New Books in Biography

At 10:20pm on August 15th, 1969, Ravi Shankar — then, and still, the most famous practitioner of the sitar and Indian classical music — takes the stage at Woodstock. It’s arguably the zenith of Indian music’s popularity in the West, with musicians like the Beatles, the Byrds and Led Zeppelin embracing elements of Indian music. But this was merely the middle-point of Shankar’s artistic development, nor was it a personal highlight in a long and storied career. For many musicians in several different genres, both in and outside of India, Shankar is the most important messenger for the ideas and concepts of Indian music.Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar (Faber & Faber / Hachette: 2020) by Oliver Craske is the first full biography on Shankar’s life, charting Shankar’s musical journey — from accompanying his older brother, the dancer Uday Shankar, on world tours at a young age, through the height of his worldwide acclaim in the late Sixties, to the end of his life as the most respected performer of Indian classical music. More details about Indian Sun can be found on the book’s official website.In this interview, Oliver and I talk about the life of Ravi Shankar, and the many ways his music was important both in and outside of India throughout the Twentieth Century. We talk about the fundamentals of Indian classical music, and whether India’s music plays an important role in the country’s “cultural soft power.”Those interested in experiencing Ravi Shankar’s music for themselves can access this Spotify playlist, curated by Oliver Craske.Oliver Craske is a writer and editor, with a longstanding interest in Indian music. He first met Ravi Shankar in 1994, and worked with Shankar on his autobiography. Craske is also the author of Rock Faces: The World's Top Rock'n'Roll Photographers and Their Greatest Images (RotoVision: 2004), a survey of leading music photographers.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Indian Sun. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. In his day job, he’s a researcher and writer for a think tank in economic and sustainable development. He is also a print and broadcast commentator on local and regional politics. 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

The debate about the origins of Enlightenment haven’t paid as much attention as they should have done to the radical religious cultures of the Dutch Republic in the mid-17th century, which are the subject of Francesco Quatrini’s new book. Adam Boreel (1602-1665): A Collegiant's Attempt to Reform Christianity (Brill, 2020) is a biographical and thematic study of one of the most enigmatic – and perhaps one of the most important – of the period’s religious and scientific thinkers. In the first major biography of this figure, and in almost two hundred thousand words, Quatrini reconstructs from complex and often ambiguous sources Boreel’s childhood in the Dutch Reformed church, the intellectual agendas and travels by which he was exposed to more radical forms of Christianity, the friendship networks in which he worked on projects that seem to have designed the conversation of the Jews, and most significantly of all the unofficial institutions that fostered the wide-ranging and open-ended conversations on religious subjects that marked the communal life of the Collegiants. Quatrini’s outstanding new book opens up new windows in our understanding of early modern religion and science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side: Bloomingdale-Morningside Heights (Fordham UP, 2020), Jim Mackin introduces readers to almost 600 former residents of a culturally and politically fertile slice of Manhattan wedged between Central Park and the Hudson River from the West 90s to 125th Street. The range of people he has uncovered will astonish even long-time residents of the area. Actor Dustin Hoffman, writer Dorothy Parker, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and singer Ronnie Spector are just four of the people you will meet in these pages. This thoroughly researched book, intelligently designed for both armchair browsing and walking tours, is a testament to the density of Manhattan life and the range of people and stories that can found in New York City neighborhoods.Robert W. Snyder, Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers University, is the author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York and co-author of All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York. He can be reached at rwsnyder@newark.rutgers.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of award-winning Japanese film director Kore-eda Hirokazu. With his recent top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters, Kore-eda is arguably Japan’s greatest living director with an international viewership. He approaches difficult subjects (child abandonment, suicide, marginality) with a realistic and compassionate eye. The lyrical tone of the writing of Japanese film scholar Linda C. Ehrlich perfectly complements the understated, yet powerful, tone of the films. From An Elemental Cinema, readers will gain a special understanding of Kore-eda’s films through a novel connection to the natural elements as reflected in Japanese traditional aesthetics. An Elemental Cinema presents Kore-eda’s oeuvre as a connected whole with overarching thematic concerns, despite frequent generic experimentation. It also offers an example of how the poetics of cinema can be practiced in writing, as well as on the screen, and helps readers understand the films of this contemporary director as works of art that relate to their own lives.Linda C. Ehrlich—writer, teacher, editor—has published extensively about world cinema, art, and traditional theatre in a number of acclaimed academic journals.Takeshi Morisato is philosopher and sometimes academic. He specializes in comparative and Japanese philosophy but he is also interested in making Japan and philosophy accessible to a wider audience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Arlin Migliazzo’s Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears (Eerdmans, 2020) documents the life and ministry of one of the most influential teachers of twentieth-century American evangelicalism. As the leader of one of the largest Sunday school classes in America at First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, California, Mears energized an entire generation of evangelical Christians with her teaching, her publishing endeavors, and her mentorship of figures such as Billy Graham and Bill Bright. Migliazzo’s biography illuminates this fascinating figure in American evangelical history and charts a trajectory of conservative American Christianity from repressed fundamentalism to a culturally aware and engaged modern evangelicalism.Lane Davis is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University where he studies American religious history. Find him on Twitter @TheeLaneDavis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In a 2012 opinion piece bemoaning the state of the US Senate, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank cited a “leading theory: There are no giants in the chamber today.” Among the respected members who once walked the Senate floor, admired for their expertise and with a stature that went beyond party, Milbank counted Sam Nunn (D-GA).Nunn served in the Senate for four terms beginning in 1972, at a moment when domestic politics and foreign policy were undergoing far-reaching changes. As a member and then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he had a vital impact on most of the crucial national security and defense issues of the Cold War era and the “new world order” that followed—issues that included the revitalization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's military capability, US-Soviet relations, national defense reorganization and reform, the Persian Gulf conflict, and nuclear arms control. In this first full account of Nunn’s senatorial career, Frank Leith Jones reveals how, as a congressional leader and “shadow secretary of defense,” Nunn helped win the Cold War, constructing the foundation for the defense and foreign policies of the 1970s and 1980s that secured the United States and its allies from the Soviet threat.At a time of bitter political polarization and partisanship, Nunn’s reputation remains that of a statesman with a record of bipartisanship and a dedication to US national interests above all. His career, as recounted in Sam Nunn: Statesman of the Nuclear Age (University Press of Kansas, 2020), provides both a valuable lesson in the relationships among the US government, foreign powers, and societies and a welcome reminder of the capacity of Congress, even a lone senator, to promote and enact policies that can make the country, and the world, a better and safer place.Frank Leith Jones is professor of security studies and the General C. Marshall Chair of Military Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His published work includes Blowtorch: Robert Komer, Vietnam, and American Cold War Strategy.Arya Hariharan is a lawyer in politics. She spends much of her time working on congressional investigations and addressing challenges to the rule of law. You can reach her at arya.hariharan@gmail.com or Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In 1933, Maurice Wilson — First World War hero, drifting veteran, and amateur aviator, lands in the aerodrome at Purnea in British India. His goal is to be the first man to climb Mt. Everest. And nothing — not his complete lack of climbing experience, the lack of official permission, and the efforts of British civil servants — will stop him.Ed Caesar’s The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest (Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster, 2020) tells Wilson’s tale, tracing his story from the First World War, through drifting across the English-speaking world to his sudden drive to climb the world’s tallest mountain. He buys a biplane, flies to India, sneaks into Tibet and attempts to climb Everest, only to succumb to the elements on its slopes in 1934, like so many before and after.In this interview, Ed and I talk about the story of Maurice Wilson, and the two stages of his quest to Everest’s summit: the flight to India, and the climb up the mountain’s slopes. We discuss how the geopolitical situation of the day affected his travels, and where Ed’s interest in this failed summit attempt comes from.Ed Caesar is an author and a contributing writer to The New Yorker. Before joining The New Yorker, he wrote stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Outside, and the Smithsonian Magazine, He has reported from a wide range of countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kosovo, Russia, and Iran. His first book, Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon (Penguin UK: 2015), was awarded a Cross Sports Book of the Year award. He can be found on Twitter at @edcaesar and Instagram at @byedcaesar.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Moth and the Mountain. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. In his day job, he’s a researcher and writer for a think tank in economic and sustainable development. He is also a print and broadcast commentator on local and regional politics. 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

A reporter uncovers the secrets behind the scientific scam of the century. The news breaks first as a tale of fear and pity. Doctors at a London hospital claim a link between autism and a vaccine given to millions of children: MMR. Young parents are terrified. Immunization rates slump. And as a worldwide ‘anti-vax’ movement kicks off, old diseases return to sicken and kill. But a veteran reporter isn’t so sure, and sets out on an epic investigation. Battling establishment cover-ups, smear campaigns, and gagging lawsuits, he exposes rigged research and secret schemes, the heartbreaking plight of families struggling with disability, and the scientific deception of our time.Brian Deer's The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020) tells the troubling story of Andrew Wakefield: a man in search of greatness, who stakes his soul on big ideas that, if right, might transform lives. But when the facts don’t fit, he can’t face failure. He’ll do whatever it takes to succeed.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Decades before he wrote his epic work Paradise Lost, John Milton was an active republican and polemicist. How Milton came to espouse such radical views is just one of the key themes of Nicholas McDowell’s Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton (Princeton UP, 2020), the first book of a projected two-volume biography of the famous author. The son of a prosperous scrivener, Milton enjoyed the benefits of a quality education heavily influenced by Italian humanism. This extensive instruction in foreign languages and classical authors was viewed by Milton as a necessary requirement for a career as a poet, one to which he dedicated himself during his time at university. Yet as McDowell demonstrates Milton’s Puritan faith also played an important role in his intellectual development, especially as he found his beliefs increasingly at odds with the emerging Laudian influence on the Anglican church. This motivated the young intellectual to write a series of pamphlets after his return from a lengthy trip to France and Italy in 1638-9, works which signaled his growing engagement with politics on the eve of England’s plunge into a devastating civil war in the 1640s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Today I talked to Michael Gorra about his new book The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War (Liveright, 2020). This episode touches on two of William Faulkner’s novels in particular: The Sound and the Fury as well as Absalom, Absalom! It considers the role of memory and history, Faulkner’s alcoholism, the sexual exploitation practiced by plantation owners, and the greater presence of Nathan Bedford Forrest over Robert E. Lee in Faulkner’s fiction writings. Ties to today’s reckoning for racial justice is a part of the episode, too.The author of Portrait of a Novel, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Michael Gorra is a Professor English Language and Literature at Smith College and the editor of the Norton Critical Editions of As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography