New Books in Biography

Interviews with Biographers about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
1376
Kathryn Holliday, "The Open-Ended City: David D...
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 same sentence again...
36 min
1377
Kerry Driscoll, "Mark Twain among the Indians a...
Driscoll charts the development of the writer’s ethnocentric attitudes about Indians and savagery in relation to the various geographic and social milieus of communities he inhabited at key periods in his life...
94 min
1378
Malcolm Woollen, "Erik Gunnar Asplund: Landscap...
Woollen investigates the landscapes and buildings of Swedish architect Erik Gunnar Asplund...
53 min
1379
Kathleen Sheppard, "The Life of Margaret Alice ...
After Napoleon occupied Egypt, Europeans became obsessed with the ancient cultures of the Nile...
31 min
1380
Laura K. T. Stokes, "Fanny Hensel: A Research a...
Nineteenth-century composer Fanny Hensel is the subject of more published research than any other woman of the period, with the possible exception of Clara Schumann...
49 min
1381
Andrew Roberts, "Leadership in War: Lessons Fro...
This outstanding contribution identifies significant new themes in its collective biography of some of those individuals who, for good or ill, have done most to shape the modern world...
30 min
1382
Peter Kerasotis, "Alou: My Baseball Journey" (U...
Alou started playing organized baseball late in life (early teens), endured poverty and hardship in his native Dominican Republic, and then helped to break down barriers of language and perception throughout his long career on the field and in the dugout...
55 min
1383
Richard F. Thomas, "Why Bob Dylan Matters" (Dey...
When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged...
64 min
1384
Charles Halperin, "Ivan the Terrible: Free to R...
Halperin’s Ivan IV emerges as a ruler at once less—and more—mysterious than in previous treatments of this subject...
59 min
1385
Lian Xi, "Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Li...
In 1960, a poet and journalist named Lin Zhao was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sent to prison for re-education...
75 min
1386
Roland De Wolk, "American Disruptor: The Scanda...
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 century...
69 min
1387
Richard J. Bernstein, "Why Read Hannah Arendt N...
Nobody should feel excited about the renewed relevance of Hannah Arendt's work today...
56 min
1388
David Hayton, "Conservative Revolutionary: The ...
Namier remains famous in academic circles for supposedly declaring that any reference to ideas in political discourse was nothing more than 'flapdoodle'...
75 min
1389
Wendy Wickwire, "At The Bridge: James Teit and ...
The history of anthropology remembers James Teit as a field assistant and man-on-the spot for Franz Boas...
61 min
1390
Douglas R. Egerton, "Heirs of an Honored Name: ...
John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace...
100 min
1391
Robert Mann, "Becoming Ronald Reagan: The Rise ...
Throughout much of his career as an actor in Hollywood, Ronald Reagan identified as a passionate New Deal Democrat...
50 min
1392
John Launer, "Sex Versus Survival: The Life and...
Spielrein's life resembles a nodal point; she stood at the crossroads of extraordinary changes in world politics and psychoanalysis...
56 min
1393
Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Martin Buber: A Life of Fai...
Mendes-Flohr paints a detailed and compelling portrait of one of the twentieth century's most versatile and influential thinkers..,
47 min
1394
Noelle Giuffrida, "Separating Sheep from Goats:...
Guiffrida tells the history of collecting and exhibiting Chinese art through the story of renowned curator and museum director Sherman E. Lee (1918-2008)...
81 min
1395
John Shelton Reed, "Dixie Bohemia: A French Qua...
In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life...
47 min
1396
Lewis H. Siegelbaum, "Stuck on Communism: Memoi...
This memoir by one of the foremost scholars of the Soviet period spans three continents and more than half a century...
58 min
1397
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, "She Came to Slay: The ...
Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad...
35 min
1398
Alexander L. Hinton, "Man or Monster?: The Tria...
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?
74 min
1399
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
What do university presses do, and how do they do it?
37 min
1400
Joseph F. O'Callaghan, "Alfonso X, the Justinia...
As O’Callaghan details, many of the code's provisions were drawn up in response to the problems Alfonso dealt with as king...
56 min