New Books in Biography

Though she died in 1847 at a young age, Marie Duplessis inspired one of the greatest operas ever composed. In The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis (Oxford University Press, 2015), René Weis recounts the life of the remarkable woman who overcame poverty and abuse to become the toast of Parisian society. Born Alphonsine Plessis, as a young girl she was sexually assaulted by her own father before she escaped to Paris. Initially finding work as a laundress, Duplessis’s beauty soon won her the attention of wealthy admirers, whose interests gave her access to the social elite. As Weis demonstrates, her success as a courtesan was not just because of her physical attractiveness, but also due to her intelligence, her charm, and her generous spirit, all of which won her a range of friends and lovers that included some of the greatest artistic talents of her time. Among them was the younger Alexandre Dumas, whose novel La Dame aux Camélias was based on Duplessis’s life and which, in turn, inspired the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi to write La traviata, an opera which has enchanted and entertained millions ever since its initial performance in 1853. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Harold Holzer has written a biography of one of America’s greatest public artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Daniel Chester French.  In Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019), Holzer chronicles the career of French, who became best known for his sculpture of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  French was born in 1850 and became one of the most sought after sculptors of portraits and thematic sculptures in America.  Holzer reveals French’s methods of creation and execution of his sculptural commissions, which included many notable works before the famous Lincoln Memorial.  Yet, the Lincoln Memorial and its place in the American imagination are a central feature of this book.  Holzer reveals how the statue had different political meanings to different audiences from the moment of it dedication.Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, is his story.For the first four years of his life, Prahlad didn’t speak. But his silence didn’t stop him from communicating—or communing—with the strange, numinous world he found around him. Ordinary household objects came to life; the spirits of long-dead slave children were his best friends. In his magical interior world, sensory experiences blurred, time disappeared, and memory was fluid. Ever so slowly, he emerged, learning to talk and evolving into an artist and educator. His journey takes readers across the United States during one of its most turbulent moments, and Prahlad experiences it all, from the heights of the Civil Rights Movement to West Coast hippie enclaves to a college town that continues to struggle with racism and its border state legacy.Rooted in black folklore and cultural ambience, and offering new perspectives on autism and more, The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir (University of Alaska Press, 2017) will inspire and delight readers and deepen our understanding of the marginal spaces of human existence.Rachel Hopkin is a UK born, US based folklorist and radio producer and is currently a PhD candidate at the Ohio State University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Audrey Hepburn was justly known for her long acting career, yet her early life is largely unknown. In his book, Robert Matzen describes how she lived during the World War II period in Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Based on many interviews and other primary sources, Robert shows how she was affected by the war. Listen in as we talk about his new book Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II (GoodKnight Books, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Many of you listening to this now probably recall growing up in a household of faith. You may have fond memories of the familiar rituals, the holidays, the shared family values. A weekly service at a church, a temple or a mosque. For many worshippers, religion can provide a sense of comfort in an otherwise uncertain universe. But for some, being in communion with God can mean placing your faith above all else—including your own children.Such was the case for writer Kelly J. Beard, whose family struggled to feed themselves under the fundamentalist purview of the Desert Chapel. In a new book, An Imperfect Rapture, Beard describes growing up in a community that required its members to participate in excessive tithing, among other practices designed to prey on those who had the least to give. As a child of the 1960s with a strong spirit, Beard defied the religious tenants of her upbringing, seeking to learn more about the world beyond the church and discovering her love of music, travel, and writing in the process. Winner of the Zone 3 Press Nonfiction Book Prize, An Imperfect Rapture (2018) tells the incredible story of one woman’s redemptive journey through an oppressive religious childhood, exploring the ways we both can and can’t transcend the circumstances we’re born into.Today on New Books in Literature, join us as we sit down with Kelly J. Beard to learn more about An Imperfect Rapture, available now from Zone 3 Press.Zoë Bossiere is a doctoral student at Ohio University, where she studies creative nonfiction and teaches writing classes. For more NBn interviews, follow her on Twitter @zoebossiere or head to zoebossiere.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Of the millions of books that have been published, few are as renowned or as coveted today by collectors as the famous Bible printed in the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg. In The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey (TarcherPerigee, 2019), Margaret Leslie Davis traces the journey of one copy of this book – known as Number 45 – over the course of two centuries as it changed hands through a succession of owners. As Davis explains, at the start of the 19th-century Gutenberg Bibles were not as highly prized by the growing market of rare book collectors, which allowed Archibald Acheson, the third earl of Gosford, to acquire Number 45 for a relatively small sum in 1836. By the time it was sold nearly a half-century later, however, its status had skyrocketed and with it the price it commanded. After a succession of British owners, Davis describes the book’s acquisition in 1950 by the American heiress Estelle Doheny, which brought Number 45 across the Atlantic Ocean and into the hands of the only woman known to own a copy. Though the book was donated to a Catholic seminary upon her death along with the rest of her collection, its sale in 1987 to a Japanese publisher led to a second transoceanic journey that brought it to Japan. There Number 45 became the first Gutenberg accessible to millions as its pages were subsequently photographed and the images posted on the Internet for anyone online to see. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Mickey and Dick Flacks' new book Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers UP, 2018) is a chronicle of the political and personal lives of progressive activists Richard (Dick) and Miriam (Mickey) Flacks, two of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As active members of the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s, and leaders in today’s social movements, their stories are a first-hand account of progressive American activism from the 1960s to the present.Throughout this memoir, the couple demonstrates that their lifelong commitment to making history through social activism cannot be understood without returning to the deeply personal context of their family history—of growing up “Red Diaper babies” in 1950s New York City, using folk music as self-expression as adolescents in the 1960s, and of making blintzes for their own family through the 1970s and 1980s. As the children of immigrants and first generation Jews, Dick and Mickey crafted their own religious identity as secular Jews, created a critical space for American progressive activism through SDS, and ultimately, found themselves raising an “American” family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Robert McNamara is best remembered today for his momentous term as Secretary of Defense in the 1960s. Often overlooked because of this is his even longer tenure as president of the World Bank, one that reflected both the strengths and flaws of McNamara’s leadership. In Robert McNamara’s Other War: The World Bank and International Development (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), Patrick Sharma situates McNamara’s tenure within the context of the changes taking place both in international development and in the broader global economy. Sharma describes how in the two decades prior to McNamara’s selection to run it the World Bank was a relatively small institution focused mainly on financing infrastructure projects in the developing world. McNamara brought to the agency a determination to do more, dramatically expanding the number of staff employed and redirecting the focus of the organization towards fighting global poverty. While Sharma details the Bank’s success in expanding its access to financial resources and in establishing a key advisory role in development projects undertaken throughout the world, he also notes the more controversial aspects of McNamara’s time at the Bank, most notably the introduction of structural adjustment funding and the problems this would create for many nations after McNamara left the Bank in 1981. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

If you’re a Latter Day Saint, you’ve probably heard of W. W. Phelps, and no doubt, you’ve probably sung some of his hymns. But did you know that he printed the Book of Commandments and other early church works? Or that he was one of the "council of presidents" that guided the Church in Kirtland, Ohio and helped publish the newspaper in Nauvoo, Illinois? Or as political clerk, he assisted Joseph Smith in his roles as mayor of Nauvoo and contender for the U.S. presidency? Phelps also played a key role in the Council of Fifty. He went west with the Saints, helped propose the "State of Deseret," and published prose and poetry in the Deseret News and his Deseret Almanac. Phelps’ strong feelings even put him at odds with Church leaders, and he was excommunicated three times, rejoining each time!Dr. Bruce Van Orden explores Phelps’ fascinating life in the first ever comprehensive biography on him, entitled, We’ll Sing and We’ll Shout: The Life and Times of W. W. Phelps (Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2018). Dr. Orden makes some compelling arguments that have never been fully teased out by scholars. Whether you’re a Latter Day Saint historian, an American religion scholar, or just an interested student. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

By the 1980s, critics and the public alike considered James Baldwin irrelevant. Yet Baldwin remained an important, prolific writer until his death in 1987. Indeed, his work throughout the decade pushed him into new areas, in particular an expanded interest in the social and psychological consequences of popular culture and mass media. In his new book James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era(University of Illinois Press, 2018), Joseph Vogel offers the first in-depth look at Baldwin's dynamic final decade of work. Delving into the writer's creative endeavors, crucial essays and articles, and the impassioned polemic The Evidence of Things Not Seen, Vogel finds Baldwin as prescient and fearless as ever. Baldwin's sustained grappling with "the great transforming energy" of mass culture revealed his gifts for media and cultural criticism. It also brought him into the fray on issues ranging from the Reagan-era culture wars to the New South, from the deterioration of inner cities to the disproportionate incarceration of black youth, and from pop culture gender-bending to the evolving women's and gay rights movements. Astute and compelling, revives and redeems the final act of a great American writer.Adam McNeil is a PhD student in History, African American Public Humanities Initiative and  Colored Conventions Project Fellow at the University of Delaware. He can be reached on Twitter @CulturedModesty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography