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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

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00:39:14

The Last of the Ellis Island Jews: A Brooklyn Memoir...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/29

Joel Dinerstein's The Last of the Ellis Island Jews (SUNY Press, 2026) is a tragicomic memoir of a dysfunctional, working-class Brooklyn Jewish family that illuminates both the vitality of urban life in the twentieth century and the social turmoil of white flight. As a child of immigrants born to older parents, Dinerstein has a unique perspective on four generations--from his grandparents escaping Russia's pogroms to his parents' embattled marriage to his older Boomer siblings (split between

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00:45:41

How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/29

There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons—and of course the day’s headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no “class photo” of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its

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00:54:55

Thomas Jefferson Survives: American Independence in...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/28

“Does Thomas Jefferson still matter?” ask two leading historians on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.Thomas Jefferson has been reinvented more than perhaps any American president in history. In the nineteenth century, slavery’s defenders invoked Jefferson’s defense of states’ rights while abolitionists drew on his antislavery writings in support of their cause. After the Civil War, Jefferson’s reputation declined because of his association with secession and disunion, but in

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00:28:10

What Is Life Worth? New Edition with Reflections 25...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/25

Kenneth R. Feinberg's What is Life Worth? New Edition with Reflections 25 Years After 9/11 (Rivertown Books, 2026) shares the story that inspired the acclaimed motion picture Worth, told by the man behind the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund—a moving saga of national tragedy and healing.Now with the author’s reflections on how today’s hyper-partisan America needs to unite to face our greatest challenges. Just days after September 11, 2001, attorney Kenneth Feinberg was appointed by Congress to

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00:43:56

Emmy Waldman, "Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/25

Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Comics Form (Cambridge UP, 2026) by Dr. Emmy Waldman is the first book to place the autobiographical projects of canonical comics authors Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel alongside each other, focusing on new and neglected works (and with an epilogue on the Pulitzer Prize-winning tour-de-force debut of Tessa Hulls). The book offers a lively cast of five formal tropes-boxes, spirals, tic-tac-toe, mirrors, and webs-through which to model fundamental

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01:00:32

Tess Chakkalakal, "A Matter of Complexion: The Life...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/23

In A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt(St. Martin's Press, 2025), Tess Chakkalakal gives readers the first comprehensive biography of Charles W. Chesnutt. A complex and talented man, Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland to parents who were considered “mixed race.” He spent his early life in North Carolina after the Civil War. Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored

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01:06:12

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/23

A gripping exposé of deception, cult power, and the long shadow of Carlos Castaneda, the man behind the biggest literary hoax of the twentieth century.Twenty years in the making, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda (OR Books, 2026) unravels the story of the secretive faux-anthropologist who pulled off one of the greatest literary hoaxes in modern history. Both an investigation of the techniques employed by charismatic narcissists and a study of the cult dynamics that still shape

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00:42:12

Randal Maurice Jelks, "My America: Langston Hughes on...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/22

Celebrated poet, essayist, playwright, and American artist Langston Hughes is one of the few American writers who consistently wrote about democracy from a joyous perspective, andMy Americaexplores how his work speaks to the political anxieties and crises we face today. Randal M. Jelks deftly examines the themes in Hughes’s work, including creative expression, communal dignity, class struggle, and human suffering, and what they mean for our inner well-being as democratic persons and political

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01:07:19

Michael R. Fischbach, "I Did It for My Country:...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/22

In June 1968, a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan B. Sirhan assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, marking yet another killing in a decade haunted by political violence. As he was being subdued, Sirhan shouted, “I can explain. I did it for my country,” by which he meant Palestine. On trial, he testified that his motives included opposition to Zionism, with particular anger directed toward Kennedy because of the senator’s call for arms sales to Israel. Despite Sirhan’s

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00:47:11

Andrew Brandt, "Smarter about Sports: My Life...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/21

For more than two decades, Andrew Brandt has lived at the intersection of money, law, and sports—first as a player agent, then as vice president of the Green Bay Packers during the franchise’s most iconic quarterback transition, and now as a widely respected educator and analyst for ESPN and Sports Illustrated.In Smarter about Sports: My Life Navigating Athletes, Agents, Media, and the Business of the NFL (Triumph Books, 2026)Brandt pulls back the curtain on the modern sports industry, revealing

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00:38:33

Jerome Sauvage, "Witness to North Korea: Three Years...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/18

Jerome Sauvage served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative in North Korea from 2009 to 2013.In this capacity, he was the most senior UN official in North Korea during one of the most eventful political periods on the Korean peninsula in recent memory. Amidst the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and death of Kim Jong-il, Sauvage had to resurrect and strengthen UNDP’s—and the UN overall’s—presence in

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00:37:36

Sarah Trad, "A House in the Lebanese Mountains:...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/18

High in the Lebanese mountains above Beirut sits Beit Trad, an eighteenth-century family home that Sarah Trad transformed into a guesthouse devoted to Levantine hospitality. The house brings together family history, Lebanese design, food, and the belief that welcoming someone into your home is an essential part of life.In A House in the Lebanese Mountains: Recipes & Stories from Beit Trad(Thames & Hudson, 2026), Trad tells the story of Beit Trad and the family who shaped it, alongside

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59:00

Ian Brown, "70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year"...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/10

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author and journalist Ian Brown about his memoir,70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year(Penguin Random House, 2026).Ian Brown, award-winning author of The Boy in the Moon and the memoir Sixty, now recounts his daily reckoning with the milestone age of seventy. Fearlessly candid, often funny and relentlessly real, Brown asks the terrifying questions we all have about growing old, even when he doesn’t want to know the answers. An

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52:06

Charlie Walker, "On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/10

In February 2022, British explorer Charlie Walker flew to Siberia's Sakha Republic to walk a thousand miles up frozen rivers to the Arctic Ocean, through Earth's coldest inhabited region. Days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Tamping down his concerns, he continued on his journey, meeting indigenous people and ice road truckers along the way. Yet his trip ended in fear and confusion, with an arrest and a month in a Yakutsk jail, the story of his new book,On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of Siberia,

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30:09

Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/09

An account of the North American fentanyl crisis told through stories and photographs of its victimsLives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy(Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026),edited by Ben Westhoff, author ofFentanyl, Inc., is a different kind of drug book. Part biography, part coffee-table photo collection, it seeks to put a human face on a public health crisis too often discussed in statistics and numbers. Westhoff's book profiles 80 people, 76 victims of fentanyl overdose and 4 survivors, and

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74:08

Sara McDougall, "Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/07

In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who took the unusual step of making a criminal complaint in an age when victims of sexual violence did so at their own peril.Justice for Jehanne: The

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42:19

Kirby, "Fairy" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/06

In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kirby about their joyful and powerful new book,Fairy(Palimpsest Press, 2026).In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their riches and fan the flames lit in their instant classic, Poetry is Queer. Their essays are an act of liberation they call “tending to each other’s freedom,” and are written with signature Kirby directness and panache, from early AIDS-activist monologues, to launching a counter city-wide “safe-sex” campaign that includes the public

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81:22

Leah Kim, "Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/05

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Leah Kim about her powerful book,Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood(Bloomsbury, 2026). A deeply personal examination of the dire state of our maternal and postpartum care for mothers.For expecting and new parents, too often the care is so focused on a healthy baby that the mother's physical and mental needs are overlooked. Mothers face intense pressure to have the perfect birth plan, breastfeed with

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51:19

Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/05

In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital age, searching for inspiration in a scene driven by music videos, synthesizers, and drum machines.Driving around that summer, a bootleg cassette of “township jive”—the street music of South Africa—kept him company. Lent to him by a friend, it reminded Simon of the sound and the joy of the early days of rock and roll. He began

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63:42

Filmmaker Peter Santenello on Your Fellow Americans:...

New Books in Biography & Memoir ·

2026/09/02

Have you ever swapped stories on a porch with Amish snowbirds in Florida? Searched for reindeer with the Siberian Yupik in Alaska? Been a guest on a houseboat deep in the Louisiana bayou? Peter Santenello hadn't either, until after years spent traveling through eighty-five countries and living abroad, he realized the most unfamiliar territory was often his own American backyard. And so, with a camera in hand and an open mind, he began visiting communities across the country that most media overlooks

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