New Books In Biography

Listen to this interview of Stephen Heard, Professor of Biology at the University of New Brunswick. We talk about his book The Scientist’s Guide to Writing: How to Write More Easily and Effectively Throughout Your Scientific Career, 2nd ed. (Princeton UP, 2022), we talk about writing when it's a verb, we talk about writing when it's a choice, and we talk about writing when it's the science. Stephen Heard : "Especially for early-career scientists there's a risk of their writing entering into a positive feedback loop with the writing as it is in the literature. And really, we do this to them, we professors and instructors. We say, 'Next week, you're going to hand in a lab report. Write out this experiment you did,' and we say, quote, 'and write like the scientific literature,' unquote. Well, that's a horrible thing to tell anyone to do, because unfortunately, much of our literature isn't particularly well written. We love our acronyms, we love really long noun phrases, we love the passive voice, and so on. And

Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America (University of Illinois Press, 2020) reveals the previously hidden impact of Ebony magazine as a major producer and disseminator of popular black history during the second half of the twentieth century. Far from dismissing Ebony as a consumer magazine with limited political or educational importance, E. James West highlights the value editors, readers, and advertisers placed upon Ebony's role as a "history book." Benefitting from unprecedented access to new archives at Chicago State and Emory University, West also offers the first substantive biographical account of the writing and philosophy of Lerone Bennett Jr., who used his position at Ebony to emerge as one of the twentieth century's most influential popular black historians. Focusing on Lerone Bennett's role within Johnson Publishing, and assessing Ebony's broader historical coverage, this book uses the magazine as a window into the transition of black history from the margi

Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa (Indiana University Press, 2021) by Brian J. Peterson is a thoroughly researched biography of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso. Peterson sketches Sankara’s rise to power in the early 1980s and focuses specifically on how his military experiences, educational background, and community of mentors, family, and friends shaped his radicalism. Peterson frames Sankara within a second-generation of anti-colonial radicals who both admired anti-colonial luminaries like Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere, but also refined their anti-colonial perspective to critique the limits of their leadership. We learn that during this moment of late-Cold War and decolonization, Sankara used his international platforms to resist and condemn neo-colonialism, imperialism, and European-American networks of surveillance and subterfuge while tackling corruption, poverty, gender discrimination, and environmental issues in Burkina Faso. Sankara’s fierce commitment to r

Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Weird Al Yankovic’s fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than comedic music's reputation suggests. In this book, for the first time, the parodies, original compositions, and polka medleys of the Weird Al universe finally receive their due respect. In Weird Al, Seriously, musicologist Lily Hirsch weaves together original interviews with the prince of parody himself, creating a fresh take on comedy and music’s complicated romance. She reveals that Yankovic’s jests have always had a deeper meaning, addressing such topics as bullying, celebrity, and racial and gender stereotypes. Weird Al is undeterred by those who say funny music is nothing but a low-brow pastime. And thank goodness. With his good-guy grace still intact, Yankovic remains unapologetically and unmistakably himself. Reveling in the mischief and wisdom of Yankovic’s forty-year career, this book is an Al-expense-paid tour of a true comedic and musical genius. Franz

On September 9th, 2001, Ahmed Shah Massoud—called one of the greatest guerilla leaders in history, alongside names like Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, was assassinated by two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers. Coming just two days before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Massoud’s assassination is thus one of those points in history that invites couterfactuals: was it a warning of things to come? And what might have happened in Afghanistan had the assassination failed? Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud (Haus Publishing, 2021) guides readers through the guerilla’s life—including his campaigns against the Communists, the Soviets and the Taliban—and how he became a target for Al Qaeda. The book was written by legendary journalist Sandy Gall, who traveled to Afghanistan on many occasions, meeting with Massoud several times. Carlotta Gall—who worked with her father Sandy to report and write Afghan Napoleon—joins us for this episode of the Asian Review of Books podcast. She is the Istanbul Bureau Chief fo

Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged--feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage. Her life story--candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers' Project--captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner's interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom's charter generation--the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love. Although Joyner was educated at a Freedmen's Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow.

What is education? Most of the time, we have little patience for this question because we take the answer to be obvious: we identify education with school learning. This book focuses on education outside of the school context as a basis for criticizing and improving school learning. Following the examples of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey, Arcilla seeks to harmonize schooling with a more pervasive education we are all naturally undergoing. He develops a philosophical theory of education that stresses the experience of being led out —a theory latent in the Latin term, “educere”— by examining the road movies of Wim Wenders. Wim Wenders's Road Movie Philosophy: Education Without Learning (Bloomsbury, 2020) contributes both to our understanding of another crucial kind of education our schooling could better serve, and to our appreciation of what unifies and distinguishes Wenders's achievements in cinema. René V. Arcilla is Professor of Philosophy of Education in the Steinhardt School of Education, at New Yo

Today I talked to Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant about her book To Live More Abundantly: Black Collegiate Women, Howard University, and the Audacity of Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe (University of Georgia Press, 2022). How have Black women fostered belonging in higher education institutions that have persisted in marginalizing them? Focusing on the career of Lucy Diggs Slowe, the first trained African American student affairs professional in the United States, this book examines how her philosophy of "living more abundantly" envisioned educational access and institutionalized campus thriving for Black college women. Born in 1883, Slowe was orphaned at a young age, raised by a paternal aunt, and earned a scholarship to attend Howard University in 1904. As an undergraduate, she helped found Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first African American sorority in the United States, and served as its first president. After graduating valedictorian of her 1908 class, she excelled as a secondary school teacher and administrator and became a

This book presents for the first time in English a complete translation of the Expository Commentary to the Daode jing, written by the Daoist monk Cheng Xuanying in the 7th century CE. This commentary is a quintessential text of Tang dynasty Daoist philosophy and of Chongxuanxue or Twofold Mystery teachings. Cheng Xuanying proposes a reading of the ancient Daode jing that aligns the text with Daoist practices and beliefs and integrates Buddhist concepts and techniques into the exegesis of the Daode jing. Building on the philosophical tradition of Xuanxue authors like Wang Bi, Cheng read the Daode jing in light of Daoist religion. Cheng presents Laozi, the presumed author of the Daode jing, as a bodhisattva-like sage and savior, who wrote the Daode jing to compassionately guide human beings to salvation. Salvation is interpreted as a metaphysical form of immortality, reached by overcoming the dichotomy of being and non-being, and thus also life and death. Cheng's philosophical outlook ties together the ancient

In his latest book Freud's Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis (Confer Books, 2021), Professor Brett Kahr has used his remarkable skills as experienced psychotherapist and rigorous historian to tell a meticulously researched, deeply engaging tale of the trials and tribulations of Sigmund Freud's life. Kahr has taken an unflinching look at the darkest hours of this remarkable man, such as the Spanish flu of 1918, the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938 and a long struggle with carcinoma in later life. Digging deep into the archives, he has unearthed a treasure trove of stories that lets us appreciate Sigmund Freud`s genius even more against the backdrop of his struggle for survival. He has synthesized his findings in elegant prose to offer us an inspiring story of hope, most pertinent for our troubled times. Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho

William Faulkner, one of America's most iconic writers, is an author who defies easy interpretation. Born in 1897 in Mississippi, Faulkner wrote such classic novels as Absolom, Absolom! and The Sound and The Fury, creating in Yoknapatawpha county one of the most memorable gallery of characters ever assembled in American literature. Yet, as acclaimed literary critic Michael Gorra explains, Faulkner has sustained justified criticism for his failures of racial nuance--his ventriloquism of black characters and his rendering of race relations in a largely unreconstructed South--demanding that we reevaluate the Nobel laureate's life and legacy in the twenty-first century, as we reexamine the junctures of race and literature in works that once rested firmly in the American canon. Interweaving biography, literary criticism, and rich travelogue, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War (Liveright Publishing, 2020) argues that even despite these contradictions--and perhaps because of them--William Faulkner still

Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays (Northwestern UP, 2022) chronicles the improbable turnaround of a drug smuggler who, after being sentenced to eight years in state prison, returned to society to earn a PhD in creative writing and become the only tenured professor in the United States with seven felony convictions. Randall Horton's visceral essays highlight the difficulties of trying to change one's life for the better, how the weight of felony convictions never dissipates. The memoir begins with a conversation between Horton and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man statue in New York City. Their imagined dialogue examines the psychological impact of racism on Black men and boys, including Horton's separation from his mother, immediately after his birth, in a segregated Alabama hospital. From his current life as a professor and prison reformer, Horton looks back on his experiences as a drug smuggler and trafficker during the 1980s-1990s as well as the many obstacles he faced after his release. He also examines the las

Cedric Robinson – political theorist, historian and activist – was one of the greatest black radical thinkers of the twentieth century, whose work resonates deeply with contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter. In Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition (Polity Press, 2021), the first major book to tell the story of Cedric Robinson, Joshua Myers shows how Robinson's work interrogated the foundations of Western political thought, modern capitalism, and the changing meanings of race. Tracing the course of Robinson's journey from his early days as an agitator in the 60s against the US's reactionary foreign policy to his publication of such seminal works within Black Studies as Black Marxism, Myers frames Robinson's mission as one that aimed to understand and practice resistance to "the terms of order." In so doing, Robinson excavated the Black radical tradition as a form of resistance that imagined that life on wholly different terms was possible. As the USA enters the 20s, the need to

“Not a whisper. / Never laughter. / Buster, thank you / for disaster.” So wrote graduate student Dana Stevens, who would go on to become Slate’s resident film critic and podcaster. Her love affair with Buster Keaton – strictly platonic, as their “first sustained encounter” was decades after the actor’s passing in 1966 – began at a cinematheque in Alsace. But Stevens’ book about actor-director-gag man-stunt virtuoso Buster Keaton, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Simon & Schuster, 2022), is more than the story of one man. Through Keaton, Stevens tells the story of modernity, one that includes the myths and scandals of the Hollywood Dream Factory but that goes far beyond the usual contours of the celebrity biography. In this conversation, Dana Stevens discusses the origins of this, her first full-length book project, weighs in on her favorite Keaton films, and reveals the particular challenges of working as a critic of contemporary franchise filmmaking.

In this episode of Queer Voices of the South I talk to Dr. Sherry Scott about her new book Playhouses: Sexuality and Fundamentalism, released in February 2022 by Black Rose Writing. Three cousins fiercely defended their roles within the sanctity of their playhouses. But a six-year stint in a fundamentalist religious organization thwarted Scott's developing understanding of sexual orientation. Homosexuality was an insidious, infective spirit that conferred fear upon her adolescent naiveté, eventually eroding the relationship with her cousins. Playhouses is a journey from corrosive indoctrination to celebrating the differences in others. "Reconciling who we were took years, but survival led to relational ties without fear and a heart for activism in the face of rising institutionalized discrimination." Sherry Scott, M.D., is a pediatrician who has practiced palliative/hospice care for children and general medicine. She self-published her first literary work, The Year My Mother Died, 2011. She founded Paris Poet

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 personal and political life of the great African-American writer who changed the face of Western politics and culture. As a lifelong anti-imperialist, black queer advocate, and feminist, Baldwin (1924-1987) was a passionate chronicler of the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. war against Vietnam, Palestinian liberation struggle, and the rise of LGBTQ rights. Mullen explores how Baldwin's life and work channel the long history of African-American freedom struggles, and explains how Baldwin both predicted and has become a symbol of the global Black Lives Matter movement. Bill V. Mullen is Professor of English and American Studies at Purdue University. His specializations are American Literature and Studies, African American Studies, Cultural Studies, Working-Class Studies, Critical Race Theory and Marxist Theory. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English

Lynn Garafola's La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern (Oxford UP, 2022) is both readable and rigorous, a rare combination. As a historian and eminent dance scholar, Garafola brings her skills to the art of biography with acumen. We also get a deep sense of the woman and her works. The interview not only includes a discussion of Nijinska and the way in which her history has been overshadowed by her famous brother, as well as dance history which has foregrounded and celebrated male ballet choreographers, and modern choreographers after the first wave of women through the late 1940s, Garafola provides insights into Nijinska's works and suggests links for viewing the best productions to further understand this ephemeral art. What emerges from the interview is the story of a woman who survived revolutions, wars, geographic moves, misogyny, motherhood, and cared for her brother who was institutionalised, and continued to work as an artist through the end of her life. Victoria Phillips is a Visiting Fellow at the

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental. Only twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear, cracks in her marriage widened, and tragedy struck, twice while she was living in Detroit. Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist (St. Martin's Press, 2020) is the first in-depth biography of these formative years spent in Gringolandia, a place Frida couldn’t always understand. But it’s precisely her feelings of being a stranger in a strange l

Henry McCarty, aka William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, is one of the most well known figures from the American West. His short life made an outsized impact on American folklore and popular culture, and his story has been told and retold for a century and a half after his death. In Thunder in the West: The Life and Legends of Billy the Kid (U Oklahoma Press, 2020), historian Richard Etulain, emeritus professor at the University of New Mexico, tackles both the real life story and the ever-changing legend of Billy the Kid. From his largely unknown early life to the critical year of 1878 to his death at the hands of Pat Garret in 1881, Etulain explains both the life and the context of Billy, and spends an equal amount of time on the young mans afterlife. In novels and movies, Billy's story lives on to the present day, a tale of romance, youth, and violence that maintains its tragic appeal. Half academic monograph and half narrative romp, Thunder in the West is bifurcated into two equally important sections, muc

To date, scholars have skilfully discussed aspects of Polqar’s thought, and yet none of the existing studies offers a comprehensive examination that covers Polqar’s thought in its entirety. Isaac Polqar: A Jewish Philosopher or a Philosopher and a Jew? (Walter de Gruyter, 2020) aims to fill this lacuna by tracing and contextualizing both Polqar’s Islamic sources (al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes) and his Jewish sources (Maimonides and Isaac Albalag). The study brings to light three of Polqar’s main purposes; (1) seeking to defend Judaism as a true religion against Christianity; (2) similarly to his fellow Jewish Averroists, Polqar wishes to defend the discipline of philosophy. By philosophy, Polqar means Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle. As a consequence, he offers an Averroistic interpretation of Judaism and becomes one of the main representatives of Jewish Averroism; (3) defending his philosophical interpretation of Judaism. From a social and political point of view, Polqar's unreserved embrace of phi