New Books In Biography

Although defined throughout his professional career as a development economist, Albert O. Hirschman’s intellectual scope defied classification. In Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (Princeton University Press, 2013) Jeremy Adelman describes the course of a restless thinker whose life intersected with some of the most important events and developments of the twentieth century. Born to a family of assimilated Jews, Hirschman grew up in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Weimar Germany in the 1920s. After the Nazi regime came to power Hirschman began an itinerant existence, gaining an education in economics from universities in three different countries. A passionate anti-fascist, he fought for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War and France in the Second World War. With the fall of France in 1940 he helped many of Europe’s leading artists and intellectuals escape from Nazi rule before emigrating to the United States himself. After wartime service in the OSS, Hirschman worked in the U.

During the Second World War millions of Britons tuned in nightly to hear the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw coming from Nazi Germany. Though the label was broadly applied to a number of English-speaking broadcasters, it was most famously associated with William Joyce. In Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce (Routledge, 2016), Colin Holmes provides a study of Joyce’s life that unravels many of the mysteries and misconceptions surrounding it. He chronicles Joyce’s early years in Ireland, where his work as an informer and his family’s association with the British during the War of Independence led to his relocation to London after the Irish won their independence. There he quickly found a home in the embryonic Fascist movement, in which became a leading figure. His clashes with Oswald Mosley in the mid-1930s brought about Joyce’s purge from the British Union of Fascists in 1937 and the formation of his own National Socialist League. Yet it was Joyce’s relocation to Germany on the eve of w

Admiring books that appeal to our hearts and souls, rather often we want to know more about the writers who create them. If a book is a dialogical and communal entity–as readers we also participate in interpreting what we read, adding to and/or subtracting from the meanings of, so to speak, “original” texts and sharing our ideas with others–a portrait of the writer takes the audience to a somewhat different realm. Who creates writers’ portraits? What sides of writers’ lives get exposed, and which ones remain silenced, hushed-hushed, discreet? Who decides what portrait should be (or even must be) produced? And for what purpose? Readers rather often want to know more about people who wrote stories with which they fell in love; stories that they would like to share with their loved ones; stories that inspire them or, although it may sound cliched, change the way they look at life. Biographies are one of the sources to receive at least some access to the lives of others. But what is a biography? The answer may s

Michelle Markel, an award-winning author and former journalist who has written for The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, talks about books she’s written about two strong and brave women Clara Lemlich and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The first book, Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers Strike of 1909 (Balzer + Bray, 2013), is illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Melissa Sweet and tells the story of Clara Lemlich, a young Ukrainian immigrant who led the largest strike of women workers in U.S. history. The book follows the plight of immigrants in America in the early 1900s, tackling topics like activism and the U.S. garment industry, and includes an extensive bibliography and authors notes about the garment industry at that time. Markel’s book, Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead (Balzer + Bray, 2016), is about the woman we’ve all come to know and who, like Clara Lemlich sixty years earlier, has refused to accept the status quo of women in society and in the workplace. Published in J

Daniel Moran’s Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers (University of Georgia Press, 2016) provides a compelling investigation of how O’Connor’s initial reputation of a Southern female writer over the years evolved into her status of great American writer. The subtitle of the book–Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers–hints at a variety of details contributing to a literary multilayered portrait. In his research, Dr. Moran considers a number of critical reviews, readers reactions, and publishers commercial decisions while following the trajectory of O’Connor’s reputation. In the introduction, Dr. Moran notes that his book is “less a work of literary criticism than of a book history and cultural analysis” (9). His research invites a discussion of how the perception of literary texts is (or can be) shaped through conversations about them. Creating Flannery O’Connor draws on the theory of “rules of notice”–readers are supplied with keys to read and understand literary works and in

James D. Boys is the author of Hillary Rising: The Politics, Persona, and Policies of a New American Dynasty (Biteback Publishing, 2016). Boys is an associate professor of international political studies at Richmond University. Just in time for the election, Hillary Rising explores the full biography of Hillary Clinton. Boys draws on original interviews with close associates of Hillary Clinton, in addition to much recently declassified materials from the Clinton archive. For those who havent made up their mind, Hillary Rising provides one more piece of information. For those who know the biography, there is considerable to be learned about the political education and career path Clinton travelled to the 2016 election. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

As Labour Party leader, member of Winston Churchill’s governing coalition during the Second World War, and prime minister of the epochal postwar government that established the welfare state, Clement Attlee played a decisive role in the history of modern Britain. In Clement Attlee: The Man Who Made Modern Britain (Oxford University Press, 2017; published in the UK as Citizen Clem), John Bew recounts the life and career of this modest yet deeply patriotic individual who dedicated his life to improving the condition of his fellow Britons. The son of a successful lawyer, Attlee enjoyed a comfortable upbringing until a trip to London’s East End exposed him to the degree of poverty in which many Britons lived. Dedicating himself to social work, he lived in the London slums until the outbreak of war in 1914 led him to volunteer for service. After the war he was elected to the House of Commons, where he often was overshadowed by the more dynamic personalities among his colleagues. Despite this, he weathered the tumu

All humans endure their private struggles, but rarely do we know what troubles our most famous public figures until now. In her recent book, Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Mind of History’s Great Personalities (National Geographic, 2016), award-winning journalist Claudia Kalb shares her research into the mental health histories of several well-known and much-loved people. She discusses Princess Diana’s struggle with eating disorder and severe loneliness; the impact of Frank Lloyd Wrights narcissism on his architectural masterpieces and personal relationships; and Andy Warhol’s penchant for holding onto and storing decades’ worth of day-to-day objects. In our interview, Kalb talks about her keen interest in these people and their stories, and we discuss the way such stories humanize these idealized figures and universalize the human quest for mental and emotional well-being. Claudia Kalb is an award-winning journalist who specializes in the fields of medicine, health, and science, former senior writer

Jimmy Stewart has a well-deserved reputation as one of the major stars of the classic film era. Yet his life was greatly affected by his experiences as a bomber pilot in World War II. Robert Matzen, author of the book, Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe (GoodKnight Books, 2016), reviews Stewart’s life in a military family and his role in the allied victory in Europe. He also discusses how the war affected Stewarts immediate post-war film career. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Sister Mary Corita, IHM (1918-1986), was a beloved artist and teacher whose role as the rebel nun continues to inspire contemporary audiences. Corita joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1936 when she was just eighteen years old, and soon after became an initially reluctant Art teacher at Immaculate Heart College. Corita remained part of the community on Franklin and Western Avenues in Hollywood until 1968 when Los Angeles archbishop Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, and other conservatives, targeted the orders reformist ways. Corita’s Pop Art styled prints celebrating the presence of God in the most ordinary of everyday subjects (Mary is the juiciest tomato of all) drew the ire of McIntyre in particular. At age fifty, she took one of many unconventional steps and left the order to start life anew as an independent woman. In Corita Kent: Art and Soul: The Biography (Angel City Press, 2015), April Dammann traces Corita’s path as an artist and religious woman who participated in the heady scen

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spent a lifetime disagreeing with inequality, arguing against unfair treatment, and standing up for what’s right for people everywhere. I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark (Simon and Schuster, 2016), a biographical picture book–the first for young children about Justice Ginsburg’s life–tells the justice’s story through the lens of her many famous dissents, or disagreements. Award-winning children’s book author, Debbie Levy, demonstrates Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s persistence and highlights notable cases in which she was a participant, such as Frontiero v. Richardson (1973), which was an important win for equal rights for women. Debbie Levy has written many powerful nonfiction narratives for children, including We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song, The Year of Goodbyes: A True Story of Friendship, Family and Farewells, and Dozer’s Run: A True Story of a Dog and His Race. Ms. Levy is a former lawyer and newspaper editor. Susan Raab is president of Raab Ass

Thomas Aiello is associate professor of history and African American studies at Valdosta State University. In The Battle for the Souls of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and the Debate that Shaped the Course of Civil Rights (ABC-CLIO, 2016) Aiello focuses on the conversation between Washington and Du Bois in order to fully examine its contours. The book serves as both a document reader and an authored text that enables readers to perceive how the back and forth between these two individuals produced a cacophony of ideas that made it anything but a bipolar debate, even though their expressed differences would ultimately shape the two dominant strains of activist strategy. The numerous chapters on specific topics and historical events follow a preface that presents an overview of both the conflict and its historiographical treatment; evaluates the legacies of both Washington and Du Bois, emphasizing the trajectories of their theories beyond 1915; and provides an explanation of the unique struc

The life of the German-born, pioneering American psychoanalyst, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, is intriguing enough in itself, but in the biography, To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (Other Books, 2005), we learn that Fromm-Reichmann played an integral role in mid-century psychoanalysis. In this interview, with the author, psychologist, and historian, Gail Hornstein, we trace not only Fromm Reichmann’s many accomplishments, but also the history of Chestnut Lodge where she worked for many years, her relationships with Erich Fromm and Harold Searles, as well as the cultural impact of the book written by her patient Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World is essential reading for anyone interested not only in the history of American psychoanalysis, but also psychoanalysis in general. You can find Chris Bandini on Twitter @cebandini. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by

Richard Bourke, Professor in the History of Political Thought in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London, began developing his history of Edmund Burke’s political thought in 1991. Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton University Press, 2015) uses Burke as a window into the eighteenth-century articulations of British imperial power, exploring the way that Burke approached relations between Britain, Ireland, America, India, and France. Beginning with Burke’s boyhood in Ireland, and closing with the challenge of grappling with Burke’s ongoing legacy, this beautifully written book displays Professor Bourke’s long study, attention to detail, and gift for trenchant observation. Our conversation ranged over subjects as familiar today as they were in the 1700s, including Burke’s understanding of representative politics as a means of resolving conflicts present in the public at large, struggles between state and corporate power, and the warrant for popular revolution.

Our modern networked world owes an oftentimes unacknowledged debt to Guglielmo Marconi. As Marc Raboy demonstrates in Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World (Oxford University Press, 2016), it was he who pioneered the concept of wireless global communications. As a teenager he was fascinated by the recent discovery of radio waves, and by the time he was in his early twenties he had developed an apparatus that used these waves to transmit and receive messages. Traveling to London, he demonstrated a gift for publicity as he established himself as a technological pioneer in an age of rapidly emerging wonders. Thanks to his unassailable patents, Marconi soon created a global communications empire, one that made his name synonymous with radio and was so dominant that it brought the nations of the world together in an unprecedented international agreement to regulate the field of wireless telegraphy. Raboy recounts Marconi’s roving life as a celebrated figure, the development of his multinational business concern

Best remembered as the nineteenth commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Clifton B. Cates began his long and distinguished military career as a second lieutenant in World War I. In I Will Hold: The Story of USMC Legend Clifton B. Cates, From Belleau Wood to Victory in the Great War (NAL, 2016), journalist and author James Carl Nelson recounts Cates’ early life and service in the war. Cates was studying to take the Tennessee bar when the United States joined the war in April 1917, an event which led Cates to set aside his studies and answer the call to service. After training in the rapidly-expanding Marine Corps, Cates was sent to France in January 1918, and within a few short months he found himself at the heart of combat at the battle of Belleau Wood. Despite being in the thick fighting, Clifton escaped serious injury, and with his unit he participated in the Soissons offensive later that summer. Nelson’s book offers a look at the war Cates fought against the Germans, one in which he demonstrated his natural

The transmission of a religion closely connected to a particular culture into a very different religious and cultural environment is a difficult act of translation in which a balance must be struck between remaining true to doctrine while understanding and accommodating cultural difference. Members of the Society of Jesus were engaged in a series of such projects in Asia in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This already difficult task was made more complex by the need to maintain unity and discipline among individual Jesuits when travel was dangerous and time consuming and letters might take years to reach their destinations. In his masterful book, The Visitor: Andre Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia (Harvard University Press, 2014), Liam Brockey explores these issues through a study of the life of Andre Palmeiro, who traveled throughout Asia settling disputes over complex questions of belief, practice, and ritual. This informative work is not only a biography, as Brockey skillfully uses the career

“Anyone can make a difference. Find a problem, get some friends together, and go fix it. Remember you don’t have to change the world, just change your world.” –Joan Trumpauer Mulholland In the early 1960s, in the segregated South, a white teenager, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, made a conscientious decision to join the Civil Rights struggle. In doing so she put her life at risk, but given her family history (the first relative to come to America did so as an indentured servant in the 1600s; her grandmother was a suffragette) she could not sit idly by as blacks were treated like second-class citizens. She organized non-violent sit-ins, attended a predominately black college, and participated in protests including the March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery March. She was arrested and held on death row; she was spit on, dragged off her stool and threatened with violence at a Woolworths lunch counter sit-in, yet she never relented. Now readers of all ages can learn more about this extraordinary woman in Sh

The story of the martyrdom of Husayn, the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, is recounted annually around the world. More broadly, the communal retelling of the lives of Shia imams has played an important part in shaping Shia identity and practice. Matthew Pierce, Assistant Professor of Religion at Centre College, examines the early canonization of these life stories in Twelve Infallible Men: The Imams and the Making of Shiism (Harvard University Press, 2016). Pierce carefully conceptualizes the relationship between history, author, text, and audience through an examination of several collective biographies of the twelve imams from the 10th-12th centuries. From this sub-genre several themes arise in the presentation of the imams, their families, and their actions. Martyrdom is central to the retellings not only of Husayn, but of all the imams. The imams’ death are remembered through images of suffering and mourning but structured in ways that provide solace for the audience. The collective biographies also offer re

Ellen Fitzpatrick is professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. Her book The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency (Harvard University Press, 2016) provides the story of three women, out of over two hundred women, who pursued the presidency. In the nineteenth century, when women were denied the vote, the self-made Victoria Woodhull, a political and religious outsider, ran on a platform of change and reform. In the 1940s, the pragmatic Republican Margaret Chase Smith entered politics as the result of the “widow’s mandate.” She stayed in Congress for over two decades and ran for president in 1964. The Democrat Shirley Chisholm took on the double jeopardy of running as the first black woman to seek the presidency in 1972. Her grassroots base included black community activists and feminists. All three women faced structural obstacles rather than lack of grit. Hillary Clinton’s presidential run in 2008 would again challenge the American resistance to breaking the highest gl