New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episodes
Carrie Noland, "Merce Cunningham: After the Arbitrary" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Carrie Noland's Merce Cunningham: After the Arbitrary (University of Chicago Press, 2020) goes past conventional understandings of Cunningham that i...
Bill Nowlin, "Vinyl Ventures: My Fifty Years at Rounder Records" (Equinox, 2021)
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Vinyl Ventures: My Fifty Years at Rounder Records (Equinox, 2021), founder Bill Nowlin combines memoir with a history of the founding and evoluti...
Jane Little Botkin, "The Girl Who Dared to Defy: Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver" (U Oklahoma Press, 2021)
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1916, hundreds of local female household workers attempted to establish a union in Denver. The organizer behind the effort was Jane Street, a remar...
Ursula Pike, "An Indian Among Los Indígenas" (Heyday Books, 2021)
16 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The western travel narrative genre has a history long tied to voyeurism and conquest. A way to see the world—and its many unique people and places—...
Dana Mills, "Rosa Luxemburg" (Reaktion Books, 2020)
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Political Theorist and activist Dana Mill’s latest new book, Rosa Luxemburg (Reaktion Books, 2020), is part of an extensive series of books publis...
John Sellars, "Marcus Aurelius" (Routledge, 2020)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is one of the most popular philosophical works by sales to the public, while in academic philosophy he is considered ...
Sibbie O'Sullivan, "My Private Lennon: Explorations from a Fan Who Never Screamed" (Mad Creek Books, 2020)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In My Private Lennon: Explorations From a Fan Who Never Screamed (Mad Creek Press, 2020), Sibbie O'Sullivan offers a new point of view from which ...
Cedric Cohen-Skalli, "Don Isaac Abravanel: An Intellectual Biography" (Brandeis UP, 2020)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) was an important forerunner of Jewish modernity. A merchant, banker, and court financier; a scholar versed in both J...
Dennis McDougal, "Operation White Rabbit: LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King" (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
07 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Operation White Rabbit: LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King (Simon and Schuster, 2020) traces the rise and fall—and rise and fall again—...
Jack Glazier, "Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race" (MSU Press, 2020)
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Radin was one of the founding generation of American cultural anthropologists: A student of Franz Boas, and famed ethnographer of the Winneb...
Mary Ann Cherry, "Morris Kight: Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist: A Story of Gay Rights and Gay Wrongs" (Process, 2020)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did the gay movement, which began as a sedate group of intellectuals, become what is arguably the most dynamic civil rights crusade in America? Ho...
Roberto Lovato, "Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas" (Harper, 2020)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s and 80s San Francisco as MS-13 and other notorious Salvadoran gangs were forming i...
Douglas A. Sweeney and Jan Stievermann, "The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards" (Oxford UP, 2021)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford UP, 2021) offers a state-of-the-art summary of scholarship on Edwards by a diverse, international, a...
Petra de Koning, "Mark Rutte" (Brooklyn, 2020)
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If, as expected, he re-emerges as prime minister after the Dutch election on March 17, Mark Rutte is on track to become the Netherlands' longest-serv...
Hans Martin Krämer, "Shimaji Mokurai and the Reconception of Religion and the Secular in Modern Japan" (U of Hawaii Press, 2016)
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Religion is at the heart of such ongoing political debates in Japan as the constitutionality of official government visits to Yasukuni Shrine, yet the...
James Eglinton, "Bavinck: A Critical Biography" (Baker Academic, 2020)
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dutch Calvinist theologian Herman Bavinck, a significant voice in the development of Protestant theology, remains relevant many years after his death....
Arnold W. Rachman, "Elizabeth Severn: The 'Evil Genius' of Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2017)
16 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Severn: The 'Evil Genius' of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2017) chronicles the life and work of Elizabeth Severn, both as one of the most con...
Roy Flechner, "Saint Patrick Retold: The Legend and History of Ireland's Patron Saint" (Princeton UP, 2019)
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The only surviving contemporary texts that provide insight into the life of Saint Patrick were both written by the legendary patron saint of Ireland. ...
William C. Kashatus, "William Still: The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia" (U Notre Dame Press, 2021)
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
William Still looms large in the history of the Underground Railroad, both for his role coordinating the Eastern Line and the records he maintained of...
Stephen J. Nichols, "R. C. Sproul: A Life" (Crossway, 2021)
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was a pastor, theologian, and trusted teacher. Most fundamentally, he was a man in awe of the holiness of God. In R.C. ...
Elizabeth Becker, "You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War" (PublicAffairs, 2021)
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Who were your heroes during your formative years? As a child of the 1970s, many of mine were journalists, especially those reporting on war and revolu...
Peter Hudis, ed., "The Letters Of Rosa Luxemburg" (Verso, 2013)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rosa Luxemburg occupies a complex place in our history partly because there are several different Rosa's one can find scattered across the world; the ...
T. G. Otte, "Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey" (Penguin, 2020)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
'The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life-time.' The words of Sir Edward Grey, looking out from the window...
Nadine Willems, "Ishikawa Sanshiro's Geographical Imagination" (Leiden UP, 2020)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ishikawa Sanshirō (1876-1956) was a journalist, intellectual, and self-proclaimed socialist active in early twentieth-century Japan. In Ishikawa San...
Philip Mansel, "King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV" (U of Chicago Press, 2019).
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Philip Mansel, a trustee of the Society for Court Studies and President of the Research Center of the Chateau de Versailles, has written a one-volume ...
Gary Scott Smith, "Duty and Destiny: The Life and Faith of Winston Churchill" (Eerdmans, 2021)
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Though Churchill harbored intellectual doubts about Christianity throughout his life, he nevertheless valued it greatly and drew on its resources, esp...
Robert Elder, "Calhoun: American Heretic" (Basic Books, 2021)
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Calhoun: American Heretic (Basic Books, 2021), historian Robert Elder documents the life and thought of one of America's most controversial state...
Marion Turner, "Chaucer: A European Life" (Princeton UP, 2019)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life—yet his poems are anything but conve...
Stephanie Russo, "The Afterlife of Anne Boleyn: Representations of Anne Boleyn in Fiction and on the Screen" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the centuries since her execution in 1536, Anne Boleyn’s presence in Western culture has grown to extraordinary proportions. In The Afterlife of...
John D. Wilsey, "God's Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles" (Eardmans, 2021)
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When John Foster Dulles died in 1959, he was given the largest American state funeral since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s in 1945. President Eisenhowe...
G. Girard and T. Lockley, "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan" (Hanover Square Press, 2021)
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The remarkable life of history's first foreign-born samurai and his astonishing journey from Northern Africa to the heights of Japanese society. When ...
Ray Rhodes Jr., "Yours, Till Heaven: The Untold Love Story of Charles and Susie Spurgeon" (Moody Publishers, 2021)
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Enter the remarkable untold love story of Charles and Susie Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon is esteemed for his writing, preaching, and passion for the L...
Sydney Stern, "The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics" (U Mississippi Press, 2019)
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Herman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the sc...
Elesha J. Coffman, "Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith" (Oxford UP, 2021)
19 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elesha J. Coffman's Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith (Oxford UP, 2021) takes a careful look at Mead’s religious origins and influence. As...
Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton, "Vera Rubin: A Life" (Harvard UP, 2021)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few astronomers in the 20th century did as much to expand our understanding of the universe as Vera Rubin. To tell her remarkable story in their biog...
Oliver Craske, "Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar" (Hachette, 2020)
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At 10:20pm on August 15th, 1969, Ravi Shankar — then, and still, the most famous practitioner of the sitar and Indian classical music — takes the ...
Francesco Quatrini, "Adam Boreel (1602-1665): A Collegiant's Attempt to Reform Christianity" (Brill, 2020)
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The debate about the origins of Enlightenment haven’t paid as much attention as they should have done to the radical religious cultures of the Dutch...
Jim Mackin, "Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side: Bloomingdale–Morningside Heights" (Fordham UP, 2020)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side: Bloomingdale-Morningside Heights (Fordham UP, 2020), Jim Mackin introduces readers to almos...
Linda C. Ehrlich, "The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema" (Palgrave, 2019)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentar...
Frank L. Jones, "Sam Nunn: Statesman of the Nuclear Age" (UP Kansas, 2020)
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a 2012 opinion piece bemoaning the state of the US Senate, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank cited a “leading theory: There are no giants in...
Arlin C. Migliazzo, "Mother of American Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears" (Eerdmans, 2020)
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Arlin Migliazzo’s Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears (Eerdmans, 2020) documents the life and ministry of one...
Ed Caesar, "The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest" (Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster, 2020)
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1933, Maurice Wilson — First World War hero, drifting veteran, and amateur aviator, lands in the aerodrome at Purnea in British India. His goal i...
Brian Deer, "The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A reporter uncovers the secrets behind the scientific scam of the century. The news breaks first as a tale of fear and pity. Doctors at a London hos...
Nicholas McDowell, "Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton" (Princeton UP, 2020)
22 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Decades before he wrote his epic work Paradise Lost, John Milton was an active republican and polemicist. How Milton came to espouse such radical vie...
Michael Gorra, "The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War" (Liveright, 2020)
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Michael Gorra about his new book The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War (Liveright, 2020). This episode touches on two ...
Alexs Thompson, "I'll Go: War, Religion, and Coming Home, from Cairo to Kansas City" (2020)
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I interview Alexs Thompson about his new memoir, I'll Go: War, Religion, and Coming Home, from Cairo to Kansas City (2020). Let me begin wit...
Elisa Pulido, "The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878-1961" (Oxford UP, 2020)
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878-1961 (Oxford University Pr...
André Gregory, "This Is Not My Memoir" (FSG, 2020)
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
André Gregory's not-memoir This Is Not My Memoir (FSG, 2020) is a fascinating trip through theatre history as seen through the eyes of one of its ...
Jeffrey B. Perry, "Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918–1927" (Columbia UP, 2020)
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918-1927 (Columbia University 2020) by Jeffrey B. Perry, independent scholar and archivist, is an exten...
Janis Tomlinson, "Goya: A Portrait of the Artist" (Princeton UP, 2020)
15 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The life of Francisco Goya (1746–1828) coincided with an age of transformation in Spanish history that brought upheavals in the country’s politics...
Rachel Berenson Perry, "The Life and Art of Felrath Hines: From Dark to Light" (Indiana UP, 2019)
15 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Rachel Berenson Perry about her book The Life and Art of Felrath Hines: From Dark to Light (Indiana University Press, 2019). Fel...
Oliver Gloag, "Albert Camus: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2020)
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Albert Camus, one of the most famous French philosophers and novelists, has a diverse fan base. British alternative rockers The Cure sang about The S...
Woojeong Joo, "Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro: Histories of the Everyday" (Edinburgh UP, 2017)
11 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most well regarded of non-Western film directors, responsible for acknowledged classics like Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu Yasujiro worked duri...
David A. Varel, "The Scholar and the Struggle: Lawrence Reddick's Crusade for Black History and Black Power" (UNC Press, 2020)
08 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most notable African American intellectuals of his generation, Lawrence Reddick helped to spearhead the early Black history movement, serve...
Anthony Valerio, "Before the Sidewalk Ended: A Walk with Shel Silverstein" (Daisy H. Productions, 2020)
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Anthony Valerio's Before the Sidewalk Ended: A Walk with Shel Silverstein (Daisy H. Productions, 2020) is a startling portrait of the great writer ...
Sean Anthony, "Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam" (U California Press, 2020)
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary historians have searched for the historical Muhammad along many paths. In Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet o...
Sophia Chang, "The Baddest Bitch in the Room" (Catapult, 2020)
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Enter the Wu-Tang. Return to the 36 Chambers. People listening to these albums by the Wu-Tang Clan and its members likely never knew about Sophia Cha...
Howard Gardner, "A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory" (MIT Press, 2021)
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The synthesizing mind is one that identifies a program or asks a question, pulls together information from across disciplines or creates new data thro...
Jenn Shapland, "My Autobiography of Carson Mccullers: A Memoir" (Tin House Books, 2020)
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jenn Shapland's My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Tin House Books, 2020) is a fascinating cross-genre book that combines elements of traditional...
Miriam Kalman Friedman, "Rivers of Light: The Life of Claire Myers Owens" (Syracuse UP, 2019)
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up in a conservative, middle-class family in Texas, Claire Myers Owens sought adventure and freedom at an early age. At twenty years old, she ...
Tom Boniface-Webb, "Modern Music Masters: Oasis" (MMM, 2020)
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the first book in the Modern Music Masters series, Tom Boniface-Webb examines the Manchester band Modern Music Masters-Oasis (MMM, 2020). Founde...
J. A. Ball and T. Burroughs, "A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable's Malcolm X" (Black Classic Press, 2015)
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is part of our Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. In this series, we delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and though...
Edwin Wilson, "Magic Time, a Memoir: Notes on Theatre & Other Entertainment" (Smith & Kraus, 2020)
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Edwin Wilson's book Magic Time, a Memoir: Notes on Theatre & Other Entertainment (Smith & Kraus, 2020) is a spirited memoir of a long and fruitful...
Ben Bland, "Man of Contradictions: Joko Widodo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia" (Penguin, 2021)
21 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Joko Widodo, or “Jokowi”, as he is popularly known, famously rose from a riverside shack to become president of Indonesia in 2014. In a country be...
Daniel S. Lucks, "Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump" (Beacon Press, 2020)
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ronald Reagan is regarded today as one of the most consequential presidents of the postwar era, yet many aspects of his legacy are largely unappreciat...
Douglas Morris, "Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler's Germany" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
14 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
During the mid-1930s, Germans opposed to Adolf Hitler had only a limited range of options available to them for resisting the Nazi regime. One of the ...
Susan M. Reverby, "Co-Conspirator for Justice: The Revolutionary Life of Dr. Alan Berkman" (UNC Press, 2020)
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Alan Berkman (1945–2009) was no campus radical in the mid-1960s; he was a promising Ivy League student, football player, Eagle Scout, and fraternity...
Justin Gifford, "Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver" (Lawrence Hill, 2020)
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Revolution Or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver (Lawrence Hill Books, 2020) is a remarkable biography that examines the notorious Black revolution...
Timothy Hampton, "Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work" (Zone Books, 2020)
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton d...
M. T. Mulder and G. Marti, "The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry (Rutgers UP, 2020), Mark Mulder and Gerardo Ma...
Dinyar Patel, "Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism" (Harvard UP, 2020)
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of a rise in nationalism around the world, and its general condemnation by liberals and the left, we have put together this series on Thir...
Clayborne Carson, "Malcolm X: The FBI File" (Skyhorse, 2012)
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is a Special Series on Malcolm X and Black Nationalism. We delve into the background of Malcolm X's action and thought in the context of Black Na...
David Adjmi, "Lot Six" (Harper, 2020)
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lot Six (Harper 2020) is a moving and hilarious memoir from playwright David Adjmi. The book traces Adjmi’s search for his identity, during which h...
Tom Rastrelli, "Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abuse, and Scandal in the Catholic Seminary" (U Iowa Press, 2020)
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Rastrelli is a survivor of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse who then became a priest in the early days of the Catholic Church’s ongoing scandals....
Frederick Crews, "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" (Picador, 2018)
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies...
Victoria Phillips, "Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy" (Oxford UP, 2019)
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Victoria Phillips adeptly tells the story of Martha Graham's role as diplomat, arts innovator, and dancer. Her book Martha Graham's Cold War: The...
Jeremy Black, "George III: Madness and Majesty" (Penguin, 2020)
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
King of Britain for sixty years and the last king of what would become the United States, George III inspired both hatred and loyalty and is now best ...
Andre E. Johnson, "No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner' (UP Mississippi, 2020)
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
No Future in this Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner by Andre E. Johnson, an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Media St...
Luke A. Nichter, "The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Making of the Cold War" (Yale UP, 2020)
18 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Few have ever enjoyed the degree of foreign-policy influence and versatility that Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the grand-son of Woodrow Wilson’s senatoria...
Charlotte Eubanks, "The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2019) examines the relations between art and poli...
Kat D. Williams, "Isabel 'Lefty' Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban American Baseball Star" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For many of its participants, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) offered them an opportunity to change their lives, yet few ...
T. C. F. Stunt, "The Life and Times of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles: A Forgotten Scholar" (Springer, 2019)
13 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For the sixty years in which he has made a distinguished contribution to the religious history of the nineteenth century, Timothy Stunt has been worki...
Julius Margolin, "Journey Into the Land of the Zeks and Back: A Memoir of the Gulag" (Oxford UP, 2020)
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Julius Margolin was a Polish Jew caught between the twin 1939 invasions of Poland by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. He spent the years 1940-1945 in S...
Amy Stanley, "Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World" (Scribner, 2020)
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“To mother, from Tsuneno (confidential). I’m writing with spring greetings. I went to Kanda Minagawa-chō in Edo—quite unexpectedly—and I ende...
V. Nesfield and P. Smith, "The Struggle for Understanding: Elie Wiesel's Literary Works" (SUNY Press, 2019)
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
An in-depth look at Elie Wiesel’s writings, from his earliest works to his final novels. Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) was one of the most important lit...
Mark Glancy, "Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend" (Oxford UP, 2020)
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend (Oxford University Press, 2020) tells the incredible story of how a sad, neglected boy became the suave,...
Ronald Grigor Suny, "Stalin: Passage to Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2020)
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ronald Suny’s recent biography of the young Stalin, Stalin: Passage to Revolution (Princeton UP, 2020) covers “Soso” Jughashvili’s life up ...
Tobias Harris, "The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan" (Hurst, 2020)
10 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Abe Shinzō is seen today through many lenses: as the longest-serving prime minister in the history of Japan; as a pragmatic leader with a consistent ...
Jon Hoover, "Ibn Taymiyya" (Oneworld, 2020)
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ibn Taymiyya is one of the most prolific and influential Islamic thinkers to date, and was even the only pre-modern Muslim author cited in the 9/11 Re...
Craig Keener, "Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels" (Eerdmans, 2019)
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Are the canonical Gospels historically reliable? The four canonical Gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of thes...
John Lobell, "Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy" (Monacelli Press, 2020)
27 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For everyone interested in the enduring appeal of Louis Kahn, this book demonstrates that a close look at how Kahn put his buildings together will rev...
Bonny H. Miller, "Augusta Browne: Composer and Woman of Letters in Nineteenth-Century America" (U Rochester Press, 2020)
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Born around 1820, Augusta Browne was a pianist, organist, composer, music pedagogue, entrepreneur, music critic, and writer. In Augusta Browne: Compos...
Ellen Wayland-Smith, "The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ellen Wayland-Smith is an associate professor of writing at University of Southern California. Her book The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wad...
Maria Hinojosa, "Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America" (Atria Books, 2020)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly thirty years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored b...
Morris Ardoin, "Stone Motel: Memoirs of a Cajun Boy" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the summers of the early 1970s, Morris Ardoin and his siblings helped run their family's roadside motel in a hot, buggy, bayou town in Cajun Louisi...
Bernice Lerner, "All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One was a teenage Jewish girl, forcibly transported from her home in Hungary to a Nazi concentration camp. The other was a British doctor, whose exper...
Ernest Freeberg, "A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement" (Basic Books, 2020)
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and animal alike. The industrial ci...
Charles F. Walker, "Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru" (Oxford UP, 2020)
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Charles F. Walker’s Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, 2020, is part of Oxford University Press’ Graphic...
Melissa Valentine, "The Names of All the Flowers: A Memoir" (The Feminist Press, 2020)
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Set in rapidly gentrifying 1990s Oakland, this memoir explores siblinghood, adolescence, and grief in a family shattered by loss. Melissa Valentine an...
Jerry Gershenhorn, "Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle" (UNC Press, 2018)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) by Jerry Gershenhorn is a hi...