Firsthand: How I Solved a Literary Mystery and Learned to Play Kickass Tennis While Coming to Grips with the Disorder of Things (U Michigan Press, 2024) is an exploration—both suspenseful and comic—of the creative process in research writing. The book takes the reader through the ins and outs of a specific research journey, from combing through libraries and archives to the intellectual challenges involved with processing information that contradicts established ideas. More fundamentally, it addresses the somewhat mysterious portion of the intellectual process: the creative and serendipitous aspects involved in arriving at a fruitful research question in the first place.Keith Gandal is Professor of English with a Joint Appointment in American Studies and Creative Writing at The City College of New York. Keith combines this scholarly detective story with a comic personal narrative about how a midlife crisis accidentally sent him on a journey to write a research monograph that many in his profession—including at times himself—were dubious about. While researching how Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner faced their forgotten crises of masculinity, Gandal discovers that his own crisis is instrumental to his creative process. Incorporating stories from Gandal’s comic romp through the hyper-competitive world of middle-aged men’s tennis, adopting pitbulls, and discussing Michel Foucault, Firsthand gives readers an inside look at how to acquire accurate knowledge—about the world, about history, and about oneself.Order Firsthand at the University of Michigan Press website using the discount code HOLIDAY24 to get 50% off for the rest of 2024.This interview was conducted by Shreya Urvashi, a doctoral researcher of sociology and education based in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

A Necessary Distance: Confessions of a Screenwriter’s Daughter (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) by critically acclaimed author Julie Salverson braids together personal memoir, Canadian cultural history, international political history, to form an inter-generational story that is both personal and public.A Necessary Distance is a detective story, an excavation of clues and traces, an inter-generational encounter. Starting with her father’s notebooks of an epic around-the world journey, Salverson also uncovers other information that hints at the personal, cultural and social forces that shaped her father’s journey—his childhood among poor Icelandic immigrants and the force that was his Governor General's Award-winning mother, the reality of making a living in early Canadian radio and television. As Salverson writes: “The notebooks are on delicate paper. The daughter deciphers the scratches of pencil marks. Already they tell her this is not the man she thought she knew. She hopes they will lead her to her father.”Thoughtful in its reflections on cultural politics and family entanglements, acutely personal and unflinching in its questioning of assumptions and easy answers, A Necessary Distance is a captivating witness to the risks, and rewards, of opening the closets of family and national histories.Julie Salverson is a nonfiction writer, playwright, editor, scholar and theatre animator. She is a fourth-generation Icelandic Canadian writer: her father, George, wrote early CBC radio and television drama and her grandmother Laura won two Governor General’s Awards (1937, 1939). Julie’s theatre, opera, books and essays embrace the relationship of imagination and foolish witness to risky stories and trauma. She works on atomic culture, community-engaged theatre and the place of the foolish witness in social, political and interpersonal generative relationships. Salverson offers resiliency and peer-support workshops to communities dealing with trauma and has many years of experience teaching and running workshops. Recent publications include When Words Sing: Seven Canadian Libretti (Playwrights Canada Press) and Lines of Flight: An Atomic Memoir (Wolsak & Wynn). Plays include Thumbelina and The Haunting of Sophie Scholl. Julie is Professor Emerita of Drama at Queen’s University’s DAN School of Drama and Music.Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Johanna Drucker’s Iliazd: A Meta-Biography of a Modernist (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) uncovers the enigmatic life and work of Ilia Zdanevich, better known as Iliazd, a revolutionary figure in modernist art and literature.The book explores Iliazd’s journey from his beginnings in the Russian Futurist avant-garde to his later experiments with artist books in Paris, where he collaborated with icons like Picasso and Matisse. Drucker’s work delves into Iliazd’s radical creativity, analyzing how his art blurred the boundaries between life and work. By shedding light on his largely overlooked contributions, the book reveals how Iliazd’s innovations helped redefine modernism for future generations.We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to make the academic publishing industry grow and to promote groundbreaking academic publications to scholars, students, and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep, and breathe publishing! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Seth Rogovoy's latest book for Oxford University Press is called Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2024). Often, biographies of musicians put the story of the subject’s life front and center, letting the music recede into the background. For a musician like George Harrison, this would be a mistake. George, the lead guitarist of the Beatles, sometimes referred to as the “quiet one,” was one of his generation’s greatest guitarists. He quietly steered the Fab Four in directions that made them legendary, through his innovative use of sitar or his thoughtful, self-reflective song-writing that contrasted with John’s ironic poetics and Paul’s cheery symphonies. A late-bloomer of sorts, George truly came into his own as a solo artist pursuing a rock and roll that centered spirituality and existential yearning.For a chapter-by-chapter playlist, check out Seth's guided listen.Subscribe to Seth's Substack: Everything is Broken.Seth Rogovoy is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet and The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music and contributing editor for The Forward.Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

During her keynote speech at the 1976 Democratic Party convention, Barbara Jordan of Texas stood before a rapt audience and reflected on where Americans stood in that bicentennial year. "Are we to be one people bound together by a common spirit, sharing in a common endeavor, or will we become a divided nation? For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future." The civil rights movement had changed American politics by opening up elected office to a new generation of Black leaders, including Jordan, the first Black woman from the South to serve in Congress. Though her life in elected politics lasted only twelve years, in that short time, Jordan changed the nation by showing that Black women could lead their party and legislate on behalf of what she called "the common good."In She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024), biographer Mary Ellen Curtin offers a new portrait of Jordan and her journey from segregated Houston, Texas, to Washington, DC, where she made her mark during the Watergate crisis by eloquently calling for the impeachment of President Nixon. Recognized as one of the greatest orators of modern America, Jordan inspired millions, and Black women became her most ardent supporters. Many assumed Jordan would rise higher and become a US senator, Speaker of the House, or a Supreme Court justice. But illness and disability, along with the obstacles she faced as a Black woman, led to Jordan's untimely retirement from elected office--though not from public life. Until her death at the age of fifty-nine, Jordan remained engaged with the cause of justice and creating common ground, proving that Black women could lead the country through challenging times.No change in the law alone could guarantee the election of Black leaders. It took courage and ambition for Barbara Jordan to break into politics. This important new biography explores the personal and the political dimensions of Jordan's life, showing how she navigated the extraordinary pressures of office while seeking to use persuasion, governance, and popular politics as instruments of social change and betterment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

An understanding of Dante the theologian as distinct from Dante the poet has been neglected in an appreciation of Dante's work as a whole. That is the starting-point of Dante the Theologian (Cambridge UP, 2022). In giving theology fresh centrality, the author argues that theologians themselves should find, when they turn to Dante Alighieri, a compelling resource: whether they do so as historians of fourteenth-century Christian thought, or as interpreters of the religious issues of our own times. Expertly guiding his readers through the structure and content of the Commedia, Denys Turner reveals – in pacy and muscular prose – how Dante's aim for his masterpiece is to effect what it signifies. It is this quasi-sacramental character that renders it above all a theological treatise: whose meaning is intelligible only through poetry. Turner's Dante 'knows that both poetry and theology are necessary to the essential task and that each without the other is deficient.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

How do we become the persons we are? Cornelia Maude Spelman's Solace (Jackleg Press, 2024) seeks to answer that question. A portrait of the emotional legacies and psychological landscapes that shaped the author's life, Solace unfurls in a series of vignettes drawn from diaries and personal stories about her relationship to others as daughter, mother, friend, wife, therapist, and grandmother. These are stories of compassion and attention bringing about healing from grief and brokenness and the necessity of our deep and caring connection to others: the comfort offered to us and the comfort we offer to others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In The Image Maker: Shattering Rock and Roll's Glass Ceiling (2023), Connie DeNave shares her experiences in the public relations world during the British Invasion and the beginning of rock-n-roll marketing. Born in Brooklyn, New York, DeNave graduated from Hunter College and found herself with no job skills. Throughout the mid-1950s to the 1980s, DeNave was rock and roll's first female press agent powerhouse. She revolutionized the public relations business at a time when it was an old boys' club. And she did this all with her—previously unheard of—all female staff. She crashed through the glass ceiling of the music business and represented some of the most influential and popular artists of their time. Her portfolio includes The Rolling Stones, Faces, Herman's Hermits, Dick Clark, Chubby Checker, Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin, and Dusty Springfield. DeNave's memoir examines what it meant to be a women in business at a time when women couldn't even get a credit card. She shares her experiences in the entertainment business and the importance of press agents and public relations in creating a star.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

General He Yingqin: The Rise and Fall of Nationalist China (Cambridge UP, 2016) is a revisionist study of the career of General He Yingqin, one of the most prominent military officers in China's Nationalist period (1928-49) and one of the most misunderstood figures in twentieth-century China. Western scholars have dismissed He Yingqin as corrupt and incompetent, yet the Chinese archives reveal that he demonstrated considerable success as a combat commander and military administrator during civil conflicts and the Sino-Japanese War. His work in the Chinese Nationalist military served as the foundation of a close personal and professional relationship with Chiang Kai-shek, with whom he worked closely for more than two decades. Against the backdrop of the Nationalist revolution of the 1920s through the 1940s, Peter Worthing analyzes He Yingqin's rise to power alongside Chiang Kai-shek, his work in building the Nationalist military, and his fundamental role in carrying out policies designed to overcome the regime's greatest obstacles during this turbulent period of Chinese history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became First Lady of the United States over sixty years ago, she stepped into the public spotlight. Although Jackie is perhaps best known for her two highly-publicized marriages, her legacy has endured beyond twentieth-century pop culture and she remains an object of public fascination today.Drawing on a range of sources– from articles penned for the women’s pages of local newspapers, to esteemed national periodicals, to fan magazines and film– Our Jackie: Public Claims on a Private Life (NYU Press, 2024) evaluates how media coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis changed over the course of her very public life. Jackie’s interactions with and framing by the American media reflect the changing attitudes toward American womanhood. Over the course of four decades, Jackie was alternatively praised for her service to others, and pilloried for her perceived self-interest. In Our Jackie, Karen M. Dunak argues that whether she was portrayed as a campaign wife, a loyal widow, a selfish jetsetter, or a mature career woman, the history of Jackie’s highly publicized life demonstrates the ways in which news, entertainment, politics, and celebrity evolved and intertwined over the second half of the twentieth century.Examining the intimate chronicles of this famous First Lady’s life, Our Jackie suggests that media coverage of this enigmatic public figure revealed as much about the prevailing views of women in America– how they should behave and whom they should serve– as it did about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as an individual.Jane Scimeca is Professor of History at Brookdale Community College. @JaneScimeca1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography