New Books In Biography

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 Charleston, gives us a very different type of history book. Slucki’s memoir blends the scholarly and literary, grounding the story of his grandfather and father in the broader context of the twentieth century. Based on thirty years of letters from Jakub to his brother Mendel, on archival materials, and on interviews with family members, this is a unique story and an innovative approach to writing both history and family narrative. Students, scholars, and general readers of memoirs will enjoy this deeply personal reflection on family, Jewish history and grief. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.f

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 story of the US Navy nurses captured by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II. Focusing on what she calls the “twelve anchors,” Lucchesi examines the lives of these women as they lived in prison camps throughout the Philippines, while at the same time continuing to work as nurses, and often the only medical professionals, in each camp. Focusing on the story of navy nurse Dorothy Still, Lucchesi starts at the attack on Pearl Harbor, chronicling the Japanese attack on the Philippines and the capture of thousands of Americans, including Dorothy. The narrative follows Dorothy, Chief Nurse Laura Cobb, and ten other navy nurses who continued to work in a makeshift hospital in the civilian prison camp they were sent to. Recounting their experiences with death, disease, malnutrition, starvation, and overcrowded c

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 oneself to obscurity, writing only for “the desk drawer” or “without permission.” Vasily Grossman challenged that binary choice, creating some of the most compelling and uncompromising fiction and journalism of the century, but also enduring heartbreaking censorship. Her excellent new biography, Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century (Yale University Press, 2019) brings the life and work of this often-overlooked writer into brilliant focus. Biography of a writer — particularly one with Grossman’s output — can be tricky to pull off, but Popoff’s extensive research is elegantly arranged into a very readable narrative, in which we follow Grossman through the harrowing experiences of witnessing first hand, famine in the 1920s, the Terror of the 1930s, the carnage of World War II, and the dull ache of censorship in the p

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 the United States, where so many of us are or are descended from immigrants, the answer to this question of heritage can be a complicated one that takes us back generations. And, with proliferation of home genealogy tests like AncestryDNA and 23andMe, people are learning more about their family histories than was ever thought possible. But what happens when the questions we have about our identities and parentage can’t be answered by a simple test? For writer Sophia Shalmiyev, the question was never “who is my mother,” but rather, “where has she gone?” Mother Winter: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, 2019) traces Shalmiyev’s journey from early childhood in Leningrad, Russia to parenthood in Portland, Oregon as she comes to terms with the ambiguous loss of the most important relationship in her life. Finding inspiration in

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 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), to understand the man behind the brand requires sorting through decades of popular legends created to fill a vacuum of knowledge. Born Löb Strauß, he changed his name to Levis Strauss when he emigrated as a young man from Bavaria to the United States. Once in New York City he joined the dry goods firm established by his brothers, moving to California in 1853 to establish a branch of the firm in San Francisco. There Strauss prospered with the gold rush-era boom, becoming a leading Bay Area businessman and civic philanthropist. It was this status that led Jacob Davis, a Nevada tailor, to seek his help in patenting his design for riveted pants. Together they succeeded in establishing a patent that became the foundation for the brand known today throughout the world, thanks to

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. Johnson has been researching Hawley’s adventurous life along the American borderlands and frontier for three decades. Hawley was an active member of several Latter Day Restoration denominations in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, Texas, the Indian Nations of Oklahoma, and Utah Territory from 1838 to 1909. A Mormon Ulysses follows Hawley’s adventures in the West growing up as a logger, woodworker, settler, church official and missionary. He helped build the first Mormon temple west of the Mississippi, battled the Comanches, was entangled in the horrors of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and pioneered the Pine Valley community in southern Utah. Hawley’s western odyssey is timely, worthy, and deserves to belong in the canon of American history and biography. Daniel P. Stone holds a PhD in American religiou

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 Peru’s twentieth century and whose achievements at the local and national level transformed Peruvian peasant politics. Structured as a testimonial biography co-authored by the activist Manuel Llamojha Mitma himself and framed by historian Jaymie Patricia Heilman, this book is a valuable document of both pre-Shining Path indigenous activism and the history of Cold War Peru. Born into a poor Quechua family in a small community in Ayacucho, Llamojha became one of the most powerful peasant activists in the country, responsible for the expansion of the Confederación Campesina del Perú to the national stage in the 1960s and integral to the debates that shaped Peru’s left before the rise of the Shining Path. Although he was a contemporary of Shining Path founder Abimael Guzmán and a participant in Maoist peasant movements,

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 mature thinking as a radical empiricist was formed through his experiences and intellectual curiosity as a young man. Looking for a suitable vocation that matched his intellectual interest, he explored life through art, science, travel, wide philosophical reading and his inner world. Thematically arranged the book looks into young James’s exploration of the tension between religion and science, his speculation over the benefits and drawback of modern medicine and sectarian medicine and the wisdom of the ancient Greeks approach to life. Through this exploration of the material and immaterial nature of reality, he navigated ill health, bouts of depression, familial tensions, unsatisfying romantic life and uncertainty. His ambivalent disposition caused him to put off making early commitments as he kept seeking for the mean

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 racial integration of public spaces. Lauded as Gore was by many for his decision, as Anthony J. Badger shows in his Albert Gore, Sr.: A Political Life (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) it was a product of a nuanced approach on the issue of civil rights in a changing time. The son of a farmer, Gore demonstrated his father’s strenuous work ethic in his efforts to earn a college education. After a rapid rise in state politics, Gore won election to the House of Representatives in 1938, where he served for fourteen years before defeating a longtime incumbent senator in a Democratic primary. As Badger demonstrates, while Gore’s “TVA liberalism” led him to play a key role in passing some of the major infrastructure legislation in the 1950s, the issues of civil rights and the Vietnam War ultimately led Gore to adopt posit

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 the way she practices medicine. Chen is the author of Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality (Vintage, 2008) and the New York Times column “Doctor and Patient.” Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. Her work has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. Michael F. Robinson is professor of history at Hillyer College, University of Hartford. He's the author of The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and The Lost White Tribe: Scientists, Explorers, and the Theory that Changed a Continent (Oxford University Press, 2016). He's also the host of the podcast Time to Eat the Dogs, a weekly podcast about science, history, and exploration.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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 endured at the hands of abusers, and for women to speak more openly about their own ambitions, dreams, and desires. For the first time in history, there is a platform for women to speak, and—most importantly—to be heard. In 2019, we can add another voice to this ongoing conversation: Reema Zaman’s radical assertion that “[t]o speak is a revolution.” Reema Zaman’s bold debut book, I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir (Amberjack, 2019) details what happens when women are silenced by the patriarchy—and what it means to find the power inherent in one’s own voice. As a Bengali woman who immigrated to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a stage actress, Zaman portrays herself as both driven and fearless, despite the many hardships she endures as a young woman in the city. From navigating toxic relationships with men in

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. Finance Before the New Deal (Columbia University Press, 2019) tells the fascinating story of just such an endeavor, first the Independent Order of St. Luke, and then the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, founded in Richmond in 1903.  Along the way, she tells the tale of force-of-nature strong women, particularly Maggie Lena Walker, who wouldn't take no for an answer as she built up a culture of business and entrepreneurship against incredibly long odds and never-ending efforts by regulators and competitors to thwart her efforts. It makes for gripping reading. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook

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 within her community and nationally. In Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life of Power and Politics (Bison Books, 2018) (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), Alexandra M. Nickliss shows how Hearst came to exercise such power and the ways she uses it to advance the causes in which she believed. As Nickliss explains, Phoebe Apperson’s parents sought an education for their daughter in accordance with the reform principles of their faith. Marriage and her relocation to California did little to change Phoebe Hearst’s views, and with her husband often absent on business she took advantage of the couple’s wealth to travel and engage in voluntary associations. With George Hearst’s death Phoebe Hearst came into her own, soon moving beyond her involvement in the kindergarten movement to help develop the University of California and

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 Arizona State University--on the scintillating and beautifully written Gertrude Stein and the Reinvention of Rhetoric from University of Alabama Press (2014). This book is truly a must-read for lovers of language; through Stein, Kirsch redelivers the “rules” of language and persuasion (organization, clarity, grammar) as heuristics or starting points for thinking about what language might be made to do. Stein re-emerges as a major twentieth-century rhetorician, not a spin doctor, as the word might suggest to some, but as someone who follows as sure as she remakes the rules of writing, expression, and language. Readers are also encouraged to learn more about the important work that Kirsch is doing with Save Our Schools Arizona. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becomin

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 meditation teacher Anne Cushman, “an homage to the long threads that run through all human lives, stitching up what’s shredded in our hearts.” In this interview, Anne Cushman, a longtime yoga and dharma teacher, talks about her new book The Mama Sutra: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Path of Motherhood(Shambala, 2019).  This thoughtful book spans an eighteen-year journey through motherhood as a spiritual practice, chronicling Cushman’s first pregnancy, her daughter's tragic stillbirth, the joyful birth of her son, the “home retreat” of early motherhood, the challenges of parenthood, the diagnosis and gifts of her son’s developmental differences, the meltdown of her nuclear family and its reconfiguration into a new and joyful form, and more. This is a powerful story of the rawness and beauty of life. Anne Cushman is a

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 fortunate folks, like Robbin Légère Henderson, such a record already exists. Henderson’s maternal grandmother, Matilda Rabinowitz, penned her own memoir before her passing in 1963 so that her grandchildren would know her history. With candor and wit, Rabinowitz, born in 1887 in Ukraine, described her experiences as an immigrant, factory worker, single mother by choice, and union organizer. In Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman: A Memoir from the Early Twentieth Century (ILR Press 2017), Henderson has expanded her grandmother’s memoir with her own commentary and original black-and-white scratchboard drawings that illustrate Rabinowitz’s early life, journey to America, political awakening, work as an IWW organizer, turbulent romance to Henderson’s grandfather, and her struggle to support herself and her child. To hear more ab

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 Middlemiss would take dictation, attend meetings, handle correspondence, and listen to telephone conversations, making recordings and transcripts and taking detailed notes. In the evening, according to her nephew, she would summarize all of this, adding excerpts from meetings of the First Presidency or Quorum of the Twelve Apostles or details provided by one of McKay’s travel companions. With his secretary’s coaxing over the course of nineteen years, McKay documented how he charted a steady course through institutional storms. He demonstrates how the LDS Church and its members emerged from one century and the insular nature of the Intermountain west into the greater world, forging an uneasy accommodation with modernity. Join Dr. Harvard S. Heath as he talks about his new book, Confidence Amid Change: The Presidential Diari

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 fortune. Some of these he had found, but ultimately he had found much more adversity than success. Ultimately, as Dannel Jones writes, he had spiraled downward on the social ladder, from barrister to worker in a munitions factory, from a satirist of the social order to a tuberculosis patient in a state hospital. This is the story she tells in An African in Imperial London: The Indomitable Life of A.B.C. Merriman-Labor (Hurst, 2018). It is a meticulously researched book about a man whose life, while it might be obscure, opens upon an interesting view. And like all good historical biography, it provokes us to think differently about the past and about ourselves–about our choices, our failures, our successes, and our luck. Al Zambone is a historian and the host of the podcast Historically Thinking. You can subscribe to Hi

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 superhero. When Billy says, “Shazam!” he becomes Captain Marvel. Cremins explores the history of artist C.C. Beck and writer Otto Binder’s Captain Marvel comic book character who outsold Superman comics in the 1940s. Examining the Golden Age of comics in the United States, Cremins addresses the careers of Beck and Binder, Captain Marvel, and the ways in which they influenced comic fandom in the 1960s. Focusing on the relationship between comics and nostalgia, Cremins examines the origins of Billy Batson and Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia details the lives of Beck and Binder, the lawsuit filed against Fawcett Comics that eventually ended Captain Marvel and Fawcett Comics, and the role of World War II and the nostalgia of American soldiers and civilians in Captain Marvel’s popularity. He also

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 become the poet laureate and historiographer royal of Charles II’s new regime. But, as this important new book demonstrates, Dryden never entirely left behind the ideas – and worries – about inspiration that shaped his early political and creative experiences. John West, who is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Warwick, has written a brilliant new book, Dryden and Enthusiasm: Literature, Religion and Politics in Restoration England (Oxford University Press, 2018), which opens up the sustained ambiguities of his subject’s interest in inspiration. With an agenda that promises to re-shape the literary history of the later seventeenth century, Dryden and enthusiasm is a defining study of a complex and contradictory literary figure. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at