New Books In Biography

An understanding of Dante the theologian as distinct from Dante the poet has been neglected in an appreciation of Dante's work as a whole.  That is the starting-point of Dante the Theologian (Cambridge UP, 2022). In giving theology fresh centrality, the author argues that theologians themselves should find, when they turn to Dante Alighieri, a compelling resource: whether they do so as historians of fourteenth-century Christian thought, or as interpreters of the religious issues of our own times. Expertly guiding his readers through the structure and content of the Commedia, Denys Turner reveals – in pacy and muscular prose – how Dante's aim for his masterpiece is to effect what it signifies. It is this quasi-sacramental character that renders it above all a theological treatise: whose meaning is intelligible only through poetry. Turner's Dante 'knows that both poetry and theology are necessary to the essential task and that each without the other is deficient.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho

How do we become the persons we are? Cornelia Maude Spelman's Solace (Jackleg Press, 2024) seeks to answer that question. A portrait of the emotional legacies and psychological landscapes that shaped the author's life, Solace unfurls in a series of vignettes drawn from diaries and personal stories about her relationship to others as daughter, mother, friend, wife, therapist, and grandmother. These are stories of compassion and attention bringing about healing from grief and brokenness and the necessity of our deep and caring connection to others: the comfort offered to us and the comfort we offer to others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In The Image Maker: Shattering Rock and Roll's Glass Ceiling (2023), Connie DeNave shares her experiences in the public relations world during the British Invasion and the beginning of rock-n-roll marketing. Born in Brooklyn, New York, DeNave graduated from Hunter College and found herself with no job skills. Throughout the mid-1950s to the 1980s, DeNave was rock and roll's first female press agent powerhouse. She revolutionized the public relations business at a time when it was an old boys' club. And she did this all with her—previously unheard of—all female staff. She crashed through the glass ceiling of the music business and represented some of the most influential and popular artists of their time. Her portfolio includes The Rolling Stones, Faces, Herman's Hermits, Dick Clark, Chubby Checker, Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin, and Dusty Springfield. DeNave's memoir examines what it meant to be a women in business at a time when women couldn't even get a credit card. She shares her experiences in the entertainm

When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became First Lady of the United States over sixty years ago, she stepped into the public spotlight. Although Jackie is perhaps best known for her two highly-publicized marriages, her legacy has endured beyond twentieth-century pop culture and she remains an object of public fascination today. Drawing on a range of sources– from articles penned for the women’s pages of local newspapers, to esteemed national periodicals, to fan magazines and film– Our Jackie: Public Claims on a Private Life (NYU Press, 2024) evaluates how media coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis changed over the course of her very public life. Jackie’s interactions with and framing by the American media reflect the changing attitudes toward American womanhood. Over the course of four decades, Jackie was alternatively praised for her service to others, and pilloried for her perceived self-interest. In Our Jackie, Karen M. Dunak argues that whether she was portrayed as a campaign wife, a loyal widow, a selfish

General He Yingqin: The Rise and Fall of Nationalist China (Cambridge UP, 2016) is a revisionist study of the career of General He Yingqin, one of the most prominent military officers in China's Nationalist period (1928-49) and one of the most misunderstood figures in twentieth-century China.  Western scholars have dismissed He Yingqin as corrupt and incompetent, yet the Chinese archives reveal that he demonstrated considerable success as a combat commander and military administrator during civil conflicts and the Sino-Japanese War. His work in the Chinese Nationalist military served as the foundation of a close personal and professional relationship with Chiang Kai-shek, with whom he worked closely for more than two decades. Against the backdrop of the Nationalist revolution of the 1920s through the 1940s, Peter Worthing analyzes He Yingqin's rise to power alongside Chiang Kai-shek, his work in building the Nationalist military, and his fundamental role in carrying out policies designed to overcome the regim

In Becoming Belle da Costa Greene: A Visionary Librarian through Her Letters (Harvard University Press, October 2024), Deborah Parker chronicles the making and empowerment of a female connoisseur, curator, and library director in a world where such positions were held by men. Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) was Pierpont Morgan’s personal librarian (1908–1913) and the first Director of the Morgan Library (1924–1948). She was also the daughter of two mixed-race parents and passed for white. In the nearly six hundred letters that Greene sent to art historian Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), Parker identifies Greene’s energetic pursuit of exceptional opportunities, illuminating the artistry and imaginative features of Greene’s writing—her self-invention, her vibrant responses to books and art, and her pathbreaking work as a librarian. As Greene transformed a private library into a magnificent public institution, she also transformed herself: hers was a life both lived and writ large. Deborah Parker is Professor of

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 bleak childhood in a small town on the English-Scottish borders to a precocious high-flying career as a TV reporter, first in London, then in New York. During his years as a journalist, he managed to elicit revealing statements from tyrants and the oppressed, but there was one person he never persuaded to open up to him—his mother. He wanted to know just one thing: who his father was. It wasn't until he was in his 50s that she confided to having been raped, aged 15, by a priest – and even then, not all her information was reliable. Alongside his career, the search for his mother’s abuser has haunted him, adding further layers of stress to a life already marked by alcoholism and insecurity. This is his astonishing story, one that deserves to sit alongside those of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and David Brinkley, and another revelatory title from EnvelopeB

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 were impossibly opposed. Tormented by her attraction to women and trapped in a loveless arranged marriage, she found herself unable to conform to her religious upbringing and soon, she made the difficult decision to walk away from the world she knew, which she details in Kissing Girls on Shabbat: A Memoir (Atria, 2024). Sara’s journey to self-acceptance began with the challenging battle for a divorce and custody of her children, an act that left her on the verge of estrangement from her family and community. Controlled by the fear of losing custody of her two children, she forced herself to remain loyal to the compulsory heteronormativity baked into Hasidic Judaism and married again. But after suffering profound loss and a shocking sexual assault, Sara decided to finally be completely true to herself. Kissing Girls on Shabbat is not only a love letter to G

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 contains his most important pedagogical writings, journal articles, as well as private texts. Volume 2 starts with extensive excerpts from two pedagogical treatises written for young readers. These are: Rules of Life, which explains the intricacies of human relationships. Next follows a selection of journal articles presenting topics from social problems, pediatrics, developmental psychology and special pedagogy. This is followed by a collection of unpublished writing including private letters exchanged between him and his former wards. The final section is his diary - a unique documentation of Korczak's last weeks of life. Korczak's writing is characterized by uncompromising views, acute observations, subtle reflection, and, above all, love for children. For more on Korczak, visit The Janusz Korczak Association of Canada. Learn more about your ad choice

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 emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted HIV through contaminated blood products. In 1985, he became a household name after he was barred from attending his Indiana middle school. As Ryan appeared on nightly news broadcasts and graced the covers of popular magazines, he was embraced by music icons and well-known athletes, achieving a curious kind of stardom.  Analyzing his struggle and celebrity, Paul M. Renfro's powerful biography grapples with the contested meanings of Ryan's life, death, and afterlives. As Renfro argues in The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (UNC Press, 2024), Ryan's fight to attend school forced the American public to reckon with prevailing misconceptions about the AIDS epidemic. Yet his story also reinforced the hierarchies at the heart of the AIDS crisis. Becau

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 off a nearby bridge, she fell to her knees, unable to fully absorb the news. How could the man she married, a devoted father and robotics professor at MIT, have committed such a violent act? How would she explain this to her young daughters? And could she have stopped him? A longtime journalist, she probed obsessively, believing answers would help her survive. She interviewed doctors, suicide researchers and a man who jumped off the same bridge and lived. Us, After examines domestic devastation and resurgence, digging into the struggle between public and private selves, life's shifting perspectives, the work of motherhood, and the secrets we keep. In Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide (Santa Fe Writer's Project, 2024), Zimmerman confronts the unimaginable and discovers the good in what remains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/

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 of Van Buren, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician (Oxford UP, 2024), James M. Bradley makes it clear the extent to which his legacy has gone underappreciated. Mastering the complex politics of New York during the early republic, Van Buren built a political operation — the Albany Regency — that made him a power on the national scene. Upon this he built the Democratic Party, the oldest political party in the United States and one which dominated the politics of his era. In an age of political giants, Van Buren was able to use his organizational skills to win the prize that eluded all of them, winning election as president in 1836, only to lose it four years later thanks in part to the success of his Whig opponents in adopting his playbook. Though Van Buren never succeeded in returning to the office to which he aspired, his impact in national poli

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 general manager–its fifth in as many years–he quickly learned just how much work needed to be done to make a Western symphony orchestra work in a majority Chinese city. John Duffus’s memoir Backstage in Hong Kong: A Life with the Philharmonic, Broadway Musicals and Classical Superstars (Blacksmith: 2024) charts his life from running the Philharmonic, bringing acts like the Three Tenors and Cats to Asia, and his thoughts on the Hong Kong Cultural Center and the West Kowloon Cultural District. John joins the show today to explain what the general manager of an orchestra actually does, the trickiest problems he had to solve in Hong Kong and China, and his thoughts on whether Hong Kong is truly a “cultural wasteland.” You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Backstage in Hong Kong. Follow o

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 coming of age, searching for belonging, and daring to escape the tightly controlled Soviet regime.  Relayed in his point of view by his daughter, Dr. Karine Rashkovsky, An Improbable Life: My Father's Escape from Soviet Russia (Cherry Orchard Books, 2024) tells the story of a man who has been at the center of some of the most dramatic and tumultuous events in modern history, from World War II to the Six-Day War to the collapse of the USSR, providing insight into the world of Soviet Jewry and the almost insurmountable obstacles to getting out. Filled with quirky, revealing anecdotes, An Improbable Life is a valuable historical resource for anyone intrigued by culture and identity in the Soviet Union from the last days of Stalin to the Brezhnev era and the paradox and perils of being outcast—and possibly heroic—in that time and place. With the return of

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 painful, sometimes uplifting story, where he recalls and describes the moment his relationship with his son changed forever - the moment that his son revealed his mental illness to him - and the journey that followed. Dr. Engelman allows the reader to accompany him as he learns about his son’s first psychotic break, witnesses his terrifying accounts of frightening hallucinations, struggle to accept that life would never be the same, and commits to helping his son, no matter what. Through years of the up and downs that so many experience with a serious mental illness, the author and his family ultimately triumph, only to lose Doug in a random auto accident. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and

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 once flourishing community of over 150,000, dating back 2,600 years, has dwindled to single figures. For many, this tells the story of the timeless clash of the Arab and Jewish civilisations, the heroic mission of Zionism to rescue Eastern Jews from their backwards nations, and unceasing persecution as the fate and history of Jewish people. Avi Shlaim tears up this script. His mother had many Muslim friends in Baghdad, but no Zionist ones. The Iraqi Jewish community, once celebrated for its ancient heritage and rich culture, was sprayed with DDT upon arrival in Israel. As anti-Semitism gathered pace in Iraq, the Zionist underground may have inflamed it - deliberately. Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (Oneworld, 2024) celebrates the disappearing heritage of Arab-Jews - caught in the crossfire of secular ideologies. Avi Shlaim was born in Baghdad and gre

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) shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature. In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents. Appealing to fans of coming-of-age memoirs such as Fresh Off the Boat, Running with Scissors, or tales of assimilation like V

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 fans streaming from all over the globe and leagues starting in countries throughout the world, the international presence of the game of basketball is a force to be reckoned with. That all started with Hakeem “the Dream” Olajuwon. He was the first international player to win the MVP, which is hard to believe now considering the last time an American‑born player won it was in 2018. Award-winning hoops journalist Mirin Fader explores this phenomenal shift through the lens of what Olajuwon accomplished throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon (Hachette, 2024) ignites nostalgia for Phi Slama Jama and “the Dream Shake,” while also exploring the profound influence of Olajuwon’s commitment to Islam on his approach to life and basketball, and how his devotion to his faith inspired generations of Muslim people around the world.

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 Company. With acclaimed revivals of his landmark shows regularly performed in London and New York, and new generations being introduced to the man who forever transformed musical theatre, Sondheim’s legacy has only grown. What is it about such classic songs as ‘Being Alive’ from Company, ‘No One Is Alone’ from Into the Woods, or ‘Send in the Clowns’ from A Little Night Music (to name but a few) that still resonates for so many? In How Sondheim Can Change Your Life (Atria Books (North America) Ebury (UK and Commonwealth), 2024), Dr. Richard Schoch shows how Sondheim’s greatness (beyond the clever lyrics and adventurous music) lies in his ability to tell stories that speak to all of us. From Louise’s desire for freedom as Gypsy Rose Lee to Sweeney Todd’s thirst for revenge, the struggles we see in Sondheim’s characters are ones we all have – and we can learn v

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 information on U.S. aviation and naval developments to the Japanese, desperate for knowledge of U.S. capability. The funny thing was, as Ron Drabkin notes in his book Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor (William Morrow, 2024), that most people were pretty sure that the boisterous Rutland was spying for someone. But for a variety of reasons—misplaced priorities, bureaucratic infighting, embarrassment over a British national spying on the U.S., or just bewilderment that someone so open and outgoing could pull off something as secretive as espionage—everyone left utland alone until it was too late. Ronald Drabkin is the author of Beverly Hills Spy and peer-reviewed articles on Japanese espionage. His obsession with espionage history started when he was as a child in Los Angeles, where he vaguely understood tha