New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episodes
Mirin Fader, "Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon" (Hachette, 2024)
02 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s now the norm for NBA and collegiate teams to have international players dotting their rosters. The Olympics are no longer a gimme for Team USA....
Richard Schoch, "How Sondheim Can Change Your Life" (Atria Books, 2024)
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For fans of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim is one of the true titans – the genius who brought us Sweeney Todd and West Side Story, Into the Woods...
Ronald Drabkin, "Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor" (William Morrow, 2024)
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Frederick Rutland—”Rutland of Jutland”—was a war hero, renowned World War I aviator…and a Japanese spy. In the years leading up to Pearl Har...
Rajbir Singh Judge, "Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia" (Columbia UP, 2024)
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do traditions and peoples grapple with loss, particularly when it is of such magnitude that it defies the possibility of recovery or restoration? ...
Sharon Kinoshita, "Marco Polo and His World" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
26 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sharon Kinoshita talks with Jana Byars about her new book, Marco Polo and His World (Reaktion Press, 2024). A lavishly illustrated tour of the fame...
Bob Frishman, "Edward Duffield: Philadelphia Clockmaker, Citizen, Gentleman, 1730-1803" (APS Press, 2024)
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Edward Duffield (1730–1803) was a colonial Philadelphia clockmaker, whose elegant brass, mahogany, and walnut timekeepers stand proudly in major Ame...
John Freed, “Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth” (Yale UP, 2016)
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For all of his importance as a medieval ruler, there are surprisingly few biographies in English of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa (c. 1122-1...
S. L. Wisenberg, "The Adventures of Cancer Bitch" (Tortoise Books, 2024)
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s 2006, and S. L. Wisenberg is teaching writing at one of Chicago’s great universities and living a busy life when she’s gobsmacked by a sudd...
Amy Reading, "The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker" (Mariner Books, 2024)
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker's midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was...
Anne Higonnet, "Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution" (Norton, 2024)
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, ...
Thomas Weber, “Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi” (Basic Books, 2017)
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Few would dispute that Hitler’s ideas led to war and genocide. Less clear however, is how and when those ideas developed. In his latest book, Becomi...
Suganya Anandakichenin, "The Monsoon Cloud: Poet Kāḷamēkam and His Irreverent Poetry" (Primus, 2024)
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A wordsmith, an extempore poet and a satirist, Kāḷamēkam (also known as Kāḷamēka Pulavar; fifteenth century) is widely known for his taṉippā...
Jennifer Lang, "Landed: A Yogi's Memoir in Pieces & Poses" (Vine Leaves Press, 2024)
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In her latest memoir, Landed: A Yogi's Memoir of Places & Poses (2024, Vine Leaves Press), American-born Jennifer traces her journey-both on and...
Oumelbanine Nina Zhiri, "Beyond Orientalism: Ahmad Ibn Qasim Al-Hajari Between Europe and North Africa" (U California Press, 2023)
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The first in-depth study of the collaborative intellectual exchange between the European and the Arabic Republics of Letters. Beyond Orientalism: Ah...
Jackie Wang, "Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood" (Semiotext(e), 2023)
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jackie Wang is a poet, scholar, multimedia artist, and Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California....
Aliza Arzt, "Turning the Pages: Conversations Through Time with Rabbi Isador Signer" (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024)
13 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Aliza Arzt about Turning the Pages: Conversations Through Time with Rabbi Isador Signer (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024) In 1924, Rabbi I...
Robert Gerwarth, “Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich” (Yale UP, 2012)
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Few history books sell better than biographies of Nazi leaders. They attract anyone even tangentially interested in World War Two or Nazi Germany. I...
Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024)
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collect...
Christopher Paul Clohessy, "Half of My Heart: The Narratives of Zaynab, Daughter of Alî" (Gorgias Press, 2020)
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Christopher Paul Clohessy about Half of My Heart: The Narratives of Zaynab, Daughter of Alî (Gorgias Press, 2020). As Abû ʿAbd...
Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action (University of R...
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav, "Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood" (India Viking, 2024)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav’s book Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood (Penguin Random House India, 2024) undertakes a s...
William H. F. Altman, "Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic" (Lexington, 2012)
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington, 2012), William Altman shines a light on the pedagogical technique of the playful Plato,...
Jane Little Botkin, "The Pink Dress: A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen" (She Writes Press, 2024)
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in colle...
Francis Stevens, "The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories" (MIT Press, 2024)
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When three people in Philadelphia inhale dust developed by a scientist who has discovered parallel universes, they are transported into an interdimens...
Jack Palmer, "Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Palmer’s Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) invites us to reconsider a ...
Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy, "An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer" (Cornell UP, 2024)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the city of New York from the 1930s to the 1990s, Irish attorney Paul O’Dwyer was a fierce and enduring presence in courtrooms, on picket lines, ...
Tom Navon, "Radical Assimilation in the Face of the Holocaust: Otto Heller (1897–1945)" (SUNY Press, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This book explores the confrontation of radically assimilated Jews with the violent collapse of their envisioned integration into a cosmopolitan Europ...
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" (FSG, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-ce...
Jack Margolin, "The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army (Reaktion, 2024) exposes the history and the future of the Wagner Group, Russia’s notorious and ...
William H. F. Altman, "The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism" (Lexington Books, 2010)
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish emigrant to the United States, an author, professor and political philosopher. Born in 1899 in Kirchhain in the Kingdo...
Will Grant, "Populista: The Rise of Latin America's 21st Century Strongman" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Will Grant about his book Populista: The Rise of Latin America's 21st Century Strongman (Bloomsbury, 2021). or more than six dec...
Philip Freeman, "Julian: Rome's Last Pagan Emperor" (Yale UP, 2023)
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Philip Freeman about his new book Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (Yale UP, 2023). Flavius Claudius Julianus, or Julian the Ap...
Grant Olwage, "Paul Robeson's Voices" (Oxford UP, 2023)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Robeson's Voices (Oxford UP, 2023) is a meditation on Robeson's singing, a study of the artist's life in song. Music historian Grant Olwage exa...
Peter Rose, "The Good War of Consul Reeves" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Macau was supposed to be a sleepy post for John Reeves, the British consul for the Portuguese colony on China’s southern coast. He arrived, alone, i...
Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice p...
Yaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019)
08 Sep 2024
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...
Sara E. Johnson, "Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's Intellectual World" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2023)
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you peer closely into the bookstores, salons, and diplomatic circles of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Sain...
Tom Boniface-Webb, "Modern Music Masters: Oasis" (MMM, 2020)
07 Sep 2024
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...
Magdalena J. Zaborowska, "Me and My House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France" (Duke UP, 2018)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The last sixteen years of James Baldwin's life (1971–87) unfolded in a village in the South of France, in a sprawling house nicknamed “Chez Baldwi...
Mark Blake, "Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac" (Pegasus Books, 2024)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An illuminating deep-dive into everything Fleetwood Mac--the songs, the rivalries, the successes, and the failures—Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwo...
James M. Scott, "Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb" (Norton, 2024)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In our interview about Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), James M. ...
Kostas Kampourakis, "Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many historical figures have their lives and works shrouded in myth, both in life and long after their deaths. Charles Darwin (1809–82) is no excep...
Jonathan Butler, "Join the Conspiracy: How a Brooklyn Eccentric Got Lost on the Right, Infiltrated the Left and Brought Down the Biggest Bombing Network in New York" (Fordham UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the shadow of recent turmoil, Join the Conspiracy: How a Brooklyn Eccentric Got Lost on the Right, Infiltrated the Left and Brought Down the Bigge...
Sanjay Lal, "Gandhi's Thought and Liberal Democracy" (Lexington Books, 2019)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is religion indispensable to public life? What can Gandhi’s thought contribute to the modern state? With an intense focus on both the depth and pra...
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia" (NYU Press, 2019)
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia(New York University Press, 2019), Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Profess...
Lise Butler, "Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970" (Oxford UP, 2020)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lise Butler’s Michael Young, Social Science and the British Left, 1945-70 (Oxford UP, 2020) invites us to revisit a figure who, in Butler’s wor...
Ludovico Silva, "Marx's Literary Style" (Verso, 2023)
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx’s work results from ...
Christopher Lovins, "King Chŏngjo: An Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea" (SUNY Press, 2019)
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Though traditionally regarded as a monarch who failed to arrest the gradual decline of his kingdom, the Korean king Chŏngjo has benefited in recent d...
Steve Moriarty, "Mia Zapata and the Gits: A True Story of Art, Rock and Revolution" (Ferel House, 2024)
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mia Zapata and the Gits: A True Story of Art, Rock and Revolution (Ferel House, 2024) by Steve Moriarty, shares the story of the Seattle based The ...
Adam Zamoyski, "Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess" (William Collins, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Princess Izabela Czartoryska was a towering figure of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century European cultural and intellectual life. Married a...
Rachel Kousser, "Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great" (Mariner Books, 2024)
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 330 BC, Alexander the Great conquers the city of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire. His troops later burn it to the ground, ...
Lesley Smith, "Fragments of a World: William of Auvergne and His Medieval Life" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lesley Smith of Oxford University joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Fragments of a World: William of Auvergne and His Medieval Life (Univ...
A Hidden Life (with Brian Zahnd)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What would you do in the place of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter in 1943? Mumble your loyalty oath to Hitler like everyone else—or refuse and ...
Shaul Magid, "Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical" (Princeton UP, 2021)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rabbi Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane ...
James Madison and the Spirit of Self-Government: A Conversation with Colleen Sheehan
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who was James Madison? Why were his Notes on Government so valuable to the American founding? Did James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Wash...
Zoë Bossiere, "Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir" (Abrams Press, 2024)
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, I interview Zoë Bossiere about Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir (Abrams Press, 2024). Bossiere is writer from Tucson, Arizona. They are th...
Paul Volcker: “The only number that works is zero”
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions e...
Arthur Burns: “The smartest guy in the room”
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions e...
Bill Martin: “Truman looked at him and said: ‘Traitor’”
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions e...
Na'ou Liu, "Urban Scenes" (Cambria Press, 2023)
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"In this tango palace everything was swaying rhythmically to and fro, bodies of men and women, beams of colored light, brilliant wine glasses, red and...
Alexandra Popoff, "Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success" (Yale UP, 2024)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ayn Rand is a provocative and polarizing figure. Strongly pro-capitalist and anti-communist, Rand was a dogmatic preacher of her moral philosophy. Bas...
Edward Shanks, "The People of the Ruins" (MIT Press, 2024)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The People of the Ruins (originally published in 1920), Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neo mediaeval society wh...
Marriner Eccles: Reform “may not have happened in 1935 if Eccles hadn't been there”
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions e...
Yiman Wang, "To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World" (U California Press, 2024)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theatre, radio, and A...
Douglas Greene, "The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade's Revenge" (Routledge, 2024)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Returning to the New Books Network is Doug Greene, here to discuss his book The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky (Routledge, 2024). Sp...
Laura Beers. "Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century" (Norton, 2024)
03 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is Orwell still relevant today? In Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century (Norton, 2024), Laura Beers, a Professor of Histor...
Iman Mersal, "Traces of Enayat" (Transit Books, 2023)
03 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Traces of Enayat (Transit Books, 2023) is a work of creative nonfiction tracing the mysterious life and erasure of Egyptian literature’s tragic her...
Shaul Magid on the Jewish Radicalism of Meir Kahane (JP, Eugene Sheppard)
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For Kahane, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the black nationalist, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the Arabs. The greatest enemy of the ...
Steven E. Lindquist, "The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya" (SUNY Press, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya (SUNY Press, 2024), Steven E. Lindquist investigates the intersections between historical context and literary...
Tim Cooper, "When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter" (Crossway, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our current culture seems to be increasingly divided on countless issues, including those affecting the church. But for centuries, theological disagre...
Jim Higgins, "Sweet, Wild and Vicious: Listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground" (Trouser Press, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the time he began recording with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s until his death in 2013, Lou Reed released nearly 50 original albums. In Sw...
Robin Darling Young et al, "Evagrius of Pontus: The Gnostic Trilogy" (Oxford UP, 2024)
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Gnostic Trilogy is the best-known and most important work by the ascetic philosopher and teacher Evagrius of Pontus. Among the writers of his age,...
Sheila Curran Bernard, "Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to ...
Justin B. Stein, "Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific" (U Hawaii Press, 2023)
27 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the second half of the twentieth century, Reiki went from an obscure therapy practiced by a few thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans to a globa...
Robyn Hitchcock, "1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left" (Akashic Books, 2024)
27 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left (Akashic Books, 2024) explores how that pivotal slice of time tastes to a bright, obsessive-compulsive boy...
Naomi Westerman, "Happy Death Club: Essays on Death, Grief, and Bereavement Across Cultures" (404 Inklings, 2024)
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Playwright Naomi Westerman was an anthropology graduate student studying death rituals around the world when her whole family died, turning the end of...
Steven Powell, "Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy (Bloomsbury, 2023) is the story of James Ellroy, one of the most provocative and singular figures ...
Francis X. Clooney, S.J., "Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This autobiography--Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story (Bloomsbury, 2024)--traces Francis X. Clooney's intellectual and spiritual j...
Dan Morrison, "The Poisoner of Bengal: The 1930s Murder That Shocked the World" (Juggernaut, 2024)
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the 1930s. Amarendra Chandra Pandey, the youngest son of an Indian prince, is about to board a train when a man bumps into him. Amarendra feels...
David Burke, "The Puppet Masters: How MI6 Masterminded Ireland's Deepest State Crisis" (Mercier Press, 2024)
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Puppet Masters: How MI6 Masterminded Ireland's Deepest State Crisis (Mercier Press, 2024), David Burke uncovers the clandestine activities o...
Suzanne Scanlon, "Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen" (Vintage, 2024)
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen (Vintage, 2024) is a critical memoir about women, reading, and mental illness. When Suzanne Scanlon was a student ...
Yanagawa Seigan, "The Same Moon Shines on All: The Lives and Selected Poems of Yanagawa Seigan and Kōran" (Columbia UP, 2024)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Yanagawa Seigan (1789–1858) and his wife Kōran (1804–79) were two of the great poets of nineteenth-century Japan. They practiced the art of tradi...
Stephanie Balkwill, "The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century" (U California Press, 2024)
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she h...
Filmmaker, Artist, Writer: A Conversation with Paromita Vohra
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Co...
Fida Jiryis, "Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel and One Family's Story of Home" (Hurst, 2022)
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this very moving and heartwarming interview I had the opportunity to discuss with Fida Jiyris her work, a beautifully written memoir that tells the...
Diana P. Parsell, "Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees" (Oxford UP, 2023)
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Eliza Scidmore (1856-1928) was a journalist, a world traveler, a writer, an amateur photographer, the first female board member of the National Geogra...
Emily Wilbourne, "Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence" (Oxford UP, 2023)
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Grounded in new archival research documenting a significant presence of foreign and racially-marked individuals in Medici Florence, Voice, Slavery, a...
Tea Krulos, "American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness" (Feral House, 2020)
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The mainstream news media struggles to understand the power of social media. In contrast, conspiracy advocates, malicious political movements, and eve...
The (ir)Rational Priests: On Ignacio Martín-Baró and Liberation Psychology
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A group of landholding elites waged psychological warfare on the El Salvadoran people, and oppressed them for generations. When a psychologist and Jes...
Benjamin J. B. Lipscomb, "The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics" (Oxford UP, 2021)
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The story of four remarkable women who shaped the intellectual history of the 20th century: Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris ...
Alan Lightman, "Einstein's Dreams" (Vintage, 1992)
07 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Einstein’s Dreams (Vintage, 1992) by Alan Lightman, set in Albert Einstein’s “miracle year” of 1905, is a novel about the cultural interconne...
Timothy Grieve-Carlson, "American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius" (Oxford UP, 2024)
06 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius (Oxford UP, 2024) explores the impact of climate change on early modern ...
Jeremy Black, "Defoe's Britain" (St. Augustine's Press, 2023)
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Weight of Words Series continues with Defoe's Britain (St. Augustine's Press, 2023), as historian Jeremy Black uses this writer to interpret Bri...
Marsha Gordon, "Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott" (U California Press, 2024)
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Credited with popularizing the label "ex-wife" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life b...
Verso l’Alto (with Christine Wohar)
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Christine Wohar talks about Finding Frassati: And Following His Path to Holiness (EWTN, 2021), her book about Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. The boo...
Michelle T. King, "Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-Mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food" (Norton, 2024)
03 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1971, the New York Times called the Taiwanese-Chinese chef, Fu Pei-Mei, the “the Julia Child of Chinese cooking.” But, as Michelle T. King no...
Lance J. Sussman, "Portrait of an American Rabbi: In His Own Words" (Xlibris US, 2023)
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, Ph.D., has been a leading rabbi and scholar of the American Jewish experience throughout his long career. Now Rabbi Emeritus o...
The (ir)Rational Mob: On the Life and Legacy of Gustave Le Bon
29 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every protest movement has been dismissed as a mere ‘mindless mob,’ caught in a psychological frenzy. Where did this idea come from, and why does ...
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, "An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948" (Columbia UP, 2024)
29 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Jerusalem, as World War II was coming to an end, an extraordinary circle of friends began to meet at the bar of the King David Hotel. This group of...
Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn, "The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, t...