New Books in Biography
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New Books in Biography
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000...
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Cathryn J. Prince, "For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman" (U Illinois Press, 2026)
My guest today is Cathryn J. Prince the author of For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman (U Illinois Press, 2026). From her start as one...
The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem
Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a...
David Bather Woods, "Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods
An engaging biography of one of the mo...
The Vilna Gaon and the Making of Modern Judaism
The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Genius...
Martha Feldman, "Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome" (Zone Books, 2026)
Around 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive...
Marc Chagall: Reflections of a Granddaughter
Marc Chagall is widely recognized as the preeminent Jewish artist of the 20th century, but little is known of his work to preserve Jewish culture. In...
Kalpana Karunakaran, "A Woman of No Consequence: Memory, Letters and Resistance in Madras" (Context, 2026)
In this intimate, yet simultaneously anthropological, exploration of the life of her maternal grandmother Pankajam (1911–2007), Kalpana Karunakaran ac...
H. S. Jones, "Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic Intellect" (Princeton UP, 2025)
James Bryce (1838–1922) was a leading figure in Britain’s Liberal Party and a distinguished historian, a versatile scholar-politician who moved seamle...
Ethelene Whitmire, "The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram" (Viking, 2026)
On the eve of World War II, a handsome young scholar arrived in Paris. The queer, Black son of a housecleaner, who had nevertheless been decorated in...
Terese Svoboda, "Hitler and My Mother-In-Law" (OR Books, 2025)
Hitler and My Mother-in-Law (OR Books, 2025) is a riveting memoir that explores the intersection of truth—both familial and political—through the colo...
Dana A. Williams, "Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship" (Amistad, 2025)
An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon's profound imp...
Charles Delgadillo and James Stacey, eds., "Heartland Utopia: William Allen White on the Ideal Midwestern Town" (UP of Kansas, 2026)
For William Allen White, the ideal Midwestern community was a utopian vision of what America could be: a prosperous, happy community built on equality...
Glen Oglaza, "When I Stories" (Pegasus, 2024)
As news reporters, we are in the story-telling business, the eye witnesses to history, writing, it's said, ‘the first draft of history'.
Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry | Filmmaker Q&A
February 24—Following a screening of the documentary Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry during the weekend of Feb. 20–22, 2026, filmmaker Laura D...
Vladka Meed's "On Both Sides of the Wall"
Vladka Meed, born Feigele Peltel, was just a teenager when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Increasingly devastated by the deportation and murder...
Daniel Brook, "The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)
More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, dubbed the "Einstein of Sex," grew famous (and infamous) for his liberating theory of sexual relativit...
Richard Vinen, "The Last Titans: How Churchill and De Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)
A compelling dual biography of Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle that shines new light on two of the greatest figures of the 20th century.Winsto...
Ani DiFranco and Lauren Coyle Rosen, "The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music, and Freedom" (Akashic Books, 2026)
Rebekah Buchanan talks with Ani DiFranco about her latest collaborative work The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music and Freed...
Coming Out as Dalit with Yashica Dutt
This episode features Yashica Dutt, journalist and author of Coming Out as Dalit. We began with a discussion of her choice to write a memoir, the sign...
E. T. Dailey, "Radegund: The Trials and Triumphs of a Merovingian Queen" (Oxford UP, 2023)
A princess born to the Thuringian royal house. A captive in war, forced to marry the Frankish king who killed her family. A queen, who renounced her p...
Michael Glover Smith, "Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think" (McNidder and Grace, 2026)
A deep dive into one of the most overlooked -- and fascinating -- sides of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner: Bob Dylan, the filmmaker. While...
Seamus McElearney with Barbara Finkelstein, "Flipping Capo: How the FBI Dismantled the Real Sopranos" (Chicago Review Press, 2025)
Séamus McElearney's early days on an FBI organized crime squad were full of grunt work.
For months he was mired in administrative tasks,...
Preacher, Teacher, and Founder: On Princeton's famous President, John Witherspoon
Madison’s Notes is back and with a new host, Ryan Shinkel.
In this episode to start off Season 5, I interview Dr. Kevin DeYoung, a popula...
Anna-Luna Post, "Galileo’s Fame: Science, Credibility, and Memory in the Seventeenth Century" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025)
From the beginning of Galileo’s career, well before the publication of the Sidereus Nuncius, his contemporaries took pains to shape his reputation and...
John Beyer, "Live a Little Better: One Man's Journey of Survival, Sobriety, and Success" (Worth, 2025)
John Beyer is the founder and owner of Men on the Move, one of the East Coast's premier moving and self-storage companies. While although John's journ...
Ananya Vajpeyi, "Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities" (Women Unlimited Ink, 2025)
'In the five years that I tacked incessantly between Delhi, Venice and Istanbul, two questions plagued me: How do we lose what we lose? Why do we love...
American Masterpiece: The Civil War Diaries of George Templeton Strong with Brenda Wineapple and Geoff Wisner
Wednesday, February 18—Called “the greatest American diary of the nineteenth century,” the journal of the patrician New York City lawyer George Temple...
Zalman Newfield, "Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey Out of Hasidism" (Temple UP, 2026)
Growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn as a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community, Zalman Newfield was raised in an atmosphe...
Mai Serhan, "I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) is a young woman’s search for connection with her...
Ray Yep, "Man in a Hurry: Murray MacLehose and Colonial Autonomy in Hong Kong" (Hong Kong UP, 2024)
In Man in a Hurry: Murray MacLehose and Colonial Autonomy in Hong Kong (Hong Kong UP, 2024), Ray Yep explores the latest available archival materials...
Carla Kaplan, "Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford" (Harper, 2025)
My guest today is Carla Kaplan, the author of Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford (Harper, 2025). In Troublemaker, Kaplan tells...
Brian Hallstoos, "Sol Butler: An Olympian's Odyssey through Jim Crow America" (U Illinois Press, 2026)
A superstar in both football and track and field Sol Butler pioneered the parlaying of sports fame into business prosperity. In Sol Butler: An Olympi...
Cindy Schweich Handler, "A German Jew's Triumph: Fritz Oppenheimer and the Denazification of Germany" (McFarland, 2025)
Cindy Schweich Handler’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Redbook, The Huffington Post, and a host of other nat...
Ian Gittins, "The Cure: A Perfect Dream" (Gemini Books, 2025)
The story of The Cure: a tall tale of a truly unique British band.
The Cure's story is a fantastical pop fable, but their trajectory has...
Karen Bermann, "The Art of Being a Stranger: A Family Memoir" (New Jewish Press, 2025)
Karen Bermann grew up in the mad orbit of her father, Fritz, the rebellious child of a Viennese Orthodox Jewish family who fled Europe alone as an ado...
Elizabeth A. DeWolfe, "Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)
Jane Armstrong Tucker was a Boston stenographer scrabbling to get by as a single woman in the Gilded Age, until she was offered a once-in-a-lifetime c...
Marc Mierowsky, "A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe's Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence" (Yale UP, 2026)
In 1706, Edinburgh was on the brink of a popular uprising. Men and women took to the streets to protest the planned union with England, fearing the en...
Nicholas Boggs, "Baldwin: A Love Story" (FSG, 2025)
Baldwin: A Love Story (FSG, 2025) the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, reveals how profoundly the writer’s personal relationsh...
Chris Washburn and Ron Chepesiuk, "Out of Bounds: From Broken NBA Dreams to Redemption" (WildBlue Press, 2025)
Highly promising basketball player Chris Washburn was selected third overall in the 1986 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors. But a chance encounte...
Matti Friedman, "Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai" (Spiegel & Grau, 2022)
In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen—thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end—traveled from his home on the Gr...