New Books in Biography

Paul J. Croce, professor of history at Stetson University. Young William James Thinking (John Hopkins University Press, 2018) offers a developmental biography of the famous pragmatist. James’s mature thinking as a radical empiricist was formed through his experiences and intellectual curiosity as a young man. Looking for a suitable vocation that matched his intellectual interest, he explored life through art, science, travel, wide philosophical reading and his inner world. Thematically arranged the book looks into young James’s exploration of the tension between religion and science, his speculation over the benefits and drawback of modern medicine and sectarian medicine and the wisdom of the ancient Greeks approach to life. Through this exploration of the material and immaterial nature of reality, he navigated ill health, bouts of depression, familial tensions, unsatisfying romantic life and uncertainty. His ambivalent disposition caused him to put off making early commitments as he kept seeking for the meaning of life. Going from personal crisis to crisis, he developed a pluralist approach to knowledge, a philosophy of the will and found solace in the hope that life was worth a commitment even if one did not know the outcome. Young William James Thinking is a book that speaks to today’s restlessness and provides comfort that life may be worth living after all.This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with The Society for U.S. Intellectual History.Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her current research is on the intellectual history of feminism seen through the emblematic life and work of Simone de Beauvoir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In 1956 Albert Gore, Sr. received national attention as one of only three senators from the states of the former Confederacy who refused to sign the infamous “Southern Manifesto” opposing the racial integration of public spaces. Lauded as Gore was by many for his decision, as Anthony J. Badger shows in his Albert Gore, Sr.: A Political Life (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) it was a product of a nuanced approach on the issue of civil rights in a changing time. The son of a farmer, Gore demonstrated his father’s strenuous work ethic in his efforts to earn a college education. After a rapid rise in state politics, Gore won election to the House of Representatives in 1938, where he served for fourteen years before defeating a longtime incumbent senator in a Democratic primary. As Badger demonstrates, while Gore’s “TVA liberalism” led him to play a key role in passing some of the major infrastructure legislation in the 1950s, the issues of civil rights and the Vietnam War ultimately led Gore to adopt positions that alienated his constituents. Though defeated in his bid for reelection in 1970, though in retirement this was tempered by his son Al’s success in winning election, first to Congress and then to the vice presidency, in the 1990s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Since its inception in 2017, the viral #MeToo movement has called more cultural attention to abusive behavior, creating a much-needed public space for women to speak up about the violence they have endured at the hands of abusers, and for women to speak more openly about their own ambitions, dreams, and desires. For the first time in history, there is a platform for women to speak, and—most importantly—to be heard. In 2019, we can add another voice to this ongoing conversation: Reema Zaman’s radical assertion that “[t]o speak is a revolution.”Reema Zaman’s bold debut book, I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir (Amberjack, 2019) details what happens when women are silenced by the patriarchy—and what it means to find the power inherent in one’s own voice. As a Bengali woman who immigrated to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a stage actress, Zaman portrays herself as both driven and fearless, despite the many hardships she endures as a young woman in the city. From navigating toxic relationships with men in the industry to finding the courage to leave an abusive marriage, Zaman touches on both the struggles and beauty of one woman’s journey towards speaking her truth.Today on New Books in Literature, join us as we sit down with Reema Zaman to learn more about her debut, I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir, available now from Amberjack Publishing.Zoë Bossiere is a doctoral student at Ohio University, where she studies nonfiction and teaches creative writing classes. She is also the managing editor of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. For more NBn interviews, follow her on Twitter @zoebossiere or visit her online at zoebossiere.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Too often keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping them as they approach death. Dr. Pauline Chen shares her experiences as a medical student and transplant surgeon and how they’ve shaped the way she practices medicine.Chen is the author of Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality (Vintage, 2008) and the New York Times column “Doctor and Patient.” Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. Her work has been nominated for a National Magazine Award.Michael F. Robinson is professor of history at Hillyer College, University of Hartford. He's the author of The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and The Lost White Tribe: Scientists, Explorers, and the Theory that Changed a Continent (Oxford University Press, 2016). He's also the host of the podcast Time to Eat the Dogs, a weekly podcast about science, history, and exploration.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Think running an insurance company or a bank is hard?  Try doing it as an African-American woman in the Jim Crow South.  Shennette Garrett-Scott's new book, Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal (Columbia University Press, 2019) tells the fascinating story of just such an endeavor, first the Independent Order of St. Luke, and then the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, founded in Richmond in 1903.  Along the way, she tells the tale of force-of-nature strong women, particularly Maggie Lena Walker, who wouldn't take no for an answer as she built up a culture of business and entrepreneurship against incredibly long odds and never-ending efforts by regulators and competitors to thwart her efforts. It makes for gripping reading.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Though not as well known today as her husband George or her son William Randolph, Phoebe Apperson Hearst was a woman who rose beyond the gender norms of her age to exert considerable influence both within her community and nationally. In Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life of Power and Politics (Bison Books, 2018) (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), Alexandra M. Nickliss shows how Hearst came to exercise such power and the ways she uses it to advance the causes in which she believed. As Nickliss explains, Phoebe Apperson’s parents sought an education for their daughter in accordance with the reform principles of their faith. Marriage and her relocation to California did little to change Phoebe Hearst’s views, and with her husband often absent on business she took advantage of the couple’s wealth to travel and engage in voluntary associations. With George Hearst’s death Phoebe Hearst came into her own, soon moving beyond her involvement in the kindergarten movement to help develop the University of California and from there to assume prominent roles in both the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and the suffrage movement of the early 20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Sutra is the Sanskrit name for a short spiritual teaching, and it comes from the same root as the English word suture, or stitch. This story of motherhood as a path to awakening is, says yoga and meditation teacher Anne Cushman, “an homage to the long threads that run through all human lives, stitching up what’s shredded in our hearts.”In this interview, Anne Cushman, a longtime yoga and dharma teacher, talks about her new book The Mama Sutra: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Path of Motherhood(Shambala, 2019).  This thoughtful book spans an eighteen-year journey through motherhood as a spiritual practice, chronicling Cushman’s first pregnancy, her daughter's tragic stillbirth, the joyful birth of her son, the “home retreat” of early motherhood, the challenges of parenthood, the diagnosis and gifts of her son’s developmental differences, the meltdown of her nuclear family and its reconfiguration into a new and joyful form, and more. This is a powerful story of the rawness and beauty of life.Anne Cushman is a creative writer and mindfulness meditation teacher whose work focuses on the intersection between spiritual practice and the wild, messy, heartbreaking, and hilarious details of ordinary life.  She is the author of Enlightenment for Idiots, From Here to Nirvana, and the meditative yoga program Moving Into Meditation. 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, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Sharon Kirsch (she/hers)--Associate Prof. of English and rhetorical studies in the New College at Arizona State University--on the scintillating and beautifully written Gertrude Stein and the Reinvention of Rhetoric from University of Alabama Press (2014).This book is truly a must-read for lovers of language; through Stein, Kirsch redelivers the “rules” of language and persuasion (organization, clarity, grammar) as heuristics or starting points for thinking about what language might be made to do. Stein re-emerges as a major twentieth-century rhetorician, not a spin doctor, as the word might suggest to some, but as someone who follows as sure as she remakes the rules of writing, expression, and language.Readers are also encouraged to learn more about the important work that Kirsch is doing with Save Our Schools Arizona. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

It’s quite common these days to hear young people being urged to collect and record the stories of their grandparents or parents in order to learn and preserve their family’s history. For a few fortunate folks, like Robbin Légère Henderson, such a record already exists. Henderson’s maternal grandmother, Matilda Rabinowitz, penned her own memoir before her passing in 1963 so that her grandchildren would know her history. With candor and wit, Rabinowitz, born in 1887 in Ukraine, described her experiences as an immigrant, factory worker, single mother by choice, and union organizer. In Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman: A Memoir from the Early Twentieth Century (ILR Press 2017), Henderson has expanded her grandmother’s memoir with her own commentary and original black-and-white scratchboard drawings that illustrate Rabinowitz’s early life, journey to America, political awakening, work as an IWW organizer, turbulent romance to Henderson’s grandfather, and her struggle to support herself and her child. To hear more about this unique collaboration across generations, listen to my interview with artist, curator, and author Robbin Légère Henderson. Interested listeners can also learn more about Rabinowitz through a new exhibit at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, where Rabinowitz once organized a Studebaker strike.Carrie Lane is a Professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton and author of A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-Collar Unemployment (Cornell University Press, 2011). Her research concerns the changing nature of work in the contemporary U.S. She is currently writing a book on the professional organizing industry. To contact her or to suggest a recent title, email clane@fullerton.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In 1919 a man named Ohlohr Maigi died of tuberculosis in London, in deep poverty. He had arrived over a decade before in the imperial capital bearing different name, seeking education, fame and fortune. Some of these he had found, but ultimately he had found much more adversity than success. Ultimately, as Dannel Jones writes, he had spiraled downward on the social ladder, from barrister to worker in a munitions factory, from a satirist of the social order to a tuberculosis patient in a state hospital.This is the story she tells in An African in Imperial London: The Indomitable Life of A.B.C. Merriman-Labor (Hurst, 2018). It is a meticulously researched book about a man whose life, while it might be obscure, opens upon an interesting view. And like all good historical biography, it provokes us to think differently about the past and about ourselves–about our choices, our failures, our successes, and our luck.Al Zambone is a historian and the host of the podcast Historically Thinking. You can subscribe to Historically Thinking on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography