New Books In Biography

In Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare (Oxford UP, 2021), Dr. Nathaniel L. Moir studies the thought of this overlooked figure, one of the most important experts on counterinsurgency warfare in Indochina. Dr. Moir’s intellectual history analyses Fall’s formative experiences: his service in the French underground and army during the Second World War; his father’s execution by the Germans and his mother’s murder in Auschwitz; and his work as a research analyst at the Nuremberg Trials. Moir demonstrates how these critical events made Fall “an insightful analyst of war because of the experience and knowledge he brought to his study and his early recognition of the Viet Minh’s approach to warfare, which they used to defeat the French in 1954 during the First Indochina War.” Dr. Moir investigates how Bernard Fall understood and described Vietnamese revolutionary warfare in Indochina after World War II.The book tells a history indelibly tied to Bernard Fall, but also centers on the u

A thirtieth‑century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red‑haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit—what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. In Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art (Yale UP, 2018), Japanese culture and animation scholar Susan Napier explores the life and art of this extraordinary Japanese filmmaker to provide a definitive account of his oeuvre. Napier insightfully illuminates the multiple themes crisscrossing his work, from empowered women to environmental nightmares to utopian dreams, creating an unforgettable portrait of a man whose art challenged Hollywood dominance and ushered in a new chapter of global popular culture. Raditya Nuradi is a Phd student at Kyushu University. He works on religion and popular culture, particularly anime pilgrimages. His research explores pilgrims’ exp

Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s (U Illinois Press, 2019) explores the history of the Black Arts Movement through the experience of activist and organizer, Hoyt W. Fuller (1923-1981). In the first book to document and analyze Fuller's profound influence on the movement, Jonathan Fenderson attends to the paradox between Fuller's central role in the Movement and his marginal place in African-American historiography. Though focused on Fuller, the project is not simply a biographer; it is a series of historical vignettes covering different aspects of Fuller's cultural activism. As it chronicles Fuller's life, the book also address pivotal events and formative moments that grant insight into the ways the Black Arts Movement took shape at the local level; the ways artists shaped the Movement; how race, class, gender, sexuality, and corporate interests impacted the Movement; and, especially, how recovering Hoyt Fuller's work fundamentally alters our knowledge of th

When France fell to Hitler's armies in June 1940, a flood of refugees fleeing Nazi terror quickly overwhelmed Europe's borders and spilled across the Mediterranean to North Africa, touching off a humanitarian crisis of dizzying proportions. Nelly Benatar, a highly regarded Casablancan Jewish lawyer, quickly claimed a role of rescuer and almost single-handedly organized a sweeping program of wartime refugee relief. But for all her remarkable achievements, Benatar's story has never been told. In Years of Glory: Nelly Benatar and the Pursuit of Justice in Wartime North Africa (Stanford UP, 2021), Susan Gilson Miller introduces readers to a woman who fought injustice as an anti-Fascist resistant, advocate for refugee rights, liberator of Vichy-run forced labor camps, and legal counselor to hundreds of Holocaust survivors. Miller crafts a gripping biography that spins a tale like a Hollywood thriller, yet finds its truth in archives gathered across Europe, North Africa, Israel, and the United States and from Benat

Johnny Cash famously declared himself to be “The Man in Black”. He sang that he dressed in a “somber tone” for “the poor and the beaten down, livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town” and for “the prisoner who is long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a victim of the times”. He famously performed for inmates of Folsom, San Quintin, and a number of other less well-known prisons. Cash publicly supported Native American activists and invited prominent African American guests on his prime-time television show. Yet, he initially supported Richard Nixon, shared the stage with the arch-conservative preacher Billy Graham, and recorded songs that glorified the South’s Lost Cause mythology. How do we make sense of these seemingly contradictory political acts and messages? In Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash, Michael Stewart Foley argues that Cash embodied a “politics of empathy” in which the singer always supported the underdog. This book makes the case that Johnny Cash deserves

Midori Yamamura’s Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular (MIT Press, 2015) is an in-depth examination of the famed artist’s early years in Japan and the United States. Based on extensive research in Kusama’s archives as well as interviews with Kusama herself, Inventing the Singular both tracks the evolution of Kusama’s artistic practice and maps the artistic, social, and political contexts in which Kusama developed as an artist. The result is as much an analysis of the development of a globalized art world after the end of World War II as a study of one artist, however influential. The book begins with Kusama’s childhood in Japan before following her integration into artist groups, styles, and themes with a steadily more international focus. Yamamura’s careful scholarship seizes on connections to movements as diverse as Surrealism, Pop Art, and the Dutch Nul group to show how art dealers’ nascent control of the global art market encouraged the careers of white male artists at the expense of artists such as Kusa

Want to read a fantastic book about art, love, politics, and resistance during the Second World War? Jeffrey H. Jackson's Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis (Algonquin Books, 2020) is a riveting account of the lives of Lucy Schwob/Claude Cahun) and Suzanne Malherbe/Marcel Moore, two French artists whose remarkable creative and romantic relationship spanned many tumultuous decades. The story of their love and work activates important themes and questions regarding the histories of art, gender, sexuality, the avant-garde, Jewishness, and more during this period of French and European history. Offering readers fresh perspective on the deep connection that Lucy/Claude and Suzanne/Marcel shared, the book is focused on the period from the late-1930s through the end of the Second World War when the pair lived together on the German-Occupied island of Jersey in the English Channel. Drawing on extensive research in archives hitherto been neglected by other scholars, Paper Bullets tells

In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton (Princeton UP, 2021), Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective’s persistence and a historian’s rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption and revolutionizes our understanding of an American icon. This radical reassessment of Hamilton’s religious upbringing gives us a fresh perspective on both his adult years and the country he helped forge. Although he didn’t identify as a Jew in America, Hamilton cultivated a relationship with the Jewish community that made him unique among the founders. As a lawyer, he advocated for Jewish citizens in court. As a financial visionary, he invigorated sectors of the economy that gave Jews the

This untold origin story of the filmmaker explores its transatlantic history. Alfred Hitchcock called The Lodger "the first true Hitchcock movie," one that anticipated all the others. And yet, the story of how The Lodger came to be made is shrouded in myth, often repeated and much embellished, by even Hitchcock himself. The truth--revealed in new archival discoveries--is stranger still.  In The First True Hitchcock: The Making of a Filmmaker (University of California Press, 2022), Henry K. Miller situates The Lodger against the backdrop of a continent shattered by war and confronted with the looming presence of a new superpower, the United States, whose most visible export was film. The details of The Lodger's making in the London fog and its attempted remaking in the Los Angeles sun is the story of how Hitchcock became Hitchcock. Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic

Jack Robinson made his name as a much-sought-after fashion and celebrity photographer during the 1960s and early 1970s, and his work is well documented in hundreds of pages of Vogue, the New York Times, and Life, as well as other publications. However, his personal life remains virtually unknown. In this study of Robinson and his photography, Howard Philips Smith takes an in-depth look at Robinson’s early life in New Orleans, where he discovered his passion for painting, photography, and the Dixie Bohemian life of the French Quarter.  A Sojourn in Paradise: Jack Robinson in 1950s New Orleans (UP of Mississippi, 2020) features more than one hundred photographs taken by the artist, accompanied by detailed commentary about Robinson’s life in New Orleans and excerpts from interviews with the people who knew him when he lived there. Robinson’s photographs of New Orleans reveal the genesis of two unique and fascinating facets of the city’s history and culture: the creation of the first gay Carnival krewes who would

In Afterlives of Affect: Science, Religion, and an Edgewalker’s Spirit (Duke UP, 2020), Matthew C. Watson considers the life and work of artist and Mayanist scholar Linda Schele (1942-1998) as a point of departure for what he calls an excitable anthropology. As part of a small collective of scholars who devised the first compelling arguments that Maya hieroglyphs were a fully grammatical writing system, Schele popularized the decipherment of hieroglyphs by developing narratives of Maya politics and religion in popular books and public workshops. In this experimental, person-centered ethnography, Watson shows how Schele’s sense of joyous discovery and affective engagement with research led her to traverse and disrupt borders between religion, science, art, life, death, and history. While acknowledging critiques of Schele’s work and the idea of discovery more generally, Watson contends that affect and wonder should lie at the heart of any reflexive anthropology. With this singular examination of Schele and the

Kristin Waters' book Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought (U Mississippi Press, 2021) tells a crucial, almost-forgotten story of African Americans of early nineteenth-century America. In 1833, Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879) told a gathering at the African Masonic Hall on Boston’s Beacon Hill: “African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States.” She exhorted her audience to embrace the idea that the founding principles of the nation must extend to people of color. Otherwise, those truths are merely the hypocritical expression of an ungodly white power, a travesty of original democratic ideals. Like her mentor, David Walker, Stewart illustrated the practical inconsistencies of classical liberalism as enacted in the US and delivered a call to action for ending racism and addressing gender discrimination. Between 1831 and 1833, Stewart’s intellectual productions, as she called them, ranged across topics from true emancipation

The Marion Thompson Wright Reader, edited by Graham Russell Gao Hodges, the George Dorland Langdon, Jr. Professor of History and Africana and Latin American Studies at Colgate University, and the author of Black New Jersey: 1664 to the Present Day (Rutgers University Press, 2019), is the first book-length text on Marion Thompson Wright—the first African American woman to earn a PhD in history from a U.S. college or university. This Reader includes a seventy plus page biographical essay on Wright, a reviews and notes section, essays and Wright’s The Education of Negroes in New Jersey first published by Columbia University Press in 1941. Hodges utilizes a set of letters written by Wright to friends and family members as well as never published before images of Dr. Wright with family members; including photos of her children. There exists no more comprehensive a text on Wright in terms of the bibliographic sketch contained in this book and coupled with the writings of one of the foremost historians of the early

Although largely unknown in the West, the Russian novelist and political essayist Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev (1831-1891) has left a strong legacy in his homeland. He has often been compared to Friedrich Nietzsche, yet his writings predate those of his German counterpart by several decades. Also, unlike his German counterpart came to embrace a very ascetic form of Orthodox Christian faith. For decades he bravely clashed with many of the greatest minds of 19th century Russia on subjects ranging from ethics, art, geopolitics, Russia's place in the world, the historical cycles of civilizations, and especially religious faith. Glenn Cronin's Disenchanted Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev (Northern Illinois University Press, 2021) is the first major English-language study in over fifty years on this enigmatic figure of Russian intellectual history. Glenn Cronin is a contributing author to Ideology in Russian Literature and holds a PhD in Russian studies from the University of London. Step

Timothy Brennan is Professor of Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, and English at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of several seminal books in literary studies, including Borrowed Light: Vico, Hegel, and the Colonies, published by Stanford University Press in 2014, Secular Devotion: Afro-Latin Music and Imperial Jazz published by Verso in 2008, and Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right published by Columbia University Press in 2006, among others. In this episode we talk to him about his recent book Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in March 2021. Drawing on extensive archival sources and hundreds of interviews, Timothy Brennan's Places of Mind is the first comprehensive biography of Said, one of the most controversial and celebrated intellectuals of the 20th century. In Brennan's masterful work, Said, the pioneer of post-colonial studies, a tireless champion for his native Palestine, and an erudite literary critic, emerges as

Today I talked to Vivian Kirkfield about her book Making Their Voices Heard: The Inspiring Friendship of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe (Little Bee Books, 2020). Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. On the outside, you couldn't find two girls who looked more different. But on the inside, they were alike--full of hopes and dreams and plans of what might be. Ella Fitzgerald's velvety tones and shube-doobie-doos captivated audiences. Jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington couldn't wait to share the stage with her, but still, Ella could not book a performance at one of the biggest clubs in town--one she knew would give her career its biggest break yet. Marilyn Monroe dazzled on the silver screen with her baby blue eyes and breathy boo-boo-be-doos. But when she asked for better scripts, a choice in who she worked with, and a higher salary, studio bosses refused. Two women whose voices weren't being heard. Two women chasing after their dreams and each helping the other to achieve them. This is the i

In this episode of QUEER VOICES OF THE SOUTH, I talk with ANDREW J. KUNKA, who is a professor of English and division chair at the University of South Carolina Sumter. He is the author of the book Autobiographical Comics and has also published articles and book chapters on Will Eisner, Kyle Baker, Doug Moench, Jack Katz, and Dell Comics. The Life and Comics of Howard Cruse: Taking Risks in the Service of Truth (Rutgers UP, 2021) tells the remarkable story of how a self-described “preacher’s kid” from Birmingham, Alabama, became the so-called “Godfather of Gay Comics.” This study showcases a remarkable fifty-year career that included working in the 1970s underground comics scene, becoming founding editor of the groundbreaking anthology series Gay Comix, and publishing the graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, partially based on his own experience of coming of age in the Civil Rights era. Through his exploration of Cruse’s life and work, Andrew J. Kunka also chronicles the dramatic ways that gay culture changed over

Today, the Big Bang is so entrenched in our understanding of the cosmos that to doubt it would seem crazy. But as Paul Halpern shows in Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate (Basic Books, 2021), just decades ago its mere mention caused sparks to fly. At the center of the debate were Russian American physicist George Gamow and British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. Gamow insisted that a fiery explosion explained how the elements of the universe were created. Attacking the idea as half-baked, Hoyle countered that the universe was engaged in a never-ending process of creation. The battle was fierce. In the end, Gamow turned out to be right -- mostly -- and Hoyle, despite his many achievements, is remembered for giving the theory the silliest possible name: "The Big Bang." Halpern captures the brilliance of both thinkers and reminds us that even those proved wrong have much to teach us about boldness, imagination, and the universe itself. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate

Mary Sully was many things: a Dakota woman, an artist, and an American living through a heyday of early celebrity culture in the United States. All of these facets of her life and of her context are present in her art. In Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract (University of Washington Press, 2019), Harvard University professor and OAH President (and direct Sully relative) Phil Deloria uncovers Sully's artwork, long tucked away in family attics, and explains why it matters. Deloria argues that Sully's abstract "personality prints" representing various American celebrities of the early 20th century placed her outside the mainstream of the often "primitivist" Native art world of the era. Instead, Sully planted one foot firmly in modernism, while keeping the other rooted in Native art traditions, making her impossible to classify as one thing or another. Deloria tells a remarkably personal and beautiful story of an unheralded master of visual arts gazing into a new American and American Indian f

Wim Wenders: Making Films That Matter (Bloomsbury, 2020) is the first book in 15 years to take a comprehensive look at Wim Wenders's extensive filmography. In addition to offering new insights into his cult masterpieces, the 10 essays in this volume highlight the thematic and aesthetic continuities between his early films and his latest productions. Wenders's films have much to contribute to current conversations on intermediality, whether it be through his adaptations of important literary works or his filmic reinventions of famous paintings by Edward Hopper or Andrew Wyeth. Wenders has also positioned himself as a decidedly transnational and translingual filmmaker taking on the challenge of representing peripheral spaces without falling into the trap of a neo-colonial gaze. Making Films That Matter argues that Wenders remains a true innovator in both his experiments in 3D filmmaking and his attempts to define a visual poetics of peace. Olivier Delers is Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Departm