New Books in Biography

Poet and jazz band musician Sun Ra, born in 1914, is one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his band “Arkestra” appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, this keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology and that the planet Saturn was his true home. In his book, Sun Ra’s Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Dr. William Sites contextualizes this visionary musician in his home on earth—specifically in Chicago’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 Sun Ra lived and relaunched his career.The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then still known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—all this to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the possibilities of urban life in new ways.Dr. William Sites is Associate Professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. His fields of interest include urban and community studies, political economy, social movements, immigration, race, culture, social theory, and historical methods.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

From his early horror movies, including Scanners, Videodrome, Rabid, and The Fly—with their exploding heads, mutating sex organs, rampaging parasites, and scientists turning into insects—to his inventive adaptations of books by William Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Don DeLillo (Cosmopolis), and Bruce Wagner (Maps to the Stars), Canadian director David Cronenberg (b. 1943) has consistently dramatized the struggle between the aspirations of the mind and the messy realities of the flesh. “I think of human beings as a strange mixture of the physical and the non-physical, and both of these things have their say at every moment we’re alive,” says Cronenberg. “My films are some kind of strange metaphysical passion play.” Moving deftly between genre and arthouse filmmaking and between original screenplays and literary adaptations, Cronenberg’s work is thematically consistent and marked by a rigorous intelligence, a keen sense of humor, and a fearless engagement with the nature of human existence. He has been exploring the most primal themes since the beginning of his career and continues to probe them with growing maturity and depth.Cronenberg’s work has drawn the interest of some of the most intelligent contemporary film critics, and the fifteen interviews in this volume feature remarkably in-depth and insightful conversations with such acclaimed writers as Amy Taubin, Gary Indiana, David Breskin, Dennis Lim, Richard Porton, Gavin Smith, and more. The pieces in David Schwartz, David Cronenberg: Interviews (UP of Mississippi, 2021) reveal Cronenberg to be one of the most articulate and deeply philosophical directors now working, and they comprise an essential companion to an endlessly provocative and thoughtful body of work.Nathan Abrams is a professor of film at Bangor University in Wales. His most recent work is on film director Stanley Kubrick. To discuss and propose a book for interview you can reach him at n.abrams@bangor.ac.uk. Twitter: @ndabrams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Mary Norris, The New Yorker's Comma Queen and best-selling author of Between You & Me, has had a lifelong love affair with words. In Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen (Norton, 2020), she delivers a delightful paean to the art of self-expression through accounts of her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, and reveals the surprising ways in which Greek helped form English. Greek to Me is filled with Norris's memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine--and more than a few Greek men.William Domnarski is a longtime lawyer who before and during has been a literary guy, with a Ph.D. in English. He's written five books on judges, lawyers, and courts, two with Oxford, one with Illinois, one with Michigan, and one with the American Bar Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

How did Steve Bannon come to believe the strange things he believes?The influential, former Trump aid, began as a Democrat-supporting Naval officer with an interest in Buddhism and transcendental meditation. He is now an anti-globalist, sympathizer of “Traditionalists” who look forward to a cataclysmic moment which will lead to a golden age of elitist, hierarchical, spiritual rule promoting long-lost essential truths. He uses the pseudonym "Alec Guinness." And Bannon believes in something akin to “the force” in Star Wars. How did Bannon undergo this transformation? In this episode, Owen Bennett-Jones sits down with Benjamin Teitelbaum, author of War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers (Dey Street Books, 2020) to find out how Bannon became Bannon. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In Irma's Passport: One Woman, Two World Wars, and a Legacy of Courage (She Writes Press, 2021), Catherine Ehrlich explores her Austrian grandparents’ influential lives at the crossroads of German and Jewish national movements. Weaving her grandmother Irma’s spellbinding memoirs into her narrative, she profiles a charismatic woman who confronts history with courage and rebuilds lives—for herself and Europe’s dispossessed.Starting out in Bohemia’s picturesque countryside, Irma studies languages in Prague alongside Kafka and Einstein—and so joins Europe’s intelligentsia. Tension builds as World War I destroys that world, and Irma marries prominent Zionist, Jakob Ehrlich, bold advocate for Vienna’s 180,000 Jews. Irma’s direct words detail the weeks after Hitler’s arrival when Adolf Eichmann himself appears to liberate Irma and her son from Vienna.Irma’s stunning turnaround in London unfolds amidst a dazzling cohort of luminaries—Chaim and Vera Weizmann, and Viscountess Beatrice Samuel among them. Irma finds her voice as an activist, saving lives and resettling refugees, and ultimately moves on to New York where her work resumes among high-profile friends like Catskills hostess Jennie Grossinger.Jane Scimeca is Professor of History at Brookdale Community College Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Timothy Blauvelt’s book Clientelism and Nationality in an Early Soviet Fiefdom: The Trials of Nestor Lakoba (Routledge, 2021), explores the complexity of Soviet Nationality Policy and patronage relationships among the Soviet elite by focusing on Nestor Apollonovich Lakoba, the Chairman of the Abkhazian Council of Commissars (Sovnarkom) and Abkhazia's colourful, hyper-connected and Zelig-like local power broker. Small in stature and hard of hearing, Lakoba earned an outsized reputation as a gracious Caucasian host with an easy-going spirit, known for his pithy Abkhazian folk sayings and his connections to absolutely everybody who mattered, reputedly having the ear of Stalin himself. Lakoba seemed at odds with the prototypical loud and gruff Stalinist party boss, but he was in his own way no less ruthless, despotic and cunning in his deployment of patronage and the political capital that this subtropical region had to offer.Local ethnic elites like Lakoba realized the advantages of representing the “titular” nationality of a territory to consolidate their position and authority and to extract resources from the centre(s) (even in territories like Abkhazia, where the titular nationality did not comprise a majority of the population). At the same time, they understood the importance of maintaining the trust and loyalty of their own “constituencies,” among both the titular masses and the other titular elites, in order prevent the emergence of a rival grouping that could position itself as a credible substitute. The goal was to maintain the trust and loyalty of both patrons above and of clients below, while at the same time cultivating an aura of irreplaceability. The patrons in the centre (in this case, primarily the Transcaucasian and Georgian Party leadership in Tiflis) required a credibly representative titular leadership grouping on the ground in the titular territories. But once the choice had been made, those in the centre often found themselves constrained by that choice: the success of the patron depended on the success of the client. This gave the latter considerable power over the former to extract resources and to guarantee protection, so long as the client remained the “only game in town,” costlier to replace than to maintain. Yet this situation was far from static: as the emphasis in Soviet nationality policy changed from support for the many smaller ethnic groups in the 1920s to favouring the larger nationalities with union republics from the mid-1930s (and even towards “cleansing” entire populations of potentially disloyal ethnicities), the imperative to maintain titular leadership groups in the autonomous units fell away. The rules of the game changed fundamentally. Listen in to learn more about this fascinating history of power and politics! Samantha Lomb is a lecturer at Vyatka State University in Kirov, Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

There have been other biographies of Roger Federer, but never one with this kind of access to the man himself, his support team, and the most prominent figures in the game, including such rivals as Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Roddick. In The Master: The Brilliant Career of Roger Federer (Twelve, 2021), New York Times correspondent Christopher Clarey sits down with Federer and those closest to him to tell the story of the greatest player in men's tennis.Roger Federer has often made it look astonishingly easy through the decades: carving backhands, gliding to forehands, leaping for overheads, and, in his most gravity-defying act, remaining high on a pedestal in a world of sports rightfully flooded with cynicism. But his path from a temperamental bleach-blond teenager with dubious style sense to one of the greatest, most self-possessed, and elegant of competitors has been a long-running act of will, not destiny. He not only had a great gift. He had grit.Christopher Clarey, one of the top international sportswriters working today, has covered Federer since the beginning of his professional career. He was in Paris on the Suzanne Lenglen Court for Federer's first Grand Slam match and has interviewed him exclusively more than any other journalist since his rise to prominence. Here, Clarey focuses on the pivotal people, places, and moments in Federer's long and rich career: reporting from South Africa, South America, the Middle East, four Grand Slam tournaments, and Federer's native Switzerland. It has been a journey like no other player's, rife with victories and a few crushing defeats, one that has redefined enduring excellence and made Federer a sentimental favorite worldwide.The Master tells the story of Federer's life and career on both an intimate and grand scale, in a way no one else could possibly do.Paul Knepper used to cover 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

In this episode of New Books in Southeast Asian Studies we travel with Craig J. Reynolds to the mid-south of Thailand in the first half of the twentieth century, where we meet with a legendary policeman who trained in martial arts and the occult so as to protect himself in mortal combat with dangerous foes. That policeman was Butr Pantharak, also known as Khun Phan. Though he already has quite a number of biographers in Thai, Reynolds’ Power, Protection and Magic in Thailand: The Cosmos of a Southern Policeman (ANU Press 2019) is the first book to tell the story of Khun Phan’s life and times for English-language readers. It is available for free download from the ANU Press website, where it is accompanied by a series of beautiful videos that build on the contents of each of its chapters, the making of which we discuss in this episode.Thai-language readers might also be interested in Craig Reynold’s new collection of essays, จดหมายจากสุดขอบโลก คิดคำนึงถึงอดีตในปัจจุบัน (Letters from the Edge of the World: Thinking of the Past in the Present, Sayam Press, 2022), which we talk about at the end of the interview.Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Thongchai Winichakul, Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok Sam van Schaik, Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment through the Ages Nick Cheesman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University. He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series and contributes to the New Books in Southeast Asian Studies channel on 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

From his earliest days Winston Churchill was an extreme risk taker and he carried this into adulthood. Today he is widely hailed as Britain's greatest wartime leader and politician. Deep down though, he was foremost a warlord. Just like his ally Stalin, and his arch enemies Hitler and Mussolini, Churchill could not help himself and insisted on personally directing the strategic conduct of World War II. For better or worse he insisted on being political master and military commander. Again like his wartime contemporaries, he had a habit of not heeding the advice of his generals. The results of this were disasters in Norway, North Africa, Greece, and Crete during 1940-41. His fruitless Dodecanese campaign in 1943 also ended in defeat. Churchill's pig-headedness over supporting the Italian campaign in defiance of the Riviera landings culminated in him threatening to resign and bring down the British Government. Yet on occasions he got it just right, his refusal to surrender in 1940, the British miracle at Dunkirk and victory in the Battle of Britain, showed that he was a much-needed decisive leader. Nor did he shy away from difficult decisions, such as the destruction of the French Fleet to prevent it falling into German hands and his subsequent war against Vichy France.In Churchill, Master and Commander: Winston Churchill at War 1895–1945 (Bloomsbury, 2021), acclaimed historian Anthony Tucker-Jones explores the record of Winston Churchill as a military commander, assessing how the military experiences of his formative years shaped him for the difficult military decisions he took in office. This book assesses his choices in the some of the most controversial and high-profile campaigns of World War II, and how in high office his decision making was both right and wrong.Charles Coutinho Ph. D. 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

In his brilliant and philosophically charged new book God, Science, and Self: Muhammad Iqbal's Reconstruction of Religious Thought (McGill-Queen's UP, 2021), Nauman Faizi conducts a close and often dazzling reading of a towering yet difficult Muslim modernist text. Through a painstakingly intimate analysis of Muhammad Iqbal’s discourse on wide ranging themes including revelation, the self, knowledge, and science, Faizi shows that Iqbal’s thought houses in productive tension representational and pragmatic registers of hermeneutics. Iqbal’s hermeneutic often embodied the very objects of critique and dissatisfaction that he identified in the epistemological norms and patterns of Western colonial modernity. Faizi reads these markings and tensions not as a form of fatal contradiction but rather as the necessary wounds carried by a panoramic thinker wrestling with the significance of religious knowledge and revelation in a world beset with the malaise of modernity. This stunningly erudite book, published in the exciting new series on “Modern Islamic Thought” by McGill-Queen’s University Press, should and will be read widely.SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize and was selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award. His other academic publications are available here. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography