New Books in Biography & Memoir

Rupert Lewis, "Marcus Garvey" (UP of West Indies, 2018)

13 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rupert Lewis has written a biography of Marcus Garvey published by the University Press of the West Indies in 2018. His book Marcus Garvey documents t...

Carol Zaleski, "The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings" (FSG, 2016)

13 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Starting in the early 1930s, a small group of academics and writers met weekly in a pub in Oxford, England to discuss literature, religion, and ideas....

Mario T. García, "Father Luis Olivares, A Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles" (UNC Press, 2018)

11 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As the leader of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles during the 1980s, Father Luis Olivares brazenly defied local Catholic authorities and the feder...

Peter J. Boettke, "F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

10 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today I spoke with professor Peter J. Boettke the author of a great new book on Friedrich August von Hayek. Dr. Boettke is University Professor of Eco...

Alan Gallay, "Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire" (Basic Books, 2019)

10 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Walter Ralegh was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. She showered him with estates and political appointments. He envisioned her becoming empress of a...

Christian J. Koot, "A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake" (NYU Press, 2017)

06 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Labels on a map: Surrey. Lower Norfolk. The Isle of Wight. Northumberland. Middlesex. Not a map England, but of the British colonies of Virginia and M...

D. J. Taylor, "The Lost Girls: Love and Literature in Wartime London" (Pegasus Books, 2020)

04 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Who were the Lost Girls? All coming from broken or failed Upper-middle Class families; the Lost Girls were all chic, glamorous, and bohemian, as likel...

Peter Bergamin, "The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology” (I. B. Tauris, 2019)

31 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Bergamin’s, new book, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology (I. B. Tauris, 2019), is an intellectual biograph...

K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)

30 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...

Andrew R. M. Smith, "No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing" (U Texas Press, 2020)

28 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Andrew R. M. Smith, author of No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the Business of Boxing (University of Texas Press, 2020)....

James D. Bratt, "A Christian and a Democrat: A Religious Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt" (Eerdmans, 2019)

23 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when asked at a press conference about the roots of his political philosophy, responded simply, “I am a Christian and a D...

Brian Cervantez, "Amon Carter: A Lone Star Life" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)

21 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Raised in a one-room log cabin in a small North Texas town, Amon G. Carter (1879–1955) rose to become the founder and publisher of the Fort Worth St...

Andrew Marble, "Boy on the Bridge: The Story of John Shalikashvili’s Remarkable Success" (UP of Kentucky, 2019)

21 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When President Bill Clinton nominated John Shalikashvili to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993, it represented the climax of a long ...

Dr. Alice Collett, "Lives of Early Buddhist Nuns: Biographies as History" (Oxford UP, 2016)

16 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Alice Collett’s monograph Lives of Early Buddhist Nuns: Biographies as History (Oxford University Press, 2016) delves into the lives of six of t...

Eileen Botting, "The Wollstonecraftian Mind" (Routledge, 2019)

15 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eileen Hunt Botting is Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame and co-editor with Sandrine Berges and Alan Coffee of the anthology The Wollstonec...

Tobias Boes, "Thomas Mann's War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters" (Cornell UP, 2019)

14 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Thomas Mann's War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters (Cornell University Press, 2019), Tobias Boes traces how the acclaim...

Identity Crisis: The Self-Portrait of a Thirteen-Year-Old Van Gogh

10 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The person in the photograph of a thirteen-year-old Vincent Van Gogh What did the influential Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh actually look like? Popul...

Brendan Simms, "Hitler: A Global Biography" (Basic Books, 2019)

08 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Every generation returns to the titanic heroes and villains of the 20th century. And every generation produces a new set of biographies--often immens...

Yaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019)

08 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the...

Frederick Beiser, "Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography" (Oxford UP, 2018)

06 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The eminent scholar of Neo-Kantianism, Frederick Beiser, has struck again, this time bringing his considerable analytical powers and erudition to the ...

Abdulhamid Sulaymon o’g’li Cho’lpon, "Night and Day: A Novel" (Academic Studies Press, 2019)

03 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Christopher Fort’s new translation of Abdulhamid Sulaymon o’g’li Cho’lpon’s Night and Day: A Novel (Academic Studies Press, 2019) (Kecha va ...

Adele Lindenmeyr, "Citizen Countess: Sofia Panina and the Fate of Revolutionary Russia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2019)

31 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Once one of the wealthiest members of the Russian aristocracy, Sofia Panina spent her final years living on a pension while in exile from her homeland...

Alex Lichtenstein, "Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid" (Indiana UP, 2016)

27 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Alex Lichtenstein, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, discusses his new book with co-author Rick Halpern, Margaret Bourke-White and...

Babette Becker, "I Should Have Been Music" (Page Publishing, 2018)

18 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Babette Becker’s memoir I Should Have Been Music (Page Publishing, 2018) recounts her experience as a patient in four different mental hospitals...

Amy Aronson, "Chrystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life" (Oxford UP, 2019)

11 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Amy Aronson is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Fordham University and former editor at Working Woman and Ms. magazines. Her ...

Wilson Jeremiah Moses, "Thomas Jefferson: A Modern Prometheus" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

10 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Greek mythology Prometheus is the trickster Titan who gives fire to humanity. As Wilson Jeremiah Moses explains in his book Thomas Jefferson: A Mod...

Asher Price, "Earl Campbell: Yards After Contact" (U Texas Press, 2019)

04 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Earl Campbell was a force in American football, winning a state championship in high school, rushing his way to a Heisman trophy for the University of...

Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)

03 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...

Lesley Chamberlain, "Ministry of Darkness: How Sergei Uvarov Created Conservative Modern Russia" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)

03 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Count Sergey Semyonovich Uvarov, once proclaimed by Aleksandr Herzen as a ‘Prometheus of our day’, has in the past 160 years become something of a...

Kathryn Holliday, "The Open-Ended City: David Dillon on Texas Architecture" (U Texas Press, 2019)

02 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It may only be a slight exaggeration to say that one of David Dillon's career accomplishments was to put the words "Dallas" and "architecture" in the ...

Kerry Driscoll, "Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples" (U California Press, 2018)

02 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples (University of California Press, 2018; paperback edition, 2019) is the first book-length st...

Kathleen Sheppard, "The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman’s Work in Archaeology" (Lexington, 2017)

29 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

After Napoleon occupied Egypt, Europeans became obsessed with the ancient cultures of the Nile. In Britain, the center of Egyptology research was Univ...

Malcolm Woollen, "Erik Gunnar Asplund: Landscapes and Buildings" (Routledge, 2018)

29 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, weaving together art, philosophy, history, and literature, this book investigates the landscapes and buildings o...

Laura K. T. Stokes, "Fanny Hensel: A Research and Information Guide" (Routledge, 2019)

28 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Nineteenth-century composer Fanny Hensel is the subject of more published research than any other woman of the period, with the possible exception of ...

Andrew Roberts, "Leadership in War: Lessons From Those Who Made History" (Allen Lane, 2019)

27 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Roberts is one of our most distinguished biographers and historians, and the author of the magisterial work, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (2...

Peter Kerasotis, "Alou: My Baseball Journey" (U Nebraska Press, 2018)

26 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

All aficionados of baseball are familiar with the pathbreaking role of Jackie Robinson in reintegrating the game back in 1947. What many fans are less...

Richard F. Thomas, "Why Bob Dylan Matters" (Dey Street, 2017)

26 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How c...

Charles Halperin, "Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

21 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, Dr. Charles Halperin provides a new analysis of Ivan’...

Roland De Wolk, "American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford" (U California Press, 2019)

21 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

With a name associated with the famous university in Palo Alto, Leland Stanford is among the best-known of the famous “robber barons” of the 19th ...

Lian Xi, "Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China" (Basic Books, 2018)

21 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1960, a poet and journalist named Lin Zhao was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sent to prison for re-education. Years before, she had ...

Richard J. Bernstein, "Why Read Hannah Arendt Now" (Polity, 2018)

20 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Nobody should feel excited about the renewed relevance of Hannah Arendt's work today. Her foresight about the fragility of democratic life is relevant...

David Hayton, "Conservative Revolutionary: The Lives of Lewis Namier" (Manchester UP, 2019)

14 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Acclaimed after the Second World War as England's greatest historian, Sir Lewis Namier was an eastern European immigrant who came to idealise the Engl...

Wendy Wickwire, "At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging" (UBC Press, 2019)

13 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The history of anthropology remembers James Teit as a field assistant and man-on-the spot for Franz Boas. But in At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anth...

Robert Mann, "Becoming Ronald Reagan: The Rise of a Conservative Icon" (Potomac Book, 2019)

12 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout much of his career as an actor in Hollywood, Ronald Reagan identified as a passionate New Deal Democrat, yet by the time he turned to a car...

Douglas R. Egerton, "Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America" (Basic Books, 2019)

12 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace. When John Quincy Adams died in 18...

Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent" (Yale UP, 2019)

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale University Press, 2019), Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinit...

John Launer, "Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein" (Henry N. Abrams, 2017)

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

John Launer's Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein (Henry N. Abrams, 2017) manages to supplant (and given the power of the vis...

Noelle Giuffrida, "Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America" (U California Press, 2018)

09 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Noelle Giuffrida’s book, Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America (University of California Press, ...

John Shelton Reed, "Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s" (LSU Press, 2012)

07 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

John Shelton Reed, William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of sociology (emeritus) at the University of North Carolina, has been observing the South for deca...

Lewis H. Siegelbaum, "Stuck on Communism: Memoir of a Russian Historian" (Northern Illinois UP, 2019)

06 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This memoir by one of the foremost scholars of the Soviet period spans three continents and more than half a century―from the 1950s when Lewis Siege...

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, "She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman" (37 Ink, 2019)

05 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness...

Alexander L. Hinton, "Man or Monster?: The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer" (Duke UP, 2016)

04 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Can justice heal? Must there be justice in order to heal? Is there such a thing as justice, something to be striven for regardless of context? Alexa...

Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing

03 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...

Joseph F. O'Callaghan, "Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age" (Cornell UP, 2019)

01 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

While monarchs throughout history used their power to make laws as a tool for governing their realms, rarely did they undertake the long and detailed ...

Wang Gungwu, "Home is Not Here" (NUS Press, 2018)

01 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Wang Gungwu has long been recognized as a world authority on the history of China and the overseas Chinese. His work has been inspired by his own expe...

Elijah Millgram, "John Stuart Mill and the Meaning of Life" (Oxford UP, 2019)

01 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

According to an intuitive view, lives are meaningful when they manifest a directedness or instantiate a project such that the disparate events and end...

W. Caleb McDaniel, "Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America" (Oxford UP, 2019)

30 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded wi...

Nicholas Buccola, "The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America" (Princeton UP, 2019)

30 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Nicholas Buccola’s new book, The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America (Princeton Universit...

J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...

Brenna Wynn Greer, "Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined American Citizenship" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

23 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Brenna Wynn Greer’s new study Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined American Citizenship (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), p...

Lorena Oropeza, "The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement" (UNC Press, 2019)

22 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Lorena Oropeza, Professor of History at the University of California at Davis, sheds new light on one of Chicano history’s most notorious figures in...

Henning Melber, "Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the Decolonisation of Africa" (Hurst, 2019)

21 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dag Hammarskjold was such a dynamic secretary-general that for years, the motto about him was simply “Leave it to Dag.” Only the second person to ...

Nicole C. Kirk, "Wanamaker’s Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store" (NYU Press, 2018)

10 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

"On Christmas Eve, 1911, John Wanamaker stood in the middle of his elaborately decorated department store building in Philadelphia as shoppers milled ...

Kathryn E. O’Rourke, "O’Neil Ford on Architecture" (U Texas Press, 2019)

04 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

O’Neil Ford on Architecture (University of Texas Press, 2019) brings together Ford’s major professional writings and speeches for the first time. ...

Jeremy Black, "England in the Age of Shakespeare" (Indiana UP, 2019)

30 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Jeremy Black’s impressive new book offers an enormously wide-ranging account of the social, political and religious cultures in which England’s gr...

Geoffrey Parker, "Emperor: A New Life of Charles V" (Yale UP, 2019)

27 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Emperor Charles V (1500–1558), ruler of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Central and South America, has long...

Sara Georgini, "Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family" (Oxford UP, 2019)

18 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Sara Georgini is a historian and series editor for The Papers of John Adams at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Household Gods: The Religious Liv...

Mark Burford, "Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field" (Oxford UP, 2019)

17 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Mahalia Jackson, the great mid-twentieth century gospel singer, thought of herself as an embodiment of the history of African Americans in the United ...

Alex J. Kay, "The Making of an SS Killer: the Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2016)

16 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Alex Kay’s The Making of an SS Killer: the Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905-1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) is a must read for those int...

Elizabeth D. Carney, "Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power" (Oxford UP, 2019)

12 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As the wife of a Macedonian king and the mother of three sons who would succeed him, Eurydice played an important role in Macedonia at an important mo...

Kate Kirkpatrick, "Becoming Beauvoir: A Life" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)

10 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Kirkpatrick a lecturer in Religion, Philosophy and Culture at King’s College London and author of Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (Bloomsbury Academi...

Matthew Crow, "Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection" (Cambridge UP, 2017)

05 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Matthew Crow about his book Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection, published by Cambridge University Press in...

Mark Braude, "The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Empire to Exile" (Penguin Press, 2018)

27 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

I must’ve been a kid when I first heard the palindrome “Able I was ere I saw Elba”. Napoleon didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. “Elba” m...

Graham Thompson, "Herman Melville: Among the Magazines" (U Massachusetts Press 2018)

26 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

"What I feel most moved to write, that is banned―it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the otherway I cannot." Herman Melville wrote these words a...

William M. Gorvine, "Envisioning A Tibetan Luminary: The Life of a Modern Bonpo Saint" (Oxford UP, 2018)

26 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, Envisioning A Tibetan Luminary: The Life of a Modern Bonpo Saint (Oxford University Press, 2018), William M. Gorvine provides a multi...

Geoffrey Parker, "Emperor: A New Life of Charles V" (Yale UP, 2019)

23 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

From his accession to the Spanish throne in 1516 until his abdication in 1556, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V dominated Europe in a way that no rule...

J. C. D. Clark, "Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2018)

14 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There are few better guides to the “long eighteenth century” that J. C. D. Clark, emeritus professor of history at the University of Kansas, whose...

David Philip Miller, "The Life and Legend of James Watt" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

13 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For all of his fame as one of the seminal figures of the Industrial Revolution, James Watt is a person around whom many misconceptions congregate. In ...

Andrew Wright Hurley, "Ludwig Leichhardt’s Ghosts: The Strange Career of a Traveling Myth" (Camden House, 2018)

09 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Wright Hurley talks about the life and afterlife of the Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, a man whose reputation has shifted to reflect the ...

Andrius Gališanka, "John Rawls: The Path to a Theory of Justice" (Harvard UP, 2019)

01 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It is hard to overestimate the influence of John Rawls on political philosophy and theory over the last half-century. His books have sold millions of ...

Amy Collier Artman, "The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation of Charismatic Christianity" (Eerdmans, 2019)

31 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On October 15, 1974, Johnny Carson welcomed his next guest on The Tonight Show with these words: “I imagine there are very few people who are not aw...

Ashley Robertson, "Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State" (The History Press, 2015)

25 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Mary McLeod Bethune was often called the "First Lady of Negro America," but she made significant contributions to the political climate of Florida as ...

William F. Trimble, "John S. McCain and the Triumph of Naval Air Power" (Naval Institute Press, 2019)

24 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The carrier task force—the symbolic and physical manifestation of the United States’ ability to project naval and air power across the globe—cam...

Courtney Pace, "Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall" (U Georgia Press, 2019)

24 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall (University of Georgia Press, 2019) is the first full-length critical study of Rev. Dr. Prathia Lau...

David Slucki, "My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons" (Wayne State UP, 2019)

23 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, "This Is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines" (Chicago Review Press, 2019)

19 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Alexandra Popoff, "Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century" (Yale UP, 2019)

12 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Sophia Shalmiyev, "Mother Winter: A Memoir" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)

10 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Lynn Downey, "Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World" (U Massachusetts Press, 2016)

09 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 Str...

M. L. Mitma and J. P. Heilman, "Now Peru is Mine: The Life and Times of a Campesino Activist" (Duke UP, 2016)

08 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 p...

Melvin C. Johnson, "Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley: A Mormon Ulysses of the American West" (Greg Kofford Books, 2019)

08 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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’...

Paul J. Croce, "Young William James Thinking" (John Hopkins UP, 2018)

02 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Paul J. Croce, professor of history at Stetson University. Young William James Thinking (John Hopkins University Press, 2018) offers a developmental b...

Anthony J. Badger, "Albert Gore, Sr.: A Political Life" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

24 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 i...

Pauline W. Chen, "Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality" (Vintage, 2008)

21 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Reema Zaman, "I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir" (Amberjack, 2019)

21 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Since its inception in 2017, the viral #MeToo movement has called more cultural attention to abusive behavior, creating a much-needed public space for...

Shennette Garrett-Scott, "Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal" (Columbia UP, 2019)

19 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 n...

Alexandra M. Nickliss, "Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life of Power and Politics" (Bison Books, 2018)

19 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Sharon Kirsch, "Gertrude Stein and the Reinvention of Rhetoric" (U Alabama Press, 2014)

17 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Sharon Kirsch (she/hers)--Associate Prof. of Engli...

Anne Cushman, "The Mama Sutra: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Path of Motherhood" (Shambala, 2019)

17 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 mother...

Matilda Rabinowitz, "Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman: A Memoir from the Early Twentieth Century" (ILR Press, 2017)

13 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 a...