New Books in Biography

Begum Wilayat Mahal, the self-proclaimed heir to the House of Awadh, has fascinated journalists and writers for decades. She claimed she was Indian royalty, descended from the kings of Awadh, a kingdom annexed by the British in 1856. She spent a decade in the waiting room of the New Delhi train station, receiving journalists intrigued by the image of Indian royals in cramped conditions. Then, her family was granted use of a rundown 14th-century hunting lodge in Delhi; none were seen in public again. Both during Wilayat Mahal’s life, and after her death, journalists have tried to figure out whether her story was true, most famously by a 2019 feature by the New York Times that picked apart the family’s story. Now, in their book The House of Awadh: A Hidden Tragedy (HarperCollins India: 2025), Aletta André and Abhimanyu Kumar dig into Begum Wilayat Mahal’s past, chasing down leads in India and Pakistan to fully explore this story. Aletta André is a Dutch historian and journalist, who has covered South Asia for Dutch and international media since 2009. Abhimanyu Kumar is an Indian poet and journalist with a wide experience covering politics, arts, culture and minority issues. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The House of Awadh. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Since her death, Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) has become an endless source of fascination for a wide audience ranging from readers of The Bell Jar, her semiautobiographical novel, to her groundbreaking poetry as exemplified by Ariel. Beyond her writing, however, interest in Plath has also been fueled in part by the tragic nature of her death. As a result, a steady stream of biographies of Plath have appeared over the last fifty-five years that mainly focus on her death or contain projections of an array of points of view about the writer. Until now, little sustained attention has been paid to the influences on Plath’s life and work. What movies did she watch? Which books did she read? How did media shape her worldview? In this meticulously researched biography The Making of Sylvia Plath (UP Mississippi, 2024), Carl Rollyson explores the intricate web of literature, cinema, spirituality, psychology, and popular culture that profoundly influenced Plath's life and writing. At the heart of this biography is a compelling exploration of William Sheldon’s seminal work, Psychology and the Promethean Will, which Plath devoured in her quest for self-discovery and understanding. Through Plath’s intense study of this work, readers gain unprecedented access to Plath's innermost thoughts, her therapeutic treatments, and the overarching worldview that fueled her creative genius.Through Sheldon as well as Plath’s other influences, Rollyson offers a captivating survey of the symbiotic relationship between an artist and the world around her and offers readers new insights into the enigmatic mind of one of the most important writers of the twentieth century.   Jane Scimeca, Professor of History at Brookdale Community College Website here @janescimeca.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight (UP of Mississippi, 2021) is a celebration of jazz and the men and women who created and transformed it. In the twenty-one conversations contained in this engaging and highly accessible book, we hear from the musicians themselves, in their own words, direct and unfiltered. Peter Zimmerman’s interviewing technique is straightforward. He turns on a recording device, poses questions, and allows his subjects to improvise, similar to the way the musicians do at concerts and in recording sessions. Topics range from their early days, their struggles and victories, to the impact the music has had on their own lives. The interviews have been carefully edited for sense and clarity, without changing any of the musicians’ actual words.Peter Zimmerman tirelessly sought virtuosi whose lives span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The reader is rewarded with an intimate look into the past century’s extraordinary period of creative productivity. The oldest two interview subjects were born in 1920 and all are professional musicians who worked in jazz for at least five decades, with a few enjoying careers as long as seventy-five years. These voices reflect some seventeen hundred years of accumulated experience yielding a chronicle of incredible depth and scope.The focus on musicians who are now emeritus figures is deliberate. Some of them are now in their nineties; six have passed since 2012, when Zimmerman began researching The Jazz Masters. Five of them have already received the NEA’s prestigious Jazz Masters award: Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry, Yusef Lateef, Jimmy Owens, and most recently, Dick Hyman. More undoubtedly will one day, and the balance are likewise of compelling interest. Artists such as David Amram, Charles Davis, Clifford Jordan, Valery Ponomarev, and Sandy Stewart, to name a few, open their hearts and memories and reveal who they are as people.This book is a labor of love celebrating the vibrant style of music that Dizzy Gillespie once described as “our native art form.” Zimmerman’s deeply knowledgeable, unabashed passion for jazz brings out the best in the musicians. Filled with personal recollections and detailed accounts of their careers and everyday lives, this highly readable, lively work succeeds in capturing their stories for present and future generations. An important addition to the literature of music, The Jazz Masters goes a long way toward “setting the record straight.”Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (Yale UP, 2024), Maurice Samuels gives readers new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus’s early life in Paris, his promising career as a French officer, the false accusation leading to his imprisonment on Devil’s Island, the fight to prove his innocence that divided the French nation, and his life of quiet obscurity after World War I.Samuels’s striking perspective is enriched by a newly available archive of more than three thousand documents and objects donated by the Dreyfus family. Unlike many historians, Samuels argues that Dreyfus was not an “assimilated” Jew. Rather, he epitomized a new model of Jewish identity made possible by the French Revolution, when France became the first European nation to grant Jews full legal equality. This book analyzes Dreyfus’s complex relationship to Judaism and to antisemitism over the course of his life—a story that, as global antisemitism rises, echoes still. It also shows the profound effect of the Dreyfus Affair on the lives of Jews around the world. Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University. He is the author most recently of The Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal That Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern. He lives in Branford, CT. Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Mentioned in the podcast: Léon Blum, Souvenirs sur l'Affaire (1935; Gallimard, 1981). Michael Burns, Dreyfus: A Family Affair, 1789-1945 (HarperCollins, 1991). Alfred Dreyfus, Cinq années de ma vie (1894-1899) (Maspero, 1982). Vincent Duclert, Alfred Dreyfus: l'honneur d'un patriote (Fayard, 2016). Marcel Thomas, L'Affaire sans Dreyfus (Fayard, 1961). Hannah Arendt, “From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today.” Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 3 (1942): 195–240. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4615201. Exhibition « Alfred Dreyfus. Truth and justice » at the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme in Paris American Israelite newspaper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In his new book, The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader (Yale University Press, 2018), Stephen Fritz professor of history at East Tennessee State University reexamines Hitler as a military commander and strategist. That Hitler saw World War II as the only way to retrieve Germany’s fortunes and build an expansionist Thousand-Year Reich is uncontroversial. But while his generals did sometimes object to Hitler’s tactics and operational direction, they often made the same errors in judgment and were in agreement regarding larger strategic and political goals. A necessary volume for understanding the influence of World War I on Hitler’s thinking, this work is also an eye-opening reappraisal of major events like the invasion of Russia and the battle for Normandy.Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today. In his book Anthony Valerio’s Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor (Zantedeschi Books, 2019). Valerio details the many struggles Semmelweis faced in winning acceptance for his advice on antiseptic procedures. The son of a Buda spice merchant, Semmelweis started his studies in law before a chance attendance at a medical lecture sparked his interest in becoming a doctor. After earning his degree he decided to specialize in obstetrics, a choice that soon brought him to confront the problem of childbed fever. Deducing that exposure to cadavers was a factor, Semmelweis devised a regimen of hand washing that dramatically reduced the morality rate at the maternity clinic where he worked. Though Semmelweis’s treatment was simple, his ideas faced considerable resistance from leading figures in the Western medical community, with the stress from his campaigns to promote his ideas contributing to the institutionalization that led to his death in 1865. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In the first major biography of Baldwin in more than a decade, James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019), Bill V. Mullen celebrates the personal and political life of the great African-American writer who changed the face of Western politics and culture. As a lifelong anti-imperialist, black queer advocate, and feminist, Baldwin (1924-1987) was a passionate chronicler of the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. war against Vietnam, Palestinian liberation struggle, and the rise of LGBTQ rights. Mullen explores how Baldwin's life and work channel the long history of African-American freedom struggles, and explains how Baldwin both predicted and has become a symbol of the global Black Lives Matter movement.Bill V. Mullen is Professor of English and American Studies at Purdue University. His specializations are American Literature and Studies, African American Studies, Cultural Studies, Working-Class Studies, Critical Race Theory and Marxist Theory.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

A major American writer, thinker, and activist, Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) transformed herself from a traditional, Radcliffe-educated lyric poet and married mother of three sons into a path-breaking lesbian-feminist author of forceful, uncompromising prose as well as poetry. In doing so, she emerged as an architect and exemplar of the feminist movement, breaking ranks to denounce the male-dominated literary establishment and paving the way for women writers to take their places in the cultural mainstream. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished materials, including Rich's correspondence and in-depth interviews with many people who knew her, Hilary Holladay provides a vividly detailed, full-dimensional portrait of a woman whose work and life continue to challenge and inspire new generations in The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography (Princeton UP, 2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

A veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War, Francis L. Sampson was a real-life hero whose exploits inspired one of the most famous war films of all time, Saving Private Ryan. From rural beginnings in northwestern Iowa, Sampson’s life would take him from the University of Notre Dame to the battlefields of Normandy on D-Day, the ambitious failure of Operation Market Garden, the harshness of a winter as a POW of the Germans during the closing stages of the Second World War, to the fall of North Korean capital Pyongyang in the early stages of the Korean War. Part of the very rare breed of Parachute Chaplains, in his case with the 101 st Airborne Division, Sampson spent much of his career as an army chaplain in the center of maelstroms of the 20th century. Throughout it all, Sampson offered a valuable Christian witness in the darkest of times and the most difficult of circumstances.This second edition of his memoirs, Look Out Below!: A Story of the Airborne by a Paratrooper Padre (Catholic U of America Press, 2023) contains material on his service during the Korean War and occupation duty in Germany and Japan as well as the Second World War, with a new historical introduction by University of Scranton Professor Sean Brennan.Allison Isidore is a Religious Studies Ph.D. student at the University of Iowa and is the Assistant Director for the American Catholic Historical Association. Her research interest is focused on the twentieth-century American Civil Rights Movement and the Catholic Church’s response to racism and the participation of Catholic clergy, nuns, and laypeople in marches, sit-ins, and kneel-ins during the 1950s and 1960s. She tweets from @AllisonIsidore1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiography that chronicles the life of Mahboob Qirvanian, from childhood and enslavement in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire to his eventual liberation in Iran. The Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran is a poignant and compelling account of one man’s journey through struggle, resilience, and unimaginable suffering. In the early twentieth century, Mahboob Qirvanian recorded his personal experiences of forced migration and enslavement as he navigated his path from captivity in Africa to full citizenship and a reconstructed identity in Iran. Written in Persian and Arabic, this remarkable autobiography serves as a powerful testament to Mahboob’s endurance, suffering, and ultimate transformation. Through insightful analysis, Behnaz A. Mirzai places Mahboob’s narrative – the only known account by a former African slave in Iran – within the context of the political upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran and the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire. This book not only sheds light on Mahboob’s personal story and the historical injustices of slavery but also engages with broader themes of displacement, identity, and social justice. In doing so, it invites readers to reflect on the enduring legacies of racial inequality and the ongoing struggles for freedom and dignity in the modern world. Behnaz A. Mirzai is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Brock University and senior guest researcher at Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at University of Bonn. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography