New Books in Biography

A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the "poet laureate of his race" hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his famous poem, felt like a "caged bird" that sings.In Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird (Princeton UP, 2022), Jarrett tells the fascinating story of how Dunbar, born during Reconstruction to formerly enslaved parents, excelled against all odds to become an accomplished and versatile artist. A prolific and successful poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and Broadway librettist, he was also a friend of such luminaries as Frederick Douglass and Orville and Wilbur Wright. But while audiences across the United States and Europe flocked to enjoy his literary readings, Dunbar privately bemoaned shouldering the burden of race and catering to minstrel stereotypes to earn fame and money. Inspired by his parents' survival of slavery, but also agitated by a turbulent public marriage, beholden to influential benefactors, and helpless against his widely reported bouts of tuberculosis and alcoholism, he came to regard his racial notoriety as a curse as well as a blessing before dying at the age of only thirty-three.Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and generously illustrated, this biography presents the richest, most detailed, and most nuanced portrait yet of Dunbar and his work, transforming how we understand the astonishing life and times of a central figure in American literary history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Assassinated by Idi Amin and a democratic ally of J.F. Kennedy during the Cold War, Benedicto Kiwanuka was Uganda's most controversial and disruptive politician, and his legacy is still divisive. On the eve of independence, he led the Democratic Party (DP), a national movement of predominantly Catholic activists, to end political inequalities and religious discrimination. Along the way, he became Uganda's first prime minister and first Ugandan chief justice. Earle and Carney show how Kiwanuka and Catholic activists struggled to create an inclusive vision of the state, a vision that resulted in relentless intimidation and extra-judicial killings. Focusing closely on the competing Catholic projects that circulated throughout Uganda, Contesting Catholics: Benedicto Kiwanuka and the Birth of Postcolonial Uganda (Boydell & Brewer, 2021) offers new ways of thinking about the history of democratic thought, while pushing the study of Catholicism in Africa outside of the church and beyond the gaze of missionaries. Drawing on never before seen sources from Kiwanuka's personal papers, the authors upend many of the assumptions that have framed Uganda's political and religious history for over sixty years, as well as repositioning Uganda's politics within the global arena.Allison Isidore is the Assistant Director for the American Catholic Historical Association. Her research interest is focused on the twentieth-century American Civil Rights Movement and the Catholic Church’s response to racism, and the participation of Catholic clergy, nuns, and laypeople in marches, sit-ins, and kneel-ins during the 1950s and 1960s. She tweets from @AllisonIsidore1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In this episode, Tiffany speaks with Professor Cynthia Orozco about her new book, Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights: Alonso S. Perales, published with Arte Público Press in 2020. Alonso S. Perales is a leading Latino lawyer of the twentieth century. Though he has remained overlooked in the historical record until now. In Orozco’s newest publication, she argues that Perales was a significant player in civil rights politics and made a profound impact by founding the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and organized many Latinos to engage in political and educational reform. From primary and rich secondary sources across Texas, Orozco masterfully crafted an intriguing life story of Perales. Chapters include Perales upbringing in south Texas, pursuing an education in Washington, D.C., organizing Latinos in San Antonio, the founding of LULAC, familial influence in his personal and political decisions, the rivalries and solidarities he formed over time, and the events leading up to his death. There are not enough political biographies on Latina/o peoples in the U.S. But Orozco’s work continues to pave a path for opening discussions about the need for biography writing. And more people should take notice.Tiffany González is an Assistant Professor of History at James Madison University. She is a historian of Chicana/Latinx history, American politics, and social movements.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In nearly 50 years of filmmaking, British director Mike Leigh has ranged from comic portrayals of ordinary life amid the social breakdowns of Thatcher’s Britain (Life is Sweet, High Hopes) to gritty renditions of working-class constraint and bourgeois hypocrisy (Meantime, Abigail’s Party, Hard Labour) to period films that reveal the “profoundly trivial” elements of artistic life even two centuries in the past (Topsy-Turvy, Mr. Turner).Leigh contains multitudes. What Roland Barthes says about the novels of Marcel Proust is true of Mike Leigh films as well: you notice different things every time you return to them.In this Columbus, Ohio conversation, Mike and John they discovered their shared love for a hometown boy made good: James Thurber. The conversation ranged from recording working-class voices in the 19th century to Method acting to the pointlessness of fetishizing closeups to the movies John had never seen and should have–and that’s only the first twenty minutes. It cries out for footnotes, but maybe the best result of all this talk would be simply your decision to go off and see a couple (or like John seven) of Mike Leigh films you’d never seen before. You won’t be sorry.Discussed in this episode: Peter Jackson (dir.), They Shall Not Grow Old John Osborne, Look Back in Anger Ingmar Bergman (dir.), The Seventh Seal Harold Pinter, The Caretaker Jean-Luc Godard (dir.), A bout de souffle John Cassavetes (dir.), Shadows and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie Sam Mendes (dir.), 1917 Alexander Sukorov (dir.), Russian Ark James Thurber, The 13 Clocks, “The Unicorn in the Garden” and “The Greatest Man in the World“ Norman Z. McLeod (dir.), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Stanley Davis (dir.), Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint and Exit Ghost Ermanno Olmi (dir.), The Tree of Wooden Clogs George Eliot, Middlemarch Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse“ H.G. Wells, The Time Machine Transcript Available Here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Offering a fresh perspective on the influence of the American southwest—and particularly West Texas—on the New York art world of the 1950s, Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West (Texas A&M UP, 2022) aims to establish the significance of itinerant teaching and western travel as a strategic choice for women artists associated with traditional centers of artistic authority and population in the eastern United States.The book is focused on three artists: Elaine de Kooning, Jeanne Reynal, and Louise Nevelson. In their travels to and work in the High Plains, they were inspired to innovate their abstract styles and introduce new critical dialogues through their work. These women traveled west for the same reason artists often travel to new places: they found paid work, markets, patrons, and friends. This Middle American context offers us a “decentered” modernism—demanding that we look beyond our received truths about Abstract Expressionism.Authors Amy Von Lintel and Bonnie Roos demonstrate that these women’s New York avant-garde, abstract styles were attractive to Panhandle-area ranchers, bankers, and aspiring art students. Perhaps as importantly, they show that these artists’ aesthetics evolved in light of their regional experiences. Offering their work as a supplement and corrective to the frameworks of patriarchal, East Coast ethnocentrism, Von Lintel and Roos make the case for Texas as influential in the national art scene of the latter half of the twentieth century.Kirstin L. Ellsworth has a Ph.D. in the History of Art from Indiana University and is Associate Professor of Art History at California State University Dominguez Hills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Today I talked to about Amma’s Daughters: A Memoir (Athabasca UP, 2018). This book is available open access here. As a precocious young girl, Surekha knew very little about the details of her mother Amma’s unusual past and that of Babu, her mysterious and sometimes absent father. The tense, uncertain family life created by her parents’ distant and fractious marriage and their separate ambitions informs her every action and emotion. Then one evening, in a moment of uncharacteristic transparency and vulnerability, Amma tells Surekha and her older sister Didi of the family tragedy that changed the course of her life. Finally, the daughters begin to understand the source of their mother’s deep commitment to the Indian nationalist movement and her seemingly unending willingness to sacrifice in the name of that pursuit. In this re-memory based on the published and unpublished work of Amma and Surekha, Meenal Shrivastava, Surekha’s daughter, uncovers the history of the female foot soldiers of Gandhi’s national movement in the early twentieth century. As Meenal weaves these written accounts together with archival research and family history, she gives voice and honour to the hundreds of thousands of largely forgotten or unacknowledged women who, threatened with imprisonment for treason and sedition, relentlessly and selflessly gave toward the revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Fans of Sherlock Holmes will delight to investigate Victorian England, a world where crimes large and small abound and where dark corners and well-lit drawing rooms alike hide villainy. In The Game Is Afoot: The Enduring World of Sherlock Holmes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Jeremy Black traces how Holmes and his milieu evolved in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books and how Holmes continues to resonate today. Black explores the context of Doyle's ideas and stories and why they struck such a chord with readers in London, and ultimately the world. He portrays a complex man with eclectic interests, from soccer to spiritualism, from cricket to divorce law reform. Standing twice for Parliament, Doyle was a committed meritocrat whose political experiences and values were expressed through his writings. Reading the Holmes stories through the lens of Doyle's multifaceted career, Black throws fresh light on the values expressed in them and how Holmes would have been perceived at the time. He traces the imperial strand in the Holmes stories and Doyle's treatment of America and Europe. Drawing on a masterful knowledge both of Doyle's era and his writings, this entertaining and wide-ranging book uses the Holmes stories to bring Victorian England to vibrant life, a world where crimes large and small abound and where dark corners and well-lit drawing rooms alike hide villainy. Holmes was a hero and an inspiration for many a character who redefined the idea of detection and the detective, a private man of great public importance. Here is his story.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

Celebrate Winter: An Olympian's Stories of a Life in Nordic Skiing (Morton Trails, 2020) by John Morton is a wonderful look back at experiences and lessons learned from over 55 years of enjoying winter. Morton has attended ten Winter Olympic Games in various capacities: athlete, coach, team leader, chief of course, and fan. He was the Dartmouth College Nordic Ski coach for 11 years and has built recreational trails for the past 30 years with over 250 projects completed.Robert Sherwood is a professor of history at Georgia Military College. He works on Swiss, Swiss-American and Sports History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

When Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818, it was illegal for him to learn the alphabet. Slave masters feared the power of a literate slave, so Douglass vowed to read. He became one of the most famous and accomplished American writers of his day, harnessing the power of the King James Bible, the spoken word, and the new visual language of photographs. Harvard professor John Stauffer discusses Douglass’s life and work. John Stauffer is the Sumner R. and Marshall S. Kates Professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, Picturing Frederick Douglass, and more. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Hans G. Myers' book The Lion of Round Top: The Life and Military Service of Brigadier General Strong Vincent in the American Civil War (Casemate, 2022) presents the story of the true savior of Little Round Top at Gettysburg―a 26-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer, who paid with his life to defend that hill.Citizen-soldier Strong Vincent was many things: Harvard graduate, lawyer, political speaker, descendent of pilgrims and religious refugees, husband, father, brother. But his greatest contribution to history is as the savior of the Federal left on the second day at Gettysburg, when he and his men held Little Round Top against overwhelming Confederate numbers. Forgotten by history in favor of his subordinate, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Vincent has faded into relative obscurity in the decades since his death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography