachel Kousser, "Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great" (Mariner Books, 2024)
In 330 BC, Alexander the Great conquers the city of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire. His troops later burn it to the ground, capping…