New Books In Biography

Today we are joined by Greg Larson, author of Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir (University of Nebraska, 2021). In Clubbie, Larson shares his unique perspective from his two-year stint as clubhouse attendant for the Aberdeen IronBirds, a Class A short-season affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. Larson’s starry-eyed perceptions about the game were quickly erased by the reality of a job that was time-consuming and thankless. Larson brings the reader into the minor-league clubhouse, showing how young baseball professionals are literally playing for their jobs on a day-to-day basis. As the clubhouse attendant, Larson was charged with doing laundry, making sure the players had food after the game, and keeping players supplied with equipment. He writes about the scams run by food concession officials, and also describes some of the ingenious ways he added to his own bank account. Players had to pay clubhouse dues on a limited salary, and while Larson made more than the players, broken bats, deals with beer dis

Outlove: A Queer Christian Survival Story, written by Julie Rodgers was published in 2021 by Broadleaf Books Publishing Inc. In this honest and vulnerable book, Rodgers takes us through her journey from ex-gay theology to radical inclusion and self-acceptance as a queer Christian. After decades of bouncing between hope and despair, Evangelical, Baptist-raised Julie Rodgers found herself making a powerful public statement that her former self would have never said: "I support same-sex marriage in the church." When Rodgers came out to her family as a junior in high school, she still believed that God would sanctify her and eventually make her straight. Wanting so intensely to be good, she spent her adolescent and early adult years with an ex-gay ministry, praying for liberation from her homosexuality. In Outlove Rodgers details her deeply personal journey from a life of self-denial in the name of faith to her role in leading the take-down of Exodus International, the largest ex-gay organization in the world, to

Dubbed the "Billy Sunday of China" for the staggering number of people he led to Christ, John Song has captured the imagination of generations of readers. His story, as it became popular in the West, possessed memorable, if not necessarily true, elements: Song was converted while he studied in New York at Union Theological Seminary in 1927, but his modernist professors placed him in an insane asylum because of his fundamentalism; upon his release, he returned to China and drew enormous crowds as he introduced hundreds of thousands of people to the Old-Time Religion.  In John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man (Baylor UP, 2020), Daryl Ireland upends conventional images of John Song and theologically conservative Chinese Christianity. Working with never before used sources, this groundbreaking book paints the picture of a man who struggled alongside his Chinese contemporaries to find a way to save their nation. Unlike reformers who attempted to update ancient traditions, and revolutio

In her magnificent and lyrical new book, The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India (Harvard UP, 2020), Supriya Gandhi reorients and adds unprecedented depth to our understanding of the much memorialized but less understood Mughal prince and thinker Dara Shukoh (d. 1659), and of his broader political and social milieu. Written with exceptional clarity and in dazzling narrative form, this book marshals overwhelming evidence to disrupt the popular and common view that sees Dara Shukoh as either an absolute interfaith inclusivist or a failed political aspirant to the Mughal throne. Alternating between social and political history, and close readings of a range of religious texts, this book not only thoroughly complicates our conception of Dara Shukoh, but also presents an intimate view of the political and family life of the Mughal elite. Operating at the intersection of Islamic Studies, South Asian Studies, and Empire Studies, this eminently accessible book is sure to spark interest and discussion a

Today I talked to Kevin McGruder about his new book Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem (Columbia UP, 2021) In a moment of hope, even faith, African-Americans inspired by Booker T. Washington believed at the start of the 21st century that prospering financially would lead them to fair and even-standing with their fellow white citizens in America. In that vein, Philip Payton launched the Afro-American Realty Company in 1904 and in doing so took on the big-money crowd. Up against him, for instance, was the Hudson Realty Company that numbered among its backers the Bloomingdale family. To an amazing extent, Payton managed in his short life to engineer real estate deals that made Harlem the home base for many of the African-Americans coming north in the Great Migration of the World War One era. Was it an entirely smooth journey for Payton? No, it wasn’t—as McGruder points out in this episode that brings into account “racial capitalism” and the looming shadow of Woodrow Wilson’s divisive approach to race rela

Kwame Anthony Appiah is among the most respected philosophers and thinkers of his generation. In Kwame Anthony Appiah (Routledge, 2021), Christopher Lee introduces the reader not only to the contributions that Appiah has made to some central debates of our time, but also to the complex personal and intellectual history that shaped his ideas. Born in Ghana to an African father and a British mother, Appiah has spent his life straddling multiple worlds. He was educated as a philosopher at Cambridge University and later moved to the United States where he has occupied several prestigious academic positions. As Lee explains, Appiah’s major contribution has been to critically question the ideologies and identities that may enable or prevent individuals to operate in a world where one is constantly moving across geographic and cultural boundaries. What is identity? What are the historical and ideological underpinnings of concepts such as race and culture? How do they affect our decisions about how to live in the wor

Daniel Shapiro was a successful attorney in his early forties when his wife, Susan, suffered a brain bleed and a diagnosis that her future was uncertain. Stunned, and with three young children, the couple made the most of the few years that followed, before a massive second hemorrhage changed everything. Physically, Susan was badly compromised in her ability to speak, see, and walk. Mentally, she spiraled into depression and experienced a drastic personality change. The Thin Ledge: A Husband’s Memoir of Love, Trauma, and Unexpected Circumstances (River Grove Books, 2021) is about coping (often unsuccessfully) with the wreckage left in the wake of an illness that destroys a loved one. Shapiro addresses the questions that people living through unspeakable tragedy may never mention, but almost always ask. Daniel P. Shapiro completed his undergraduate degree as a member of Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Illinois, and earned a J.D. at the University of Chicago Law School. He grew up in the northern Chicago su

Olga Tufnell (1905–85) was a British archaeologist working in Egypt, Cyprus, and Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, a period often described as a golden age of archaeological discovery. Tufnell achieved extraordinary success for an “amateur” archaeologist and as a woman during a time when the field of professional archaeology was heavily dominated by men, typically with university training. Olga Tufnell’s 'Perfect Journey': Letters and Photographs of an Archaeologist in the Levant and Mediterranean (UCL Press, 2021), edited by Jack Green and Ros Henry, presents, for the first time, letters and photographs by Tufnell primarily during her pioneering work in the 1920s and 1930s. From the Palestine Exploration Fund archive, these records not only shed light on the discoveries made by Tufnell and her colleagues, but are also a window into the past, often narrating contemporary events, and revealing a great deal about the way in which Olga Tufnell viewed the rapidly changing, often contentious world around her. With

Michal Kšiňan’s Milan Rastislav Štefánik: The Slovak National Hero and Co-Founder of Czechoslovakia is the first scientific biography of Milan Rastislav Štefánik (1880–1919) that is focused on analyzing the process of how he became the Slovak national hero. Although he is relatively unknown internationally, his contemporaries compared him “to Choderlos de Laclos for the use of military tactics in love affairs, to Lawrence of Arabia for vision, to Bonaparte for ambition ... and to one of apostles for conviction.” He played a key role in founding an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 through his relentless worldwide travels during the First World War in order to create the Czechoslovak Army: he visited Serbia and Romania on the eve of invasion by the Central Powers, Russia before the February revolution, the United States after it declared war on Germany, Italy dealing with the consequences of defeat in the Caporetto battle, and again when Russia plunged into Civil War. Several historical methods are used to an

Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (1194–1270), known in English as Nahmanides and by the acronym the Ramban, was one of the most creative kabbalists, one of the deepest and most original biblical interpreters, and one of the greatest Talmudic scholars the Jewish tradition has ever produced. Join us as we talk with Moshe Halbertal about his recent book: Nahmanides: Law and Mysticism (Yale UP, 2020), where he provides a broad, systematic account of Nahmanides’s thought, exploring his conception of halakhah and his approach to the central concerns of medieval Jewish thought, as well as the relationship between Nahmanides’s kabbalah and mysticism and the existential religious drive that nourishes them. Moshe Halbertal is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Hebrew University and Gruss Professor of Law at NYU Law School. He has also written Maimonides: Life and Thought. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tab

No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (U Mississippi Press, 2020) is a history of the career of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915), specifically focusing on his work from 1896 to 1915. Drawing on the copious amount of material from Turner’s speeches, editorial, and open and private letters, Dr. Andre E. Johnson tells a story of how Turner provided rhetorical leadership during a period in which America defaulted on many of the rights and privileges gained for African Americans during Reconstruction. Unlike many of his contemporaries during this period, Turner did not opt to proclaim an optimistic view of race relations. Instead, Johnson argues that Turner adopted a prophetic persona of a pessimistic prophet who not only spoke truth to power but, in so doing, also challenged and pushed African Americans to believe in themselves. Learn about the #HMT Project Andre E. Johnson, PhD is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies in the Department of Communicat

Meryl Altman's new book Beauvoir in Time, published by Brill Rodopi Press (2020), situates Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) in its historical context and responds to criticism that muddles what she actually said about sex, race and class. She takes up three aspects of Beauvoir's work today’s feminists find problematic: the characterizations of the frigid woman and lesbians, the analogy of race and class that obscures Black and working-class women and her examples drawn from white middle-class experience. Charged with ethnocentrism, her contribution is distorted by not considering her place and time. Through close reading of Beauvoir's writing in many genres, alongside expansive criticism, Altman shows that what appears as a problem for feminist theory is best understood by a full consideration of Beauvoir’s engagement with Freudian, Marxist and anticolonial thinkers. Extremely helpful in understanding the place of The Second Sex within international feminist theory, Altman offers insights into how B

In First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery (Pegasus Books, 2021), Ken Ellingwood takes readers back to the first true test of the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech and a free press through the story of abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy. The story unfolds during the 1830s, a period known for legal efforts to silence the abolitionist movement by states across the South and violent mobs who picked up that charge when the government could not. Lovejoy pushed back against both of those forces and ultimately succumbed to them, becoming a martyr for the abolitionist movement and a wakeup call about how essential a free press was to a free country and a thriving democracy in America. Lovejoy's story is worth revisiting now at time when attacks against journalists are again on the rise and the press is considered by some to be the "enemy of the people." Ellingwood does a wonderful job of capturing it in this book and bringing this important time in Americ

The First World War poet and composer Ivor Gurney (1890–1937) spent the last fifteen years of his life confined in a Kent mental hospital before dying prematurely of tuberculosis. How good was Gurney's war poetry, and has his music stood the test of time? Why did try to re-write Shakespeare's plays? How far do recently uncovered archives transform our understandings both of Ivor Gurney's troubled life and his remarkable work?  Kate Kennedy of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing discusses her ground-breaking biography of Ivor Gurney Dweller in Shadows (Princeton 2021) with Duncan McCargo, in an unusual podcast that includes readings of his poetry, and two specially recorded examples of his music. The podcast opens and closes with Kate Kennedy (cello) and Simon Over (piano) performing Gurney's song Sleep. We also hear Simon accompany Dominic Bevan as he sings Severn Meadows, a rare example of Gurney setting his own words to music.  Rare treats lie in store for the listener.  Learn more about your ad choices. Vis

Ryan Ruby is a writer and translator from Los Angeles, California. His fiction and criticism have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, Conjunctions, n+1, The Baffler, and elsewhere. The piece we are discussing here is Child’s Play. What can Wittgenstein teach us about raising kids published in June 2021 in The Believer. His debut novel The Zero and the One was published in March 2017 by Twelve Books. It has subsequently appeared in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and France. He is the author of a book-length poem, Context Collapse, which was a Finalist for the 2020 National Poetry Series and a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. He has translated Roger Caillois and Grégoire Bouillier from the French for Readux Books. A graduate of Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in Berlin, where he is on the faculty of the Berlin Writers' Workshop and an Affiliate Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Inquiry. Agata Popeda is a Polish-American journalist. Int

Lyle D. Bierma's Font of Pardon and New Life: John Calvin and the Efficacy of Baptism (Oxford UP, 2021) is a study of the historical development and impact of John Calvin's doctrine of baptismal efficacy. The primary questions it addresses are (1) whether Calvin taught an "instrumental" doctrine of baptism, according to which the external sign of the sacrament serves as a means or instrument to convey the spiritual realities it signifies, and (2) whether Calvin's teaching on baptismal efficacy remained constant throughout his lifetime or underwent significant change. Secondarily, the work also examines whether such spiritual blessings, in Calvin's view, are conferred only in adult (believer) baptism or also in the baptism of infants, and what impact Calvin's doctrine of baptismal efficacy had on the Reformed confessional tradition that followed him. The book examines all of Calvin's writings on baptism-his Institutes, commentaries on Scripture, catechisms, polemical writings, and consensus documents-chronolog

This year, transgender liberation is at the forefront of Pride Month discourse, with a staggering number of conservative, religious, and gender critical-backed bills challenging trans people’s rights to use public restrooms, participate in organized sports, and even expect inclusive language at the doctor’s office. These would-be laws seek to legislate and restrict trans identity—especially that of trans children—despite the fact that trans people have always existed and will continue to exist, living lives that sometimes include having children of their own. For trans masculine writer Krys Malcolm Belc, pregnancy taught him more about gender identity and transition than he expected—an embodied experience that ultimately encouraged him to begin Hormone Replacement Therapy. In his stunning experimental debut, The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood, Belc uses original photographs and documents to outline the expansion of his family and the surprising revelations of this journey. The r

Federico Fellini’s distinct style delighted generations of film viewers and inspired filmmakers and artists around the world. In Fellini’s Films and Commercials: From Postwar to Postmodern, renowned Fellini scholar Frank Burke presents a film-by-film analysis of the famed director’s cinematic output from a theoretical perspective. The book explores Fellini’s movement from relatively classic filmmaking to modernist reflexivity and then to ‘postmodern reproduction’. Burke moves from analysis of stories told from a relatively ‘objective’ standpoint, to increased concentration on Fellini-as-author and on the cinematic apparatus, to Fellini’s dismantling of authorship and cinematic apparatus, to his postmodern signifying strategies. Grounded in poststructuralist approaches to texts and signification, Burke shows that Fellini is profoundly readable, if extremely complex. Revisiting Burke’s 1996 Fellini’s Films: From Postwar to Postmodern, this new edition includes revised material from the original, plus a new pref

Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, Ike was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, as well as his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the center of things. He was a man of judgment, and steadying force. He sought national unity, by pursuing a course he called the Middle Way that tried to make winners on both sides of any issue. Ike was a strategic, not an operational leader, who relied on a rigorous pursuit of the facts for decision-making. His talent for envisioning a whole, especially in the context of the long game, and his ability to see causes and various consequences, explains his success as Allied Commander and as President. After making a decisio

Ahmad Ibn Tulun: Governor of Abbasid Egypt, 868-884 (Oneworld Academic, 2021), by Matthew S. Gordon (Miami University (Ohio)) is an innovative look at the Abbasid governor of Egypt from 868-884, and the short-lived dynasty that succeeded him for just two decades.  Ibn Tulun is perhaps best known for the mosque that still bears his name in Cairo--arguably the city's oldest Islamic monument that survives in its original form--which was the centerpiece of the capital city that he built. While ibn Tulun is often depicted in Egyptian historiography as an autonomous leader, aspiring toward independence away from the greater Abbasid state, Gordon makes a convincing argument that ibn Tulun--the son of a Turkic slave-soldier gifted to the Abbasid caliph--was instead a product of the political turmoil in Iraq, but that he was very much an Abbasid in spirit and politics. This intriguing and convincing reframing of ibn Tulun's life and career offers a new interpretation of this understudied period in Egyptian history, as