New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episodes
Arianne Edmonds, "We Now Belong to Ourselves: J. L. Edmonds, the Black Press, and Black Citizenship in America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Black press provided a blueprint to help Black Americans transition from slavery and find opportunities to a...
Glenn Richardson, "WOLSEY" (Routledge, 2020)
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Through a thematic and broadly chronological approach, WOLSEY (Routledge, 2020) offers a fascinating insight into the life and legacy of a man who ...
Victoria de Grazia, "The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy" (Harvard UP, 2020)
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy (Belknap Press), Dr. Victoria de Grazia takes the s...
Victoria de Grazia, "The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy" (Harvard UP, 2020)
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy (Belknap Press), Dr. Victoria de Grazia takes the s...
Marion Bower, "The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality" (Routledge, 2018)
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. She came to prominence in the world of psychoanalysis as Freud’...
Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "gr...
Cynthia Blakeley, "The Innermost House: A Memoir" (Bright Leaf, 2024)
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Innermost House: A Memoir (Bright Leaf, 2024) is a stunning account of year-round life on the windswept shores of Cape Cod, threaded with medita...
M’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrat...
Frank L. Jones, "Sam Nunn: Statesman of the Nuclear Age" (UP Kansas, 2020)
20 Jul 2025
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...
David Engerman, "Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made" (Oxford UP and Penguin RandomHouse South Asia, 2025)
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made (Oxford University Press and Penguin RandomHouse South Asia, 2025) by Dr. David Enger...
Brendan O'Meara, "The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine" (HarperCollins, 2025)
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the fifty years since his tragic death in a car crash, Steve Prefontaine has towered over American distance running. One of the most recognizable a...
Rosemary Goring, "Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots" (Berlinn, 2025)
12 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the moment Mary, Queen of Scots set foot on English soil in 1568 until her execution at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, she was the priso...
Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Springsteen was keenly aware and excited by the sounds of the CBGBs scene during the Seventies. With his own bands, the Boss performed in the sa...
John Eldevik, "Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and Its Manuscript Contexts" (Arc Humanities Press, 2024)
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and its Manuscript Contexts by John Eldevik During the Middle Ages, many Europeans imagined that there exist...
Alex Vernon, "Peace Is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O'Brien" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
05 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawi...
Jennifer Kabat, "Nightshining: A Memoir in Four Floods" (Milkweed Editions, 2025)
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hello, my name is Eric LeMay, a host on New Books in Literature, a channel on the New Books Network. Today I interview Jennifer Kabat. Kabat is write...
John DeVore, "Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway" (Applause, 2024)
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with John Devore about his phenomenal memoir, Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway (Applaus...
Keith Merith, "A Darker Shade of Blue: A Police Officer's Memoir" (ECW Press, 2024)
28 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A transparent first-hand account of a Black officer maneuvering through three terrifying yet rewarding decades of policing, all while seeking reform i...
John P. Gribbin, "Gribbin: A Family History of Ulster" (Ulster Historical Foundation, 2023)
28 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a comprehensive history of the Gribbin (Gribben/Gribbon) family. The author traces his own family line back to the early nineteenth century, s...
Zachary Gorman, "The Young Menzies: Success, Failure, Resilience 1894-1942" (Melbourne UP, 2022)
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Robert Menzies is a towering figure in Australian history. The Young Menzies: Success, Failure, Resilience 1894-1942 (Melbourne UP, 2022) ex...
Louis P. Masur, "A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, and the Forging of a Friendship" (Oxford UP, 2025)
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between May 21 and June 16, 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on a trip together through Upstate New York and parts of New England on hors...
Nubar Hovsepian, "Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual" (AUC Press, 2025)
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete’s temperament, he did not ex...
Kay Sohini, "This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir" (Ten Speed Graphic, 2025)
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kay Sohini about her graphic memoir, This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir (publish...
Christopher Clarey, "The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay" (Grand Central Publishing, 2025)
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay (Grand Central Publishing, 2025) Christopher Clarey illuminates the skill and determinat...
The Truth About Bullshit: Celebrating the 20th Anniversary Edition of On Bullshit with Pamela Hieronymi
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m thrilled to launch a brand new series for the Princeton UP Ideas Podcast. 20 years ago, Princeton University Press published a short volum...
Kevin J. Hayes, "Undaunted Mind: The Intellectual Life of Benjamin Franklin" (Oxford UP, 2025)
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An exploration of the mind of one of America's most beloved Founding Fathers and most brilliant minds, through the books he read and his social circle...
Wendy Doniger, "An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963-64" (SUNY Press, 2023)
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wendy Doniger’s An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963–64 (SUNY Press, 2023) is a memoir-style collection of letters and re...
David P. Celani, "Ronald Fairbairn: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2024)
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this concise and introductory book, David Celani examines the work of Ronald Fairbairn, one of the pioneers of Object Relations Theory. Ronald Fai...
Andreas Beyer, "Benvenuto Cellini and the Embodiment of the Modern Artist" (Reaktion, 2025)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Andreas Beyer joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Benvenuto Cellini and the Embodiment of the Modern Artist (Reaktion, 2025). Benvenuto Ce...
Rob Edwards, "Defiant: The Story of Robert Smalls" (Stranger Comics, 2025)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the height of the Civil War, on May 12, 1862, Robert Smalls—an enslaved harbor pilot in Charleston, South Carolina—carried out one of the most ...
Ana Hebra Flaster, "Property of the Revolution: From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town" (She Writes Press, 2025)
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ana Hebra Flaster was six years old when her working-class family was kicked out of their Havana barrio for opposing communism. Once devoted revolutio...
Barbara Allen, "Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction" (Reaktion, 2025)
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction (Reaktion, 2025) by Reverend Barbara Allen presents thirty-one extinct species through the p...
Fyodor Tertitskiy, "Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung" (Hurst UP, 2025)
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Kims, of North Korea, are perhaps the 21st century’s most successful family dictatorship–if only due to sheer longevity, having run North Kore...
Myra Mendible, "American War Stories: Veteran-Writers and the Politics of Memoir" (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021)
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Even with the availability of new forms of storytelling, the memoir remains as one of the favored ways for combat veterans to tell their stories about...
Sabrin Hasbun, "Crossing: A Love Story Between Italy and Palestine" (Footnote Press, 2025)
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A beautiful and compelling family memoir retracing the love story between Sabrin Hasbun’s Palestinian father and Italian mother, and the life of her...
Semmy Stalhammer, "Codename Barber: My Father’s Story" (Albert Bonniers Publishers, 2007)
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Nazi threat emerges from Germany 1933 and shatters the small town life in Krasnik south of Lublin in eastern Poland. The teenager Mischa Stahlhamm...
Joseph Torigian, "The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" (Stanford UP, 2025)
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Often I will find in a chronology or a biography, you know, official materials, evidence that because I have other evidence, it’s meaningful in a wa...
James Graham Wilson, "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan" (Cornell UP, 2024)
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In America's Cold Warrior, James Graham Wilson traces Paul Nitze's career path in national security after World War II, a time when many of his mento...
Christoph Schuringa, "Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It is indisputable that Marx began his intellectual trajectory as a philosopher, but it is often thought that he subsequently turned away from philoso...
Bonnie Yochelson, "Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen" (Fordham UP, 2025)
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen (Fordham University Press, 2025) by Dr. Bonnie Yochelson, explore Gilded A...
Victoria Bynum, "Deep Roots, Broken Branches: A History and Memoir" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Victoria Bynum turns now to her own history in this multigenerational American saga spanning from 1840 to 1979. Through meticulous historica...
Stephen P. Huyler, "Transformed by India: A Life" (iIppa Rann, 2025)
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With a compelling story, wit, insight, and candor, American author Stephen Huyler leads the reader into the heart of India. It is a country and cultur...
Gina Leola Woolsey, "Fifteen Thousand Pieces" (Guernica Editions, 2023)
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Gina Leola Woolsey about her stunning biography, Fifteen Thousand Pieces (Guernica Editi...
Dmitri N. Shalin, "Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination" (Routledge, 2024)
25 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman’s direction for his papers not to be opened to researcher...
Stephen R. Platt, "The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II" (Knopf, 2025)
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The extraordinary life of forgotten World War II hero Evans Carlson, commander of America’s first special forces, secret confidant of FDR, and one o...
Maureen Stanton, "The Murmur of Everything Moving: A Memoir" (Columbus State UP, 2025)
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Maureen Stanton’s new memoir, The Murmur of Everything Moving (Columbus State University 2025) opens when she was in her early twenties, working a...
Yosie Levine, "Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate" (Littman Library, 2024)
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My recent interview with Rabbi Dr. Yosie Levine about his book, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate (Li...
Andrew Holter, ed., "Going Around: Selected Journalism / Murray Kempton" (Seven Stories Press, 2025)
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From 1949 until his death in 1997, Murray Kempton was a distinct presence in New York City journalism. Peddling around town on a three-speed bicycle w...
Michael A. Meyer, "Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler" (CCAR Press, 2025)
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Reform Judaism looks different today than it did a century ago. There are a lot of factors that lead to that change, but among these is Rabbi Alexande...
Noel Rubinton, "Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee" (Princeton UP, 2025)
17 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John McPhee has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1965 and has written more than thirty acclaimed books that began on the magazine's page...
Mayukh Sen, "Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star" (Norton, 2025)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2022, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. But she wasn’t the first actress of Asian origin to...
Marc Shapiro, "Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New: The Unique Vision of Rav Kook" (Littman Library, 2025)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rav Kook’s Vision: Halakhah, Secular Knowledge, and the Renewal of Judaism. Those of us who know something about Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook’...
Annie Zaleski, "I Got You Babe: A Celebration of Cher" (Running Press Adult, 2025)
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Covering her life and sixty-year career from Sonny & Cher to show-stopping solo performer, award-winning actress, fashion icon, and beyond, this is ...
Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, "Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch" (Oxford UP, 2025)
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gospel singer and seven-time Grammy winner Andraé Crouch (1942-2015) hardly needs introduction. His compositions--"The Blood Will Never Lose Its Powe...
Elaine Pagels, "Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesus" (Doubleday, 2025)
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culminat...
Nechama Birnbaum, "The Redhead of Auschwitz: A True Story" (Amsterdam Publishers, 2021)
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rosie was always told her red hair was a curse, but she never believed it. She often dreamed what it would look like under a white veil with the man o...
John Lee Hooker Jr., "From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) is powerful memoir of redemption from the so...
Jerome Powell: “We don't think you're a straight shooter"
04 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More than any one institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates ar...
Janet Yellen: “She had a view that the world was on fire”
03 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest...
Ben Bernanke: “Like being a paleontologist”
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest...
Alan Greenspan: “The man who knew”
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest...
Chris Stowers, "Shoot, Ask...and Run" (Earnshaw Books Ltd, 2025)
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Stowers, longtime photographer, credits a fellow journalist for the title of his latest memoir, Shoot, Ask...and Run (Earnshaw, 2025). The jo...
Alexandra Popoff, "Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century" (Yale UP, 2019)
24 Apr 2025
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 ...
Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-...
Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he rea...
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, ed., "We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn" (U Notre Dame Press, 2025)
20 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (U Notre Dame Press, 2025) brings together ten of Nobel Prize–winne...
Kayla E.'s "Precious Rubbish" (Fantagraphics Books, 2025)
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kayla E.’s Precious Rubbish (Fantagraphics, 2025), is an experimental graphic memoir drawn in a style that references the aesthetics of mid-centu...
Erica Stern, "Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story" (Barrelhouse Inc., 2025)
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story (Barrelhouse Inc., 2025) is a genre-bending expedition into childbirth. Seamlessly blending memoir, fiction, and...
Martha A. Sandweiss, "The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West" (Princeton UP, 2025)
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A haunting image of an unnamed Native child and a recovered story of the American West In 1868, celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner tr...
Ulf Zander, "Raoul Wallenberg: Life and Legacy" (Lund UP, 2024)
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Raoul Wallenberg: Life and Legacy (Lund UP, 2024) examines important events in the life of the Swedish diplomat, but this is not a traditional biogra...
Mark Doyle, "John Cale's Paris 1919" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of the W...
Karen A. Frenkel, "Family Treasures: Lost & Found" (Post Hill Press, 2025)
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this captivating memoir, journalist Karen A. Frenkel unravels her parents' and sole surviving grandparent's secret, riveting stories of survival du...
Stephen J. Campbell, "Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life" (Princeton UP, 2025)
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed nex...
Loretta Vandi, "Eufrasia Burlamacchi" (Getty Publications, 2025)
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eufrasia Burlamacchi (Getty Publications, 2025) by Dr. Loretta Vandi is a timely exploration of the skilful illuminated manuscripts of Sister Eufrasi...
Seán Creagh, "Republican Solipsist: The Life and Times of Joseph Mcgarrity, 1874-1940" (Peter Lang, 2025)
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Seán Creagh was born in County Monaghan in 1977. He attended Our Lady’s Secondary School in Castleblayney and later on Dundalk Institute of Techno...
Michael Backus, "The Heart Is Meat: An 80s Memoir" (Oil on Water Press, 2025)
05 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 80s, New York City’s Gansevoort Meatpacking District, a small irregular patch of the West Village, was a wild confluence of meat market...
Martha S. Jones, "The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir" (Basic Books, 2025)
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones’...
Miriam Haughton, "The Theatre of Louise Lowe" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Louise Lowe is a theatre and performance director, writer, choreographer, dramaturge, and, more recently, a television director and short film writer/...
Jason Cannon, "A Time for Reflection: The Parallel Legacies of Baseball Icons Willie McCovery and Billy Williams" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Professional baseball has featured a bevy of superstars over the past century and a half, but only a few of them have impacted their sport and cities ...
Letizia Osti, "History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writing the Past in Medieval Arabic Literature" (I. B. Tauris, 2024)
29 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Abu Bakr al-Suli was an Abbasid polymath and table companion, as well as a legendary chess player. He was perhaps best known for his work on poetry an...
Mikhail Goldis, "Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What was it like to work as a Jewish district attorney in provincial Soviet Ukraine in the post-Stalinist eras? What role did antisemitism and Holocau...
Lincoln A. Mitchell, "Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco" (U Nevada Press, 2025)
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Those who recognize Mayor George Moscone's name may think of him as the career politician who was assassinated along with Harvey Milk, but there was m...
Donna Besel, "The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family" (U Regina Press, 2021)
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode host Hollay Ghadery talks to bestselling author Donna Besel about her staggering memoir, The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruct...
Simon Morrison, "Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer" (Yale UP, 2024)
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we ...
Heather Akou, "Afterthought: A Family Story" (Indiana U Libraries, 2025)
22 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Afterthought: A Family Story (Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Publishing, 2025) by Dr. Heather Akou focuses on the life of her grandmother, ...
Jon Chapple, "Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer" (Blazing Sapphire Press, 2024)
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer is an in-depth, spiritual biography of a British fighter pilot (WW I), Ronald Nixon (1898-1965). Raised in an i...
Andrew Janiak, "The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2024)
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2024) introduces the work and legacy ...
Douglas Field, "Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father and I" (Manchester UP, 2024)
15 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwi...
Patrick Beldio, "The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga" (Lexington Books, 2024)
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga (Lexington Books, 2024) analyzes the contributions of the Mother (née Mirra ...
Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, "Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult" (Ibidem Press, 2014)
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (Ibidem Verlag, 2014) is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the U...
Ariane Sherine, "The Real Sinéad O'Connor" (White Owl, 2024)
08 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sinéad O'Connor, renowned for her angelic voice and activism, overcame a tumultuous upbringing to become a global protest singer and advocate for soc...
Rachelle Bergstein, "The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us" (Atria, 2024)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows Judy Blume. Her books have garnered her fans of all ages for decades and sold tens of millions of copies. But why were people so drawn ...
Elizabeth T. Craft, "Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage" (Oxford UP, 2024)
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
George M. Cohan was one of those rare Broadway figures who was a composer, lyricist, playwright, performer, director, theater owner, and star actor. H...
Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa" (Chicago UP, 2023)
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped sh...
Michael Visontay, "Noble Fragments: The Gripping Story of the Antiquarian Bookseller Who Broke Up a Gutenberg Bible" (Scribe, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg...
Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, "Bong Joon Ho" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Successful cult films like The Host and Snowpiercer proved to be harbingers for Bong Joon Ho's enormous breakthrough success with Parasite. In Bong ...
Paul Lisicky, "Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell" (HarperOne, 2025)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Lisicky remembers when he first heard Joni Mitchell on the radio, and when he found one of her records in a bin at Korvettes. He was inspired by ...
John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerba...
Isabel Moreira, "Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint" (Oxford UP, 2024)
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in...
Florence Martin, "Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) unfolds and analyzes the work of Moroccan director, producer, and scriptwriter Farid...