New Books in Biography & Memoir

D. J. Taylor, "Orwell: The New Life" (Pegasus Books, 2023)

04 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A fascinating exploration of George Orwell--and his body of work--by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to ...

Ashley Brown, "Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson" (Oxford UP, 2023)

03 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career...

Richard Wolin, "Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology" (Yale UP, 2023)

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important ph...

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, "Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

27 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hello, this is Eric LeMay, a host on the New Books Network. Today, I speak with Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, author of the new artist’s biography Lin-M...

Marcus Willaschek, "Kant: A Revolution in Thinking" (Harvard UP, 2025)

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the most important philosopher of the modern era. His Critique of Pure Reason, “categorical imperative,” and con...

Amy Bowers Cordalis, "The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life" (Little Brown, 2024)

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For the members of a Northern California tribe, salmon are the lifeblood of the people—a vital source of food, income, and cultural identity. When a...

Michael Braddick, "Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian" (Verso Books, 2025)

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Christopher Hill was one of the leading historians of his generation. His work across more than 15 books and dozens of articles fundamentally rewrote ...

Jane Eisner, "Carole King: She Made the Earth Move" (Yale UP, 2025)

21 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jane Eisner is a widely published journalist who held leadership positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Forward. She is the author of Taking B...

Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism’s High Tide: A Conversation with Howard W. French

20 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, 2025), the second work in a trilogy from best-sellin...

Joseph Torigian, "The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" (Stanford UP, 2025)

18 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Xi Zhongxun’s career spanned the entirety of China’s modern history. Born just two years after the 1911revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty,...

Michael Staunton, "Thomas Becket and His World" (Reaktion Books, 2025)

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Becket and His World (Reaktion Books, 2025) explores the turbulent life and violent death of Thomas Becket, one of the most controversial ...

Henry Rausch, "Submerged: Life on a Fast Attack Submarine in the Last Days of the Cold War" (Independently Published, 2024)

06 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Submerged: Life on a Fast Attack Submarine in the Last Days of the Cold War (Independently Published, 2024), the author graduates from an eli...

Adam Silverstein, "Haman" (Princeton UP, 2025)

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Haman, infamous as the antagonist in the book of Esther, appears as a villainous figure in virtually all varieties of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...

Ali Anooshahr, "Slavery in the Early Mughal World: The Life and Thoughts of Jawhar Aftabachi (1520s–1580s)" (Oxford UP, 2025)

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jawhar Aftabachi was enslaved as a child by the Ottomans in the Black Sea region in the early sixteenth century. He was then sold to the Ottoman admir...

Brooke Barbier, "King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father" (Harvard UP, 2023)

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father (Harvard UP, 2023) is a rollicking portrait of the paradoxical patriot, whose meas...

Dennis Deletant, "In Search of Romania" (Hurst, 2022)

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The imposition of Communist ideology was a misfortune for millions in Eastern Europe, but never for Dennis Deletant. Instead, it drew him to Romania. ...

Chris Yogerst, "The Warner Brothers" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formati...

Sarah Ruden, "Vergil: The Poet's Life" (Yale UP, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the proces...

Treena Orchard, "Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating Apps" (Aevo, U Toronto Press, 2024)

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Treena Orchard about her memoir, Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating ...

Christina Cecelia Davidson, "Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2024)

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

H. C. C. Astwood: minister and missionary, diplomat and politician, enigma in the annals of US history. In Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and t...

Emma Heaney, "This Watery Place: Four Essays on Gestation" (Pluto Press UK, 2025)

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does it feel like to experience your body cleaving into two while public discussion of reproductive healthcare centers around the viability line:...

David Chanoff, "Anthony Benezet: Quaker, Abolitionist, Anti-Racist" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

22 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wilberforce, Clarkson, Wesley. Britain’s great abolitionist activist Granville Sharp. Each of these consequential figures of the eighteenth-century ...

Julie Dobrow, "Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A Biography of an Extraordinary Interracial Marriage" (NYU Press, 2025)

22 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Like any set of star-crossed lovers, Elaine and Charles came from different worlds. Elaine, an acclaimed childhood poet from a remote corner of the Ma...

Simon Appleford, "Drawing Liberalism: Herblock's Political Cartoons in Postwar America" (U Virginia Press, 2023)

21 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing Liberalism: Herblock's Political Cartoons in Postwar America (U Virginia Press, 2023) is the first book-length critical examination of th...

Dustin Condren, "An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film" (Cornell UP, 2024)

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film (Cornell UP, 2024) explores the unfinished cinematic projects developed and abandoned...

Lester D. Friedman, "Citizen Spielberg" (U of Illinois Press, 2022)

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Steven Spielberg's extraordinary career redefined Hollywood, but his achievement goes far beyond shattered box office records. Rejecting the view of S...

Philip Nash, "Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman" (Routledge, 2022)

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Nash's book Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman (Routledge, 2022) is a concise and highly readable political biography that examine...

Christina Lane, "Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock" (Chicago Review Press, 2020)

16 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A platinum beauty with an ugly secret; a tall, dark, and handsome husband with murder in his eyes; starkly lit interiors that may or may not include t...

Aaron Magid, "The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan" (Universal Publishers, 2025)

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan (Universal Publishers, 2025) is the first comprehensive biography on Jordan’s King Abdullah. Drawing o...

Meg Groff, "Not If I Can Help It" (Rivertown Books, 2025)

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Meg Groff's memoir Not If I Can Help It (Rivertown Books, 2025) recounts some of the most harrowing, infuriating, yet inspiring stories from Groff’...

Judith L. Pearson, "Radical Sisters: Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, Evelyn Lauder, and the Dawn of the Breast Cancer Movement" (Mayo Clinic Press, 2025)

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There was a time when women's health was marginalized. There was a time when breast cancer wasn't discussed. There was a time when October wasn't pink...

Al Posamentier, "Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians" (Prometheus, 2020)

09 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Alfred S. Posamentier, a co-author (with Christian Spreitzer) of Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians (Prome...

Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025)

08 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt. For many civil rights activists, t...

David T. Beito, "FDR: A New Political Life" (Open Universe, 2025)

07 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

David Beito's new book brings to bear the latest historical scholarship to shed light on the life and achievements of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Profe...

House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr.

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the height of the civil rights movement, Charles C. Diggs Jr. (1922–1998) was the consummate power broker. In a political career spanning 1951 to...

Mark L. Clifford, "The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic" (Free Press, 2024)

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The extraordinary life story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who be...

Elizabeth R. Hyman, "The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising" (Harper, 2025)

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is one of the most storied events of the Holocaust, yet previous accounts of have almost entirely focused on its male parti...

Rob Wells, "The Insider: How the Kiplinger Newsletter Bridged Washington and Wall Street" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Willard M. Kiplinger launched the groundbreaking Kiplinger Washington Letter in 1923, he left the sidelines of traditional journalism to strike o...

Brian Baker, "The Road" (Akashic Books, 2025)

29 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Road (Akashic Books, 2025) is an illuminating selection of photographs spanning iconic punk rock guitarist Brian Baker’s many years of global ...

Diane Ravitch, "An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else" (Columbia UP, 2025)

28 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country’s leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clea...

Patrick Parr, "Malcolm Before X" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing upon interviews, correspondence, and nearly 2000 pages of never-before-used prison records, Malcolm Before X is the definitive examination of ...

Sarah Smarsh, "Bone of the Bone: Essays on America from a Daughter of the Working Class" (Scribner, 2024)

25 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her career writing memoir, essays, and journalism centered on ...

Ashley D. Farmer, "Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore" (Pantheon, 2025)

25 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the world of Black radical politics, the name Audley Moore commands unquestioned respect. Across the nine decades of her life, Queen Mother Moore d...

Abhimanyu Kumar and Aletta André, "The House of Awadh: A Hidden Tragedy" (HarperCollins India, 2025)

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Begum Wilayat Mahal, the self-proclaimed heir to the House of Awadh, has fascinated journalists and writers for decades. She claimed she was Indian ro...

Carl Rollyson, "The Making of Sylvia Plath (UP Mississippi, 2024)

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since her death, Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) has become an endless source of fascination for a wide audience ranging from readers of The Bell Jar, her...

Peter C. Zimmerman, "The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight (UP of Mississippi, 2021) is a celebration of jazz and the men and women who created and transformed it...

Maurice Samuels, "Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair" (Yale UP, 2024)

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In Alfred Dreyfus: The Man...

Stephen Fritz, "The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader" (Yale UP, 2018)

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader (Yale University Press, 2018), Stephen Fritz professor of history at East Tennessee St...

Anthony Valerio, "Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor" (Zantedeschi Books, 2019)

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today. In his book Anthony Valerio’...

Bill V. Mullen, "James Baldwin: Living in Fire" (Pluto Press, 2019)

19 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the first major biography of Baldwin in more than a decade, James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019), Bill V. Mullen celebrates the per...

Hilary Holladay, "The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography" (Princeton UP, 2025)

17 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A major American writer, thinker, and activist, Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) transformed herself from a traditional, Radcliffe-educated lyric poet and ma...

Francis L. Sampson, "Look Out Below!: A Story of the Airborne by a Paratrooper Padre" (Catholic U of America Press, 2023)

16 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War, Francis L. Sampson was a real-life hero whose exploits inspired one of the most famous war films...

Mahboob Qirvanian and Behnaz Mirzai, "Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

14 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiog...

Nicolae Steinhardt, "The Journal of Joy" (SVS Press, 2025)

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A conversation with Fr. Bogdan Bucur and Dr. Razvan Porumb This publication represents the officially authorized translation of The Journal of Joy ...

Marion Orr, "House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr." (UNC Press, 2025)

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the height of the civil rights movement, Charles C. Diggs Jr. (1922-1998) was the consummate power broker. In a political career spanning 1951 to 1...

Sarah Hurwitz, "As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us" (HarperOne, 2025)

04 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An urgent exploration of how antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity and how Jews can reclaim their tradition, by the celebrated White House speechwri...

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland" (SUNY Press, 2025)

04 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A fascinating story of how three musicians, who escaped the Nazis, inspired Iceland's modern classical music. In Iceland in the 1930s, classical musi...

Raymond J. McKoski, "David Davis, Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Judge" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

03 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One of Abraham Lincoln's staunchest and most effective allies, Judge David Davis masterminded the floor fight that gave Lincoln the presidential nomin...

Roddy Bottum, "The Royal We" (Akashic Books, 2025)

01 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Royal We (Akashic Books, 2025) is a poetic survey of a time set in a magical city that once was and is no more. It is a memoir written by Roddy ...

Eibhear Walshe and Eleanor Fitzsimons, "Speranza: Poems by Jane Wilde" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

01 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Speranza: Poems by Jane Wilde (Liverpool UP, 2025) by Dr. Eibhear Walshe and Dr. Eleanor Fitzsimons is the first contemporary edition of the poetry o...

Katie Herzog, "Drink Your Way Sober: The Science-Based Method to Break Free from Alcohol" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After 20 years of fighting and failing to get sober using abstinence-based methods, journalist Katie Herzog found a simple, inexpensive, and effective...

Todd McGowan, "The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The difficulty of Jacques Lacan's thought is notorious. The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan cuts through this difficulty to provide a clear, j...

Scott Beekman, "The Last Gladiator: William Muldoon and the Making of American Sports" (U Texas Press, 2025)

28 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

William Muldoon was an infamous athlete whose prowess, savvy, and chicanery across his six-decade career led him to wealth, cultural importance, and p...

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland" (Indiana UP, 2019)

27 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland (Indiana University Press, 2019), Árni Heimir Ingólfsson provides a striking account of the ...

Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, "Lady Charlotte Schreiber, Extraordinary Art Collector" (Lund Humphries, 2025)

27 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Lady Charlotte Schreiber, Extraordinary Art Collector (Lund Humphries, 2025) emphasises Lady Charlotte Schreiber (1812-1895) — also known as Lady C...

Robert Waxler and David Beckman, "You Say, I Say: Staying Alive with Literature, Language, and Friendship" (Rivertown Books, 2025)

25 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a world increasingly dominated by visual and electronic noise, Robert Waxler and David Beckman's You Say, I Say: Staying Alive with Literature, La...

Stefanie Mercado Altman, Claire Altman, and Stan Altman, "Twice Blessed: A Story of Unconditional Love" (Fordham UP, 2025)

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Twice Blessed (Fordham University Press, 2025) is a memoir that explores the depths of love, resilience, and the true meaning of family. Stefanie Me...

Shulamit Reinharz, "Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir" (Amsterdam Publishers, 2024)

21 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Born in Amsterdam in 1946, Professor Shulamit Reinharz grew up amid the lingering shadows of wartime trauma, an experience that shaped her later acade...

I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“My name has become a horror to all those who want slavery,” declared Jean‑Jacques Dessalines as he announced the independence of Haiti, the mos...

James Campion, "Revolution: Prince, the Band, the Era" (Backbeat Books, 2025)

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Revolution: Prince, the Band, the Era (Backbeat Books, 2025) is a detailed exploration into the era of Prince's most prolific and groundbreaking musi...

Steven J. Zipperstein, "Philip Roth: Stung by Life" (Yale UP, 2025)

17 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In his literary biography, Philip Roth: Stung by Life (Yale UP, 2025), Steven J. Zipperstein captures the complex life and astonishing work of Phili...

Hadi Abdullah, "Critical Conditions: My Diary of the Syrian Revolution" (Doppelhouse Press, 2025)

17 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hadi Abdullah's Critical Conditions: My Diary of the Syrian Revolution (DoppelHouse Press, 2025), translated by Alessandro Columbu, is no ordinary ...

“Plato and the Tyrant” with author James Romm

13 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 388 BCE, Plato, at the age of about forty and in the midst of writing The Republic, visited for the first time the then-Greek city state of Syrac...

William Kelleher Storey, "The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes" (Oxford UP, 2025)

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the wor...

Edward Stanley et. al., "A North American Tour Journal 1824-1825: The Making of a Prime Minister" (Sutton Publishing, 2025)

06 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A North American Tour Journal 1824-1825: The Making of a Prime Minister (Sutton Publishing, 2025) follows Edward Stanley's 1824-25 journey through N...

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, "Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

05 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Claire McCardell forever changed fashion—and most importantly, the lives of women. She shattered cultural norms around women’s clothes, and today ...

Susana M. Morris, "Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler" (Amistad Press, 2025)

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A magnificent cultural biography, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler (Amistad, 2025) charts the life of one of our greatest...

Tracy Slater, "Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp" (Chicago Review Press, 2025)

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced Executive Order 9066, which authorized the confinement of tens of thousands of Japanese an...

Micaela Sahhar, "Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family" (Newsouth, 2025)

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"If we were different people, to write down these words might be to leave them behind us. But words are our artifacts, and I am seeding a trail for th...

Tom Arnold-Forster, "Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography" (Princeton UP, 2025)

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the years before World War I until the late 1960s, the journalist and political theorist Walter Lippmann was one of the most influential writers ...

LaShawn Harris, "Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City" (Beacon, 2025)

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On October 29, 1984, 66-year-old beloved Black disabled grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was murdered in her own home. A public housing tenant 4 months beh...

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

24 Aug 2025

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...

Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr., "Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune" (Ballantine, 2013)

23 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bill Dedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and New York Times #1 bestselling author of Empty Mansions, shares the extraordinary s...

Gill Plain, "Agatha Christie: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Agatha Christie is a global bestseller. Her work has been translated into over 100 languages and adapted for stage and screen. Christie's writing life...

Alexander Kimel and Martin Kimel, "The Pessimists Son: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2025)

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Pessimists Son: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope (Cherry Orchard Books, 2025) is a personal depiction of life in Poland set against the Nazi and Sovie...

Stacia Kalinoski, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025)

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The book, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025), is a memoir and an educational resource, which tells the ...

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

17 Aug 2025

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...

Thomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Kemple‘s new book is an extraordinarily thoughtful invitation to approach Max Weber (1864-1920) as a performer, and to experience Weber’s w...

Harriet Jacobs, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (Norton, 2025)

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the stirring autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive, detailing her harrowing escape from ens...

Inna Faliks, "Weight in the Fingertips: A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage" (Backbeat Books, 2023)

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Adventurous and passionate” (The New Yorker) Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most communicative, and poetic...

W. Henry Sledge, "The Old Breed... The Complete Story Revealed" (Knox Press, 2025)

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Because events like D-Day and the Battle of Okinawa took place an entire lifetime ago, it is rare to find any new accounts and memories from veterans....

Edward Berenson, "Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia" (Yale UP, 2025)

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity. Two material artifacts defined the middle-class America...

Raffale Bedarida, "Corrado Cagli: Transatlantic Bridges (1938-1947" (Centro Primo Levi, 2023)

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a Jewish and openly gay artist, Cagli became the target of virulent attacks, especially after Italy promulgated its racial laws in 1938. In respons...

Edward Luce, "Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Union’s demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsaw—the heart of central Europe’s ...

Alan M. Wald, "Bohemian Bolsheviks: Dispatches from the Culture and History of the Left" (Brill, 2025)

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For several decades now, Alan Wald has been thoroughly documenting the history of the literature and cultural output of the American left. While his n...

Grace C. Huang, "Chiang Kai-Shek's Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China" (Harvard UP, 2021)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Once a powerful figure who reversed the disintegration of China and steered the country to Allied victory in World War II, Chiang Kai-shek fled into e...

Teacher by Teacher: The People Who Change Our Lives

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Teacher By Teacher traces the journey of the tenth U.S. Secretary of Education and is a deeply personal love letter to all the teachers in our lives....

Melody Glenn, "Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis" (Beacon Press, 2025)

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Melody Glenn was a burned-out emergency physician who had grown to resent the large population of opioid dependent patients passing through her ER...

Robert Morstein-Marx, "Julius Caesar and the Roman People" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Julius Caesar was no aspiring autocrat seeking to realize the imperial future but an unusually successful republican leader who was measured against t...

Mark Vernon, "Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination" (Hurst & Co., 2025)

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the 200 years since Blake's death, the visionary artist, poet and writer has become a household name, often beloved. Yet many struggle to comprehen...