New Books in Biography

Adriaan Neele, who is director of the doctoral programme and Professor of Historical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, has edited an outstanding collection of essays on Petrus van Mastricht. This new book, Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706): Text, Context, and Interpretation (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2020), combines work by new and well-established scholars to examine the ways in which the achievements of this eminent protestant scholastic theologian have impacted upon theology and philosophy. The book contains ground-breaking arguments, challenges an emerging consensus about the nature of religious and political thinking in the period, and provides a road-map for new directions in the burgeoning field of early modern historical theology.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of An introduction to John Owen (Crossway, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Next year, Germany goes to the polls. For the first time in 15 years, Angela Merkel will not be a candidate for chancellor.Although a leadership election is underway inside Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, all eyes are on the CDU’s Bavarian sister party and its leader Markus Söder as her likely successor.A “shameless” self-publicist and political chameleon, Söder first rose to national prominence in 2015-17 as a conservative opponent of Merkel’s refugee policy. Yet, three years on, he has redefined himself as a Green-friendly moderate whose national popularity has soared in response to his sound pandemic management.Who is the 53-year-old Bavarian first minister and, if he does succeed Merkel next year, what should Germany’s geopolitical partners expect? In Markus Söder: The Shadow Chancellor (Droemer Knauer, 2020) Roman Deininger explains.Few people know better than Deininger, a longtime political reporter for Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich who has been stalking this wily politician for two decades.Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Anais Angelo, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Vienna has written an exceptional book entitled Power and the Presidency in Kenya: The Jomo Kenyatta Years (Cambridge University Press) in CUP's prestigious African Studies Series.Angelo’s book analyses the little-studied institution of the Office of the President by studying its first postcolonial office-holder in Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.Angelo’s book is also a study of postcolonial statebuilding, told through the process of negotiations that transformed Kenya into a presidential republic. Using extensive archival records, she finds that neither the Brits nor Kenyan political elites intended to create a presidential regime with near limitless executive power. The result is a political biography of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta. It’s a story of distant and discrete politician that also narrates Kenya’s colonial and postcolonial history.Susan Thomson is associate professor of peace and conflict studies at Colgate University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

It is 1969 and Jody A. Forrester is in her late teens, transitioning from a Sixties love child to pacifist anti-Vietnam War activist to an ardent revolutionary. Guns Under the Bed: Memories of a Young Revolutionary (Odyssey Books) revolves around her three years in the Revolutionary Union, a Communist organization advocating armed overthrow of the ruling class. In readiness for the uprising, she sleeps with two rifles underneath her bed.One of millions protesting the war, what sets Jody apart her from her peers is her decision to join a group espousing Mao Tse Tung's ideology of class war. But why? How does she come to embrace violence as the only solution to the inequities inherent in a capitalist empire? To answer that question, Jody goes into her past, and in the process comes to realize that what she always thought of as political is also deeply personal.More than a coming-of-age story, this memoir tells universal truths about seeking a sense of belonging not found in her family with themes of shame, pride, secrecy, self-valuation, and self-acceptance explored in context of the culture and politics of that volatile period in American history.Jody A. Forrester was born and raised in Los Angeles during the uneasy Fifties and tumultuous Sixties. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the Sonora Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, WriteRoom, Dreamers Writing, Citroen Review, Gazelle and several others.Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In The Fornes Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of Maria Irene Fornes (University of Arizona Press, 2016) playwright and theatre scholar Anne García-Romero traces the career and legacy of Maria Irene Fornes.Fornes was one of the most significant American playwrights of the twentieth century, and her legacy is evident in the dozens of playwrights she mentored over the course of her long career. García-Romero shows how her unique pedagogy and her example as a successful Latina experimental playwright continue to inspire playwrights like Caridad Svich, Cusi Cram, Elaine Romero, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Karen Zacarías.Anne García-Romero is a playwright and theatre studies scholar.Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA program at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Despite her nearly two decades as the publisher of the largest newspaper in a politically pivotal state, the role of Nackey Scripps Loeb in American political and media history has been unjustly forgotten. In Political Godmother: Nackey Scripps Loeb and the Newspaper That Shook the Republican Party (Potomac Books, 2020), Meg Heckman describes the ways in which she shaped both journalism in New Hampshire and presidential politics in America. An heiress to the Scripps publishing empire, Nackey enjoyed a childhood that was privileged yet unorthodox After a first marriage ended acrimoniously, she married William Loeb, the right-wing publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader, and together they ran the newspaper from their ranch in Nevada. After the twin tragedies of a crippling car accident and the death of her husband from cancer, Nackey took over the newspaper and maintained both its independence and its stridently conservative voice. As Heckman explains, the newspaper’s location in the state hosting the nation’s first presidential primary gave Nackey an outsized political influence, one which she used to promote conservative Republican presidential candidates, most notable Pat Buchanan in his disruptive primary challenge to President George H. W. Bush in 1992. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

“I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America.“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud.“I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that.” – Shirley Chisholm, January 25, 1972, Announcement of Run for the PresidencyWhat is the political and intellectual legacy of Shirley Chisholm? Recent coverage of Chisholm – especially after the announcement of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s choice of Vice-Present – emphasizes ‘trailblazer talk.’ Chisholm’s extraordinary career included being both the first African-American woman elected to the United States congress and the first to run for the U.S. presidency. But emphasizing these “firsts” obscures Shirley Chisholm’s political and intellectual significance. She was a brilliant political strategist who deftly cultivated relationships that allowed her to accomplish her principled and wide-ranging political agenda. Shirley Chisholm said of herself that her achievement was having the "audacity and nerve" to run for the presidency of the United States: "I want history to remember me not as the first black woman to have be elected to the Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the united states, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself." Chisholm spoke and acted forcefully throughout her long career – Her slogan was “unbought and unbossed” – and she defined empowerment in the second half of the 20th century. She is better understood in the context of #BLM and than Kamala Harris.POSTSCRIPT, a new series from New Books in Political Science, invites authors to react to contemporary political developments that engage their scholarship. Dr. Anastasia Curwood and Dr. Zinga A. Fraser – imminent scholars of Shirley Chisholm’s political strategies and ideals – engage in a remarkable dialogue.Shirley Chisholm is often “disremembered” and Drs. Curwood and Fraser emphasize the importance of evaluating her work in the context of the Black Power movement of the 1970s, Black Women’s history, and Black feminism. Chisholm’s feminism was central to both her principles and her practice. She spoke the language of intersectionality – emphasizing the overlapping identities of gender, race, and class – decades before it was a popular term in Critical Race Theory. She had a majority woman staff with a woman as her top legislative aid. Political Science often equates political strategy with masculinity – failing to adequately explore Chisholm’s brilliant strategy of cultivating relationships that allowed her to deftly construct cross-cutting alliances. Her understanding of power was complex. She did not care who got credit and artfully created unlikely coalitions that allowed her to accomplish her political goals – always her priority.Dr. Anastasia Curwood is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and the Director of African-American and Africana Studies in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Zinga A. Fraser is an Assistant Professor in the Africana Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College. In addition to her academic responsibilities she is also the Director of the Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women’s Activism at Brooklyn College. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (July 2020). Email her comments at sliebell@sju.edu or tweet to @SusanLiebell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground (Doppelhouse Press, 2020) is Joanna Stingray’s autobiographical account of her time on the underground music scene in the USSR and Russia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this time Joanna met and worked with some of the most important names in Russian rock like Boris Grebenshchikov of Aquarium and Victor Tsoi of Kino. She also had encounters with both the KGB and FBI who were incredulous that an American girl would come to the USSR just to listen to rock. Listen in as she describes the creativity, inspiration and events that helped create iconic underground Russian rock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Tamar Herzig, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, the Director of Tel Aviv University’s Morris E Curiel Institute for European Studies, and as the Vice Chairperson of the Historical Society of Israel about her new book, A Convert’s Tale: Art, Crime, and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance Italy (Harvard University Press).Dr. Herzig took time out from her extraordinarily busy schedule to discuss her exciting new read, detailing the life of a very interesting, possibly tragic, definitely frustrating Italian Jew turned Christian goldsmith who was, on one hand, connected to the wealthiest and most powerful of families in Northern Italy, and, on the other, an inveterate gambler and general lout.Salomone da Sesso, was so good at his job that he was a verifiable celebrity. He had a very complex relationship with, and occasionally ran afoul of, his fellow Jews, so much so that he is charged with sodomy (amongst other things) and coverts to Christianity.As Ercole de Fidelis (Ercole the Faithful) he enjoyed the favor of the likes of Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia. When he lost their support, however, he fell into poverty. He was forced into exile and died unnoticed. We discuss microhistory, Jewish apostasy, sodomy, and the archival tradition.Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

For many, the history of the Mughal empire looms heavy over contemporary South Asian social imaginaries. The lightning rod figure within modern day myths about the past is the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1618-1707). Some think of him as a violent Muslim fanatic who went out of his way to oppress Hindus and destroy their temples. Others consider his nearly 50-year reign (1658–1707) one of the most consequential for pre-modern South Asian history. Audrey Truschke, Associate Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University–Newark, wanted to probe the pre-modern archive in order to understand the historical life and legacy of Aurangzeb.In Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King (Stanford University Press, 2017) she offers a rich and detailed biographical account of his social, political, and intellectual contexts. The narrative unfolds through both a chronological portrait of the late 17th century Mughal imperial world and a thematic account of Aurangzeb’s administrative governance, the moral underpinnings of his self-perception, and questions of religious diversity and intolerance. In our conversation we discuss the textual sources we can use for South Asian history and the challenges they pose to modern readers, the early Mughal empire, Aurangzeb’s competitive climb to rulership, state security and uprisings, the construction of moral leadership and ethical judgement, managing difference across empire, motivations and circumstances for temple destructions, and Aurangzeb’s hallmark policies, final years, and legacy. We also consider the challenges of doing public scholarship, hate mail, and the benefit of bringing the historical record to bear on modern debates.Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography