New Books in Biography

Though relatively short, the 2022 book The Prophet of Harvard Law: James Bradley Thayer and His Legal Legacy (UP of Kansas, 2022) by Andrew Porwancher, Austin Coffey, Taylor Jipp, and Jake Mazeitis, is jam-packed with information about late 19th and early 20th Century legal history and the professionalization of American legal education.This is a moving tale of a professor whose acolytes included some of the giants of American jurisprudence (e.g., the judges and justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Learned Hand and the legal scholars John Henry Wigmore and Roscoe Pound). Even those not directly taught by Thayer, such as Felix Frankfurter, lauded him as an intellectual influence.You may be thinking, “Why should I take the time to read a book about a long-dead Harvard law professor?” Well, because many of the issues that James Bradley Thayer (1831-1902) and his students grappled with have shaped almost every encounter Americans have with the law and affect our rights from the workplace to the schoolroom to the courtroom.Thayer and Wigmore, for example, did pioneering work on the laws of evidence. Hand did the same on the topic of expert testimony. Holmes and Thayer thrashed out the meaning of the word “presumption” as it was used in trials. And on a grander scale, Holmes, Brandeis, and Hand were trained as thinkers on Constitutional law by Thayer. We could all do with a primer on what “living constitutionalism” is, for example.The book is also valuable for its contributions to the field of the history of education and will benefit those researching the development of professional associations and the transformation of universities like Harvard from small liberal arts institutions into major research universities. This is social history at its best.We read about how Thayer attracted bright young men from across the country who applied what they learned under their beloved mentor once they left Harvard and took up posts elsewhere (as Wigmore did as dean at Northwestern Law School) and/or played key roles in major legal cases in the Progressive Era and beyond. Economics. Labor Law. Free speech. They’re all here.And “beloved” is not too strong a word for the way these titans of American law regarded Thayer. Early career academics in any field who need a role model of a dedicated teacher could do worse than study the life of James Bradley Thayer. He was the subject of admiration and gratitude decades later by influential men who credited him with providing moral support and practical help when they were first starting out and for setting a standard of learning and hard work that they applied in their judicial and academic careers. Thayer was a networker and mentor par excellence.The book is interesting in itself apart from its subject in that it is a joint work by a professor (Andrew Porwancher) and three of his former students. That is a project worthy of note and something Thayer would almost certainly have endorsed, given how closely he worked with his students when they were at Harvard and, in many cases, for years afterward. It is no exaggeration to say that our lives today were affected by the active law-related personal correspondence between Thayer and his men.Let’s hear from Professor Porwancher about what might be called the Thayer Effect and what co-authorship with students entails.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Every Russian knows him purely by his patronym. He was the general who triumphed over Napoleon's Grande Armée during the Patriotic War of 1812, not merely restoring national pride but securing national identity. Many Russians consider Field Marshal Mikhail Illarionovich Golenischev-Kutuzov the greatest figure of the 19th century, ahead of Pushkin, Tchaikovsky, even Tolstoy himself. Immediately after his death in 1813, Kutuzov's remains were hurried into the pantheon of heroes. Statues of him rose up across the Russian empire and later the Soviet Union. Over the course of decades and centuries he hardened into legend.As award-winning author Alexander Mikaberidze shows in Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace (Oxford UP, 2022), Kutuzov's story is far more compelling and complex than the myths that have encased him. An unabashed imperialist who rose in the ranks through his victories over the Turks and the Poles, Kutuzov was also a realist and a skeptic about military power. When the Russians and their allies were routed by the French at Austerlitz he was openly appalled by the incompetence of leadership and the sheer waste of life. Over his long career--marked equally by victory and defeat, embrace and ostracism--he grew to despise those whose concept of war had devolved to mindless attack.Here, at last, is Kutuzov as he really was--a master and survivor of intrigue, moving in and out of royal favor, committed to the welfare of those under his command, and an innovative strategist. When, reluctantly and at the 11th hour, Czar Alexander I called upon him to lead the fight against Napoleon's invading army, Kutuzov accomplished what needed to be done not by a heroic charge but by a strategic retreat. Across the generations, portraits of Kutuzov have ranged from hagiography to dismissal, with Tolstoy's portrait of him in War and Peace perhaps the most indelible of all. This immersive biography returns a touchstone figure in Russian history to human scale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In this unforgetable memoir, Emerald Garner recounts her father's cruel and unjust murder, the immense pain that followed, the pressures of an exploitative media, and her difficult yet determined journey as an activist against police violence.She begins with the morning of July 17, 2014--a rare day off from work, one she had hoped to enjoy with rest and family, that quickly turned her world inside out. What follows is a personal account of the suffering Emerald and her family endured: unsympathetic camera lenses, the stares and whispers of strangers, and the inability to mourn in private.In addition to these vulnerable, personal essays, Finding My Voice (Haymarket Books, 2022) includes conversations in which Emerald found inspiration, empathy, and community: politicians, athletes, and activists like Brian Benjamin and Etan Thomas; others who had survived similarly unfathomable grief like Lora Dene King, Angelique Kearse, and Pamela Brooks; and Emerald's own family, Mrs. Esaw Garner and Eric Garner Jr. The book ends with a powerful call-to-action by author and daughter of Malcolm X, Ilyasah Shabazz. With growing calls for radical transformation and accountability, Emerald Garner's memoir is a story of family and community, and the strength it takes to survive, to stand, to speak. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8, 2022. She reigned for 70 years, longer than any other British sovereign. In this interview, Charles Coutinho discusses her life and legacy with historian Jeremy Black.Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The first biography of trailblazing legislator Patsy Takemoto Mink, best known as the legislative champion of Title IX."Every girl in Little League, every woman playing college sports, and every parent-including Michelle and myself-who watches their daughter on a field or in the classroom is forever grateful to the late Patsy Takemoto Mink."-President Barack Obama, on posthumously awarding Mink the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014Patsy Takemoto Mink was the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected to Congress. Fierce and Fearless is the first biography of this remarkable woman, who first won election to Congress in 1964 and went on to serve in the House for twenty-four years, her final term ending with her death in 2002. Mink was an advocate for girls and women, best known for her work shepherding and defending Title IX, the legislation that changed the face of education in America, making it possible for girls and women to participate in school sports, and in education more broadly, at the same level as boys and men.Mink's life is wonderfully chronicled by eminent historian Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink, Patsy's daughter, a noted political science scholar and first-hand witness to the many political struggles that her mother had to overcome. Featuring family anecdotes, vignettes, and photographs, Fierce and Fearless offers new insight into who Mink was, and the progressive principles that fueled her mission. Wu and Mink provide readers with an up-close understanding of her life as a third-generation Japanese American from Hawaii-from her childhood on Maui to her decades-long career in the House, working with noted legislators like Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, and Nancy Pelosi. They follow the evolution of her politics, including her advocacy for race, gender, and class equality and her work to promote peace and environmental justice.Fierce and Fearless provides vivid details of how Patsy Takemoto Mink changed the future of American politics. Celebrating the life and legacy of a woman, activist, and politician ahead of her time, this book illuminates the life of a trailblazing icon who made history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) is one of the most acclaimed authors of the twentieth century. He is also one of the most controversial. Before settling in England, Naipaul grew up in Trinidad in an Indian immigrant community, and his depiction of colonized peoples has often been harshly judged by critics as unsympathetic, misguided, racist, and sexist. Yet other readers praise his work as containing uncommonly perceptive historical and psychological insight.In V. S. Naipaul's Journeys: From Periphery to Center (Columbia UP, 2020), Sanjay Krishnan offers new perspectives on the distinctiveness and power of Naipaul’s writing, as well as his shortcomings, trajectory, and complicated legacy. While recognizing the flaws and prejudices that shaped and limited Naipaul’s life and art, this book challenges the binaries that have dominated discussions of his writing. Krishnan reads Naipaul as self-subverting and self-critical, engaged in describing his own implication in what he saw as the malaise of the postcolonial world. Krishnan brings together close readings of major novels with considerations of Naipaul’s work as a united project, as well as nuanced assessments of Naipaul’s political commentary on ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Krishnan provides a Naipaul for contemporary times, illuminating how his life and work shed light on debates regarding migration, diversity, sectarianism, displacement, and other global challenges.Professor Sanjay Krishnan is teaches English at Boston University.Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Born to a powerful family and educated at the prominent Mindröling Monastery, the Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher Mingyur Peldrön (1699–1769) leveraged her privileged status and overcame significant adversity, including exile during a civil war, to play a central role in the reconstruction of her religious community. In The Tibetan Nun Mingyur Peldrön: A Woman of Power and Privilege (U Washington Press, 2022), Alison Melnick Dyer employs literary and historical analysis, centered on a biography written by the nun's disciple Gyurmé Ösel, to consider how privilege influences individual authority, how authoritative Buddhist women have negotiated their position in gendered contexts, and how the lives of historical Buddhist women are (and are not) memorialized by their communities. Mingyur Peldrön's story challenges the dominant paradigms of women in religious life and adds nuance to our ideas about the history of gendered engagement in religious institutions. Her example serves as a means for better understanding of how gender can be both masked and asserted in the search for authority—operations that have wider implications for religious and political developments in eighteenth-century Tibet. In its engagement with Tibetan history, this study also illuminates the relationships between the Geluk and Nyingma schools of Tibetan Buddhism from the eighteenth century, to the nonsectarian developments of the nineteenth century.The Tibetan Nun Mingyur Peldrön is available for free open-access download here. Bruno M. Shirley is a PhD candidate at Cornell University, working on Buddhism, politics, and gender in medieval Sri Lankan texts and landscapes. He is on Twitter at @brunomshirley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Captain Richard E. Evans was an American B-17 "Flying Fortress" pilot. He flew 55 combat missions and during that time was also chosen to fly British Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery to wherever the General needed to be throughout North Africa and Italy. Evans and "Monty" traveled together during a particularly dangerous phase of the war. The Allied forces were just beginning to turn back the brutal Axis armies that had invaded North Africa and were closing in on Egypt in an effort to gain control of the strategically vital Suez Canal. Over the deserts of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, a rocky but honest and respectful friendship formed between the young American pilot, Captain Evans, and his British commander, Field Marshall Montgomery. This is also a tale of a young boy from Knoxville, Tennessee, who spread his wings, quite literally, to fly throughout the world in the service of the US Army Air Corps during World War II. 'Richard Eager': A Pilot's Story from Tennessee Eagle Scout to General Montgomery's 'Flying Fortress' (Kieran Publishing, 2021) is the story of a close family told lovingly by one of its five sons, four of whom would live to serve in and survive the Second World War. It is also a glimpse of Middle American lives through small windows of time, reflecting the nineteen twenties, thirties, and forties. This is a first-hand account of a young man coming of age just as the Second World War erupted.o provide greater context and color to Colonel Evans's memoir, daughter Evans Kinnear included much of his research and additional archival materials, including a chronology of his life's milestones and Second World War details; his own glossary of war terms; an appendix of original family letters, V-Mail, commendations, and interesting documents, all primary sources that shed light on his personal and professional relationships; photos of Evans from Tennessee boyhood through military service; maps illustrating the lands and seas over which he flew. An epilogue detailing his work after the Second World War is also included. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time.The Macedonian king Alexander III is best remembered today for his many martial accomplishments and the empire he built from them. Yet as Fred S. Naiden details in Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great (Oxford University Press, 2018), this ignores what for his subjects were his even more important responsibilities as a religious figure. Alexander’s religious practices were a vital part of his legitimacy as a ruler of his people, and were interwoven into his daily activities. As his armies advanced into southwestern Asia, Alexander insinuated himself into the religions of the lands he conquered, which aided the acceptance of his rule. This became increasingly difficult the further east he marched, however, as the religious systems he encountered there often contained obligations often at variance from the traditions which he had accepted. As Naiden describes, Alexander’s increasing disregard for the religions he encountered contributed to the difficulties he faced with his later campaigns, fueling both local resistance and rebellions by his own men. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

George Washington is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitution, and forging a new nation, but few know the story of his involvement in the establishment of a capital city and how it nearly tore the United States apart. In George Washington's Final Battle: The Epic Struggle to Build a Capital City and a Nation (Georgetown UP, 2021), Dr. Robert P. Watson brings this tale to life, telling how the country's first president tirelessly advocated for a capital on the shores of the Potomac. Washington envisioned and had a direct role in planning many aspects of the city that would house the young republic. In doing so, he created a landmark that gave the fledgling democracy credibility, united a fractious country, and created a sense of American identity. Although Washington died just months before the federal government's official relocation, his vision and influence live on in the city that bears his name. This little-known story of founding intrigue throws George Washington’s political acumen into sharp relief and provides a historical lesson in leadership and consensus-building that remains relevant today. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the founding period, the American presidency, and the history of Washington, DC.Daniel P. Stone holds a PhD in American history from Manchester Metropolitan University (United Kingdom) and is the author of William Bickerton: Forgotten Latter Day Prophet (Signature Books, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography