Loading...

PODCAST

New Books in Biography & Memoir

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+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

society & culture

All Episodes

63:04

Matti Friedman, "Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/02/09

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 Greek island of Hydra to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a guitar and a group of local musicians, Cohen met hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war

en

97:35

Joshua D. Zimmerman, "Jozef Pilsudski: Founding...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/02/08

In the 1920s, Józef Piłsudski was a household name not just in Poland, but across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean as well. Yet this complex and contradictory figure – a socialist and a nationalist, a clandestine agitator and a legendary military strategist, protector of Jews and other national minorities on Polish soil who was nonetheless often accused of imperialism – has eluded serious biographical treatment in English until now. Yeshiva University professor Joshua D. Zimmerman offers a

en

54:32

Garrett Felber, "A Continuous Struggle: The...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/02/06

The first biography of the revolutionary political prisoner who laid the foundation for contemporary abolitionist struggles and Black anarchism.A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre (AK Press, 2025) is a political biography of one of the most important revolutionary figures of the twentieth century in the United States. Martin Sostre (1923–2015) was a Black Puerto Rican from East Harlem who became a politicized prisoner and jailhouse lawyer, winning cases in the early

en

60:19

164 Maurice Samuels: Jewish Assimilation, Integration...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/02/05

When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet when things seemed to be going well for Jews in Western Europe and North America generally and France especially, the infamous fin de siècle Dreyfus affair brought to the surface some of the worst kinds of bigotry and animus--like contemporaneous Russian pogroms a premonition of the deadly looming revival of ethnic or religious divisions that had

en

60:48

Dianna N. Watkins-Dickerson, "A Black Woman for...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/02/04

Throughout US history, only three Black women—Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris—have given successfully recognized bids for the office of president of the United States. In A Black Woman for President: Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris(UP of Mississippi) author Dianna N. Watkins-Dickerson uses womanist rhetorical criticism to analyze the presidential announcement speeches of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, and then-Senator

en

26:21

Janet Kintner, "A Judge’s Tale: A Trailblazer Fights...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/02/03

Janet Kintner survived a difficult father and several assaults, but she didn’t let any of it stop her from pursuing law school as one of three women at the University of Arizona. And she didn’t let anything stop her from pursuing justice for her clients as a new lawyer, regardless of their ability to pay, their gender, race or religion. Despite learning that men dominated the legal system, she became a prosecutor who specialized in consumer fraud. As she continued to help everyone she could,

en

32:28

Sunny Dhillon, "Hide and Sikh: Letters from a Life in...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/02/03

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Sunny Dhillon about his book, Hide & Sikh: Letters from a Life in Brown Skin (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025). In 2018, Sunny Dhillon resigned as a journalist with the Globe and Mail. His blog post announcing his departure went unexpectedly viral. It was a decision that had been long brewing and Dhillon posted the piece with the hope that it would lead to “meaningful reflection on the lack of diversity in Canadian journalism and the problems therein.” But he

en

43:09

Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/31

Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at once responded to and sought to influence the tumultuous times in which he lived—decades during which Europe and eventually the entire world would be torn apart by war, while ideologies like fascism, socialism, and communism changed the stakes of global politics. In this study, Stanford historian and lifelong Orwell scholar Peter Stansky incisively

en

25:54

Najati Sidqi, "Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist:...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/30

In the public eye, Najati Sidqi was known as a journalist and writer, a translator of Russian classics, and an outspoken opponent of Nazism. However, Sidqi concealed a critical component of his life from the world and his family. He was an underground activist for the Palestinian Communist Party, a risky and influential pursuit that took him to early Bolshevik Moscow, British courts and prison cells in Palestine, Nazi Germany, intrigue-heavy interwar Paris, and Civil War Spain, Morocco, and Algeria

en

49:17

Thomas Aiello, "Return of the King: The Rebirth of...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/30

Return of the King: The Rebirth of Muhammad Ali and the Rise of Atlanta (U Nebraska Press, 2025) tells the story of Muhammad Ali’s return to the ring in 1970, after a more than three-year suspension for refusing his draft notice as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. With Ali’s career still in doubt, he found new support in shifting public opinion about the war and in Atlanta, a city still governed by white supremacy, but a white supremacy decidedly different from that of its neighbor

en

59:33

Betty Boyd Caroli, "A Slumless America: Mary K....

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/28

Betty Boyd Caroli's biography of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch is the first full-length work on a seminal figure in the settlement house movement, which spearheaded efforts to improve the life of immigrants and to counter urban squalor in cities around America in the early 19th century. Greenwich House, the community center Simkhovitch founded in 1902 in Greenwich Village, then a destination point for new immigrants to New York, quickly gained a reputation equal to that of Jane Addams's Hull House in

en

38:19

Duy Lap Nguyen, "Walter Benjamin and the Critique of...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/27

Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual and philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School, who tragically died at 48 years old in 1940 as he fled the advance of the Third Reich on the French-Spanish border. Most writers and critics see Benjamin’s work as fragmented, disjointed, esoteric and dispersed, with no clear narrative or cohesive philosophy. Duy Lap Nguyen, Associate Professor in World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston, paints a different picture of Benjamin’s

en

57:33

Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, "Kubrick: An...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/24

The definitive biography of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange, presenting the most in-depth portrait yet of the groundbreaking filmmaker.The enigmatic and elusive filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has not been treated to a full-length biography in over twenty years. Kubrick: An Odyssey (Pegasus Books, 2024) fills that gap. This definitive book is based on access to the latest research, especially Kubrick's archive at the University of the Arts, London, as well as

en

50:52

Ben Ratliff, "Run the Song: Writing About Running...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/23

Ben Ratliff is the author of Every Song Ever and Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening (Graywolf Press, 2025) was longlisted for the National Book Award, and the 2026 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. A former music critic for the New York Times, he lives in New York City and teaches at NYU.Listening Recommendations: Cara Lise Coverdale, A Series of Actions

en

54:58

Andrew Burstein, "Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/21

The deepest dive yet into the heart and soul, secret affairs, unexplored alliances, and bitter feuds of a generally worshipped, intermittently reviled American icon.Perhaps no founding father is as mysterious as Thomas Jefferson. The author of the Declaration of Independence was both a gifted wordsmith and a bundle of nerves. His superior knowledge of the human heart is captured in the impassioned appeal he brought to the Declaration. But as a champion of the common man who lived a life of

en

61:38

Christopher Lynch, "Formulating Foster: Stephen C....

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/19

Stephen C. Foster (1826–1864) was a prolific song composer. A few of his minstrel tunes have become so enmeshed in American musical culture that they are often thought to be folk songs. Although he died in poverty and most of his music was quickly forgotten, by the early twentieth century he was hailed as the “Father of American Music” and had become a symbol of US democracy. In Formulating Foster: Stephen C. Foster and the Creation of a National Musical Myth (Oxford University Press, 2025),

en

56:10

Oline Eaton, "Finding Jackie: The Second Act of...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/18

In her new book, Finding Jackie: A Life Reinvented (Diversion Books, 2023), scholar and writer Oline Eaton examines the story of an era's biggest "star of life," Jaqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, as she coped with trauma and built a new existence in an unstable world during the time between JFK's murder in 1963 and the death of her second husband, Aristotle Onassis, in 1975. Jackie Kennedy was universally loved and to this day is still remembered as dignified, classy, a superior wife, mother,

en

59:16

Giles Tremlett, "El Generalísimo: A Biography of...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/17

From a scrawny, overlooked military graduate to the youngest general in Europe, Francisco Franco was known for his ambition, talent and calculated risk-taking. Yet his reputation remains a topic of fierce debate. Did he destroy Spain and stifle its democracy or rescue the nation from left-wing tumult? In this compelling biography, Giles Tremlett unravels the complex life and legacy of the enigmatic dictator who shaped twentieth-century Spanish history.El Generalísimo: A Biography of Francisco

en

39:37

Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder:...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/15

In Everything Is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder: Confessions of A Former Badass (Street Noise Books, 2025), Professor Cara Gormally draws us into the familiar academic world of chronic busyness. In panel after panel, Cara brings us into a life numbed by overwork. Then, as this graphic memoir shows us, during an ordinary early-morning run, Cara’s watch dings with a Facebook friend request. Their rapist wants to “friend” them.Cara always had a long to-do list; always had many projects; always was

en

74:45

Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui, "The Making of Global...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/01/14

Today we are joined by Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui, author of The Making of Global FIFA: Cold War Politics and the Rise of João Havelange to the FIFA Presidency, 1950-1974 (De Gruyter, 2023). This book was previously published in Portuguese as A Dança das Cadeiras a eleição de João Havelange à presidenência da FIFA (1950-1974). In our conversation, we discussed João Havelange’s rise to FIFA’s presidency, how the FIFA leader crafted his own legacy, and the difficulties of publishing work in

en

637 results

Similar Podcasts

وجوه من الـظل

Medi1 Podcast

Richard lancaster"s podcast

Richard lancaster

Dis-List Podcast

Dis-List Podcast

Acta Non Verba

Marcus Aurelius Anderson

Hypermentilating The Podcast

Certified father and daughter