New Books in Biography

Give 'em Soul, Richard!: Race, Radio, and Rhythm and Blues in Chicago (U Illinois Press, 2010) is the remarkable story of a remarkable man. Richard Stamz (1906-2007) never stopped hustling. From his birth on a Mississippi riverboat to appearances with Ma Rainey, from his connection to Governor Adlai Stevenson to his prison stint as a southside DJ fired over payola, Richard’s is the story of Twentieth-century Chicago. In a unique memoir, Prof. Patrick Roberts of Northern Illinois University repeats, explains, and interprets the life of Richard Stamz.David Hamilton Golland is professor of history and immediate past president of the faculty senate at Governors State University in Chicago's southland. @DHGolland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

When The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. looked over into the promised land and tried to discern how we would get there, he called the poor to lead the way. The Poor People’s Campaign was part of a political strategy for building a movement expansive enough to tackle the enmeshed evils of racism, poverty, and war. In Freedom Church of the Poor: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign (Fortress Academic, 2021), Colleen Wessel-McCoy roots King’s political vision solidly in his theological ethics and traces the spirit of the campaign in the community and religious leaders who are responding to the devastating crises of inequality today.Colleen Wessel-McCoy is an Assistant Professor of Peace & Justice Studies and the Director of the Master of Arts in Peace and Social Transformation program at the Earlham School of Religion.Brady McCartney is an interdisciplinary environmental studies scholar at the University of Florida. Email: Brady.McCartney@UFL.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Inventing Secularism: The Radical Life of George Jacob Holyoake (McFarland, 2021), by Ray Argyle is the first modern biography of the founder of Secularism, describing a transformative figure whose controversial and conflict-filled life helped shape the modern world. Jailed for atheism and disowned by his family, Holyoake came out of an English prison at the age of 25 determined to bring an end to religion’s control over daily life. Ever on the front lines of social reform, Holyoake has been hailed for having won “the freedoms we take for granted today.” With Secularism again under siege, Argyle argues that Holyoake’s vision of a “virtuous society” rings today with renewed clarity.Ray Argyle is the author of eleven books, including five biographies, three political histories, a memoir, and a novel of Victorian Canada. He’s worked as a journalist, a publishing executive, and a communications consultant, with articles appearing in Canada’s major newspapers, as well as magazines such as Reader’s Digest, France Today, and World War II History. Having grown up in British Columbia, he is now based in Canada’s province of Ontario.Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. carrie-lynn.evans@lit.ulaval.ca Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

James Woods is one of the most versatile and captivating actors in American film history. From his breakthrough performance as Greg Powell in The Onion Field (1979), Woods has grabbed the attentions of filmgoers the world over, and remains a firm fixture in our collective cinematic consciousness. In such films as Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986), Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995), and John Carpenter's Vampires (1998), he has portrayed some of the most memorable anti-heroes of our times. Twice nominated for an Oscar (for Salvador and Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi), he is also the winner of a Golden Globe, an Independent Spirit Award, and three Emmys. Performances in such landmark TV productions as My Name is Bill W, Promise, and Citizen Cohn have gone down as some of the greatest in history. An exciting and engaging performer, throughout his fifty year career he has committed himself tirelessly to his craft, remained at the top of his game, and collaborated with some of the world's finest filmmakers and actors.Drawing on new interviews with the man himself, James Woods discusses his whole career, taking the reader on a journey from his beginnings on stage and TV, through the iconic films and TV movies of the 80s and 90s, to his most recent work. In these free-wheeling conversations, James Woods shares his thoughts and memories with the reader, revealing key moments of movie history in the process. In The Films of James Woods (Wisdom Twins Books, 2022), Chris Wade explores every single acting credit, and also speaks to such friends and collaborators as Oliver Stone, Debbie Harry, Dolly Parton, Sharon Stone, Tim Metcalfe, Harold Becker, Jim Belushi, and Joe Wambaugh.Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In the early 1990s, Tommy Morrison, a young roughneck from Jay, Oklahoma, burst onto the boxing scene to become one of the most controversial fighters of his era. Handsome, eloquent, and dynamic, Morrison parlayed destructive knockout power and a homespun personality into celebrity status throughout middle America, where boxing rarely prospered.But it was his starring role in Rocky V alongside Sylvester Stallone that propelled him to stardom–and ultimately led to his tragic downfall. His brush with Hollywood fame triggered a limitless appetite for parties, liquor, and sex. When Morrison was shockingly diagnosed with HIV in 1996, his life imploded, and his subsequent descent into drugs, prison, bigamy, and conspiracy theories made Morrison notorious long after his glory days had ended.In The Duke: The Life and Lies of Tommy Morrison (Hamilcar, 2022), Carlos Acevedo chronicles Morrison’s tumultuous life from his days as a teenaged Toughman contestant, to his victory over George Foreman, to his struggles with HIV and depression, to his death at forty-four, when his delusions finally overtook him.Paul Knepper covered the Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

NB: This is part 2 of a two part interview with Ehud Olert. Part 1 is here.Written almost entirely from inside a prison cell, Searching for Peace: A Memoir of Israel (Brookings Institution, 2022) is the compelling memoir of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.The child of parents who were members of the Irgun, the paramilitary group that fought for the establishment of Israel, Olmert became the youngest member of the Israeli Knesset in 1973, serving in the right-wing Likud party. He rose quickly in the party, serving in national government before being elected mayor of Jerusalem in 1993.As mayor he overcame decades of municipal malaise, inertia, and waves of terror attacks to bring huge improvements in the city's infrastructure, education, and welfare. Although a child of the Israeli right, it was during his mayoralty that he realized the inevitability of compromise and the need to divide the city in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians.Olmert rejoined the national government in 2003 as a top aide to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. After Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke in 2006, Olmert took over as acting prime minister, then led Sharon's new centrist party Kadima to victory in elections. Heading a coalition government, Olmert led Israel through the war with Lebanon in July 2006 and approved the dramatic strike on Syria's nuclear reactor the following year.From late 2006 through 2008, Olmert engaged in some three dozen negotiations with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The talks, Olmert says, came "within a hair's breadth" of reaching a comprehensive peace deal.At the same time, Olmert was fighting allegations that he had illegally accepted large sums of money from a well-connected American businessman. He was acquitted of all but a minor charge against him, but in 2014 he was convicted on charges of taking $15,000 in bribes involving the construction of an industrial park while he served as Minister of Industry and Trade. He served 16 months in prison, using his time to write these memoirs.Searching for Peace offers a riveting political story and an unparalleled window into Israeli history, peacemaking, politics, U.S.-Israel relations, and the future of the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental movement, he is perhaps best known for his famous mantra "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." Steve Jobs's endorsement of these words as his code to live by is fitting; Brand has played many roles, but one of the most important is as a model for how to live.In Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand (Penguin, 2022), the contradictions are striking: A blond-haired WASP with a modest family inheritance, Brand went to Exeter and Stanford and was an army veteran, but in California in the 1960s he became an artist and a photographer in the thick of the LSD revolution. While tripping on acid on the roof of his building, he envisioned how valuable it would be for humans to see a photograph of the planet they shared from space, an image that in the end landed on the cover of his Whole Earth Catalog, the defining publication of the counterculture. He married a Native American woman and was committed to protecting indigenous culture, which connected to a broader environmentalist mission that has been a throughline of his life. At the same time, he has outraged purists because of his pragmatic embrace of useful technologies, including nuclear power, in the fight against climate change. The famous tagline promise of his catalog was "Access to Tools"; with rare exceptions, he rejected politics for a focus on direct power. It was no wonder, then, that he was early to the promise of the computer revolution and helped define it for the wider world.John Markoff was one of a team of New York Times reporters who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. He has covered Silicon Valley since 1977, wrote the first account of the World Wide Web in 1993, and broke the story of Google's self-driving car in 2010.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In Fierce Appetites: Loving, Losing and Living to Excess in my Present and in the Writings of the Past (Sandy Cove, 2022), Dr. Elizabeth Boyle weaves together the past and the present together, creating a beautiful memoir and reflection. To quote the book blurb, “Not only does Elizabeth Boyle write dazzling accounts of ancient stories, familiar and obscure, from Ireland and further afield, but she uses her historical learning to grapple with the raw and urgent questions she faces, questions that have bedeviled people in every age. She writes on grief, addiction, family breakdown, the complexities of motherhood, love and sex, memory, class, education, travel (and staying put) with unflinching honesty, deep compassion, and occasional dark humour.” This book is for academics and non-academics alike and for those interested in musings on the Middle Ages, a multifaceted life, and the events of 2020. Fierce Appetites was published by Sandycove, an imprint of Penguin Books, in 2022.Dr. Elizabeth Boyle is a lecturer in the Department of Early Irish at Maynooth University and former Head of the Department. She is the author of numerous works, including the History and Salvation in Medieval Ireland (Routledge, 2021) which was featured on a previous New Books in Irish Studies podcast.Dr. Danica Ramsey-Brimberg is a multidisciplinary researcher, who recently graduated with her PhD in History from the University of Liverpool and is an editorial assistant for the Church Archaeology journal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement (Between the Lines Books, 2020) details the life of George Manuel, a seminal figure in the emergence and development of the modern Indigenous rights movement in Canada. A three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, he laid the groundwork for what would become the Assembly of First Nations and was the founding president of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples; an advocacy organization that fights for the rights of Indigenous peoples internationally. A critical reference point for three generation of Indigenous activists and intellectuals, Manuel’s commitment, politics, and vision are now again assessable to a new generation of readers courtesy of Doreen and Peter, and Between the Lines Books in Toronto.Zachary Smith (Anishinaabe) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He researches histories of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada and is currently writing a dissertation on the migration of Indigenous peoples from reserves to urban centres in mid-twentieth century Canada. He can be found on Twitter at: @zacharylwsmith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In 1977, Jeanne’s German nationalist ex-husband, Klaus, tells her he’s gotten a new job and wants to take their three-year-old daughter and six-year-old son away for a long weekend to celebrate. Jeanne relents. But Klaus never returns and instead sends Jeanne a letter, delivered by a mutual friend, in which he declares that he has fled to Germany and she will never see him, or her children, again.The next four months are filled with agony, despair, and anger as Jeanne seeks legal support but quickly learns that federal parental kidnapping laws will offer her little help. She reflects on her tumultuous ten-year marriage to Klaus and the unsettling events that followed their divorce. A product of the patriarchal culture of the 1950s, Jeanne’s nice-girl mentality is being tested and reshaped by the feminist movement of the 1970s, and she finds that the kidnapping ultimately becomes a doorway to unexpected strength.You'll Never Find Us: A Memoir (She Writes Press, 2021) is the story of a young mother coming into her own power, regardless of past mistakes, bad judgment, and fears; the story of a woman who realizes she must tap into her newfound resilience and courage to find her stolen children—and steal them back.Jeannette Cockroft is an associate professor of history and political science at Schreiner University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography