New Books in Biography

A scholarly yet accessible biography of the Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje, one of the great historical figures of Tibetan Buddhism. Known for his mastery of teachings across sectarian lines, his treatises on medicine and astrology, and his work as spiritual advisor to the last Yuan emperor of China, Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339) is considered one of the most important and influential figures in Tibetan Buddhist history. First recognized as a tulku, or reincarnated Buddhist master, at the age of five, Rangjung Dorje became the Karma Kagyu lineage holder and instituted the reincarnation-based inheritance structure within Tibetan Buddhism that led to the formation of important lineages of tulkus such as the Dalai Lamas.In The Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje: Master of Mahamudra (Shambala, 2020), Ruth Gamble synthesizes her extensive research on Rangjung Dorje into a sweeping biography covering his life, legacy, and important selected writings. Included in her discussions are Rangjung Dorje's synthesis of Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā in his writings, his devotion to spreading the teachings of Buddha nature, and several works never before translated into English. As the most comprehensive work available on Rangjung Dorje, this book is an indispensable resource for scholars and Buddhist practitioners alike.Cuilan Liu is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work on Buddhism, Law, China, Tibet, and documentary filmmaking can be found here. 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, I interview David Barak-Gorodetzky about his new book, Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist (U Nebraska Press, 2021). This comprehensive intellectual biography of Judah Magnes—the Reform rabbi, American Zionist leader, and inaugural Hebrew University chancellor—offers novel analysis of how theology and politics intertwined to drive Magnes’s writings and activism—especially his championing of a binational state—against all odds. Like a prophet unable to suppress his prophecy, Magnes could not resist a religious calling to take political action, whatever the cost. In Palestine no one understood his uniquely American pragmatism and insistence that a constitutional system was foundational for a just society. Jewish leaders regarded his prophetic politics as overly conciliatory and dangerous for negotiations. Magnes’s central European allies in striving for a binational Palestine, including Martin Buber, credited him with restoring their faith in politics, but they ultimately retreated from binationalism to welcome the new State of Israel. In candidly portraying the complex Magnes as he understood himself, Barak-Gorodetsky elucidates why Magnes persevered, despite evident lack of Arab interest, to advocate binationalism with Truman in May 1948 at the ultimate price of Jewish sovereignty. Accompanying Magnes on his long-misunderstood journey, we gain a unique broader perspective: on early peacemaking efforts in Israel/Palestine, the American Jewish role in the history of the state, binationalism as political theology, an American view of binationalism, and the charged realities of Israel today.Bar Guzi is PhD candidate at Brandeis University. His research focuses on modern Jewish thought and theology. Bar’s dissertation discerns and conceptualizes a non-supernaturalistic current of American Jewish thought that is nevertheless profoundly concerned with God. He can be found on Twitter and reached via email at bguzi@brandeis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

We interview Dr. Joel Whitebook, philosopher and psychoanalyst about his book Freud: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge UP, 2017). Dr. Whitebook works in Critical Theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, developing that tradition with his clinical and philosophical knowledge of recent advances in psychoanalytic theory.The life and work of Sigmund Freud continue to fascinate general and professional readers alike. Joel Whitebook here presents the first major biography of Freud since the last century, taking into account recent developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, gender studies, philosophy, cultural theory, and more. Offering a radically new portrait of the creator of psychoanalysis, this book explores the man in all his complexity alongside an interpretation of his theories that cuts through the stereotypes that surround him. The development of Freud's thinking is addressed not only in the context of his personal life, but also in that of society and culture at large, while the impact of his thinking on subsequent issues of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and social theory is fully examined. Whitebook demonstrates that declarations of Freud's obsolescence are premature, and, with his clear and engaging style, brings this vivid figure to life in compelling and readable fashion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In the decades following the American Civil War, several of the generals who had laid down their swords picked up their pens and published accounts of their service in the conflict. In The Generals’ Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today (University of North Carolina Press, 2021), Stephen Cushman analyzes a half-dozen of these works to discern the perspectives they provided on the era and the insights they offered about their authors. The publication of the service memoirs proliferated during the Gilded Age, thanks to the increases in literacy and the market for books that this created. Beginning in the 1870s several generals took advantage of the opportunity created by this emergence to recount for profit their time in uniform and justify the decisions they made.As Cushman details, several of these books, such as those of the Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston and Union commander William T. Sherman, contained contrasting views of similar events that, when read together, reflect the process of postwar reconciliation between the former foes. For others, such as Richard Taylor and George McClellan, their accounts served as an opportunity to present themselves as wagers of a more gentlemanly and “humane” war than that subsequently conducted by Sherman and Ulysses Grant. Grant’s own memoir proved the greatest successes of the genre, a testament both to his wartime stature and the skills as a writer he developed over the course of his life. The success of Grant’s posthumously published book was such that it overshadowed the subsequent release of both McClellan’s and Philip Sheridan’s memoirs, both of which proved a disappointment for their publisher, Charles L. Webster and Company. Cushman shows how the firm’s founder, Mark Twain, exerted an outsized influence on the genre, not only as a publisher but more famously as the editor of Grant’s memoirs and as a writer about the war in his own right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Te Rauparaha is most well known today as the composer of the haka ‘Ka mate’, made famous the world over by the All Blacks. A major figure in nineteenth-century history, Te Rauparaha was responsible for rearranging the tribal landscape of a large part of the country after leading his tribe Ngāti Toa to migrate to Kapiti Island. He is venerated by his own descendants but reviled with equal passion by the descendants of those tribes who were on the receiving end of his military campaigns in the musket-war era.He Pukapuka Tātaku i ngā Mahi a Te Rauparaha Nui (Record of the Life of the Great Te Rauparaha) is a 50,000-word account in te reo Māori of Te Rauparaha’s life, written by his son Tamihana Te Rauparaha between 1866 and 1869. A pioneering work of Māori (and, indeed, indigenous) biography, Tamihana’s narrative weaves together the oral accounts of his father and other kaumātua to produce an extraordinary record of Te Rauparaha and his rapidly changing world.Edited and translated by Ross Calman, a descendant of Te Rauparaha, He Pukapuka Tātaku i ngā Mahi a Te Rauparaha Nui makes available for the first time this major work of Māori literature in a parallel Māori/English edition.Tamihana Te Rauparaha (1822–1876) was the son of Ngāti Toa leader Te Rauparaha and Te Ākau of Tūhourangi. Known as Katu in early life, he received a chiefly education and accompanied his father on many of his campaigns. He later became a key figure in the early Anglican Church in New Zealand, and one of a new generation of chiefs to adopt literacy. He was friendly with many of the Pākehā elite, adopted the manners of an English gentleman and became a successful sheep farmer in the Ōtaki district.Ross Calman (Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-tonga, Ngāi Tahu) is a descendant of Te Rauparaha, one of the offspring of a peace marriage forged between Ngāti Toa and Ngāi Tahu in the 1840s. He has authored and edited important works on Māori language and history including Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi (with Mark Derby and Toby Morris), The Essential Māori Dictionary (with Margaret Sinclair), The New Zealand Wars and The Reed Book of Māori Mythology (with A. W. Reed). He is also a licensed translator. He lives in Wellington with his wife Ariana and they have two adult children. The Ngāti Toa Whakapapa Committee have given their blessing to the publication of this book.Ed Amon is a Master of Indigenous Studies Candidate at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, a columnist at his local paper: Hibiscus Matters, and a Stand-up Comedian. His main interests are indigenous studies, politics, history, and cricket. Follow him on twitter @edamoned or email him at edamonnz@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Karla Huebner’s Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) follows the life and career Czech artist Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 1902-1980). Toyen’s career spans the twentieth century, from the cultural flux of interwar Prague to postwar France. Huebner traces the growth, divergence, and fluidity of Czech as well as international avant-gardes. Eroticism, Huebner argues, centered Toyen’s life, settings, and art. Toyen’s ambiguous gender equally found its own place in the predominantly male Czech Devětsil group, lesbian milieus of interwar Paris, and André Breton’s postwar Surrealist network. So too did Toyen’s work in erotic drawings, book commissions, collage, and oil paintings, all generously represented in this monograph. Magnetic Woman hence unites art history with cultural and intellectual history. Huebner analyzes Toyen’s artistic collaborations and friendships with figures as diverse as Jindřich Štyrský, Karel Teige, and Philippe Soupault. She traces Toyen’s wide reading of European classics, contemporary writing, and psychological and sexual literature of the day. Huebner anchors Toyen’s artwork in these contexts throughout the monograph while showcasing its inherent originality and formal innovations.Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic furnishes readers with both a fascinating biography of the artist and a map of the entangled histories of the Czech and French avant-gardes. Huebner’s work will interest scholars of interwar European history, of European sexuality and gender, art history, and international history alike, and the heavily illustrated monograph will intrigue scholars, general readers, and artists in equal measure.John Raimo is a PhD. Candidate in History at NYU finishing up my dissertation (on postwar publishing houses) this summer in European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Who is the most fascinating historical figure that you have never heard of? David Lester and Marcus Rediker make a good case that it was Benjamin Lay. Based on Rediker’s 2017 The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist, Lester has created a moving, engaging, and eye-opening graphic novel. Lay embodied inter-sectional resistance centuries before the term was coined. In the 18th century he not only fought against slavery and condemned racism but supported women’s rights, criticized class disparities, and promoted the human treatment of animals. Lay was a vegetarian who lived in a humble cave with his beloved wife. He condemned the hypocrisy of the slave owning church leadership. The diminutive Lay engaged in powerful acts of guerilla theater that included smashing expensive Chinese porcelain in the public square and splashing fake blood about a Quaker meeting house. Well-known after his death as a founder of the abolitionist movement, post-Civil War white supremacists marginalized Benjamin Lay. Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay (Beacon Press, 2021) will revive the memory of this role model of speaking truth to power.David Lester is an author and graphic artist. His work includes but is not limited to 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike, Direct Action Gets the Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada, Drawn To Change: Graphic Histories of Working Class Struggle, and The Listener, a graphic novel. He is also the guitarist for the underground duo Mecca Normal.Marcus Rediker is a Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburg and a Guest Curator at the J. M. W. Turner Gallery, Tate Britain. He is the author of numerous books on the history of piracy, the slave trade, and the Atlantic world such as The Many Headed Hydra, The Slave Ship: A Human History, Villains of all Nations, Outlaws of the Atlantic, The Amistad, and The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf who became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Andrea Warner's Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography (Graystone Books, 2018) tells the story, often in Buffy's own words, of the life of the remarkable artist and activist. Buffy Sainte-Marie's musical career is as varied and fascinating as those of her Canadian contemporaries Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen, but he work has not always achieved the recognition it deserves. Warner's book is in part an attempt to rectify that by presenting Buffy's complete story to a new generation of readers and listeners. We encounter Buffy as a coffee shop folkie, an electronic music pioneer, and indigenous activist, a Sesame Street cast member, and finally as an elder stateswoman of Canadian music. This is a book for longtime fans or for new initiates who have never heard songs like Power in the Blood, Now That the Buffalo's Gone, The Universal Soldier, or The War Racket. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

A ’90s time capsule buried inside a coming-of-age memoir set against the neon backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area's rave scene, Raver Girl (She Writes Press, 2021) chronicles Samantha’s double life as she teeters between hedonism and sobriety, chaos and calm, all while sneaking under the radar of her entrepreneur father—a man who happened to drop acid with LSD impresario Owsley Stanley in the ’60s.Samantha keeps a list of every rave she goes to—a total of 104 over four years. During that time, what started as trippy fun morphs into a self-destructive roller coaster ride. Samantha opens the doors of her mind, but she's left with traumas her acid-fried brain won't let her escape; and when meth becomes her drug of choice, things get progressively darker. Through euphoric highs and dangerous lows, Samantha discovers she’s someone who lives life to the fullest and learns best through alternative experience rather than mainstream ideals. She’s a creative whose mind is limitless, whose quirks are charms, whose passion is inspirational. She’s an independent woman whose inner strength is rooted in unwavering family ties. And if she can survive high school, she just might be okay.Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. 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 eighteenth century, the noblewoman Ōgimachi Machiko composed a memoir of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, the powerful samurai for whom she had served as a concubine for twenty years. Machiko assisted Yoshiyasu in his ascent to the rank of chief adjutant to the Tokugawa shogun. She kept him in good graces with the imperial court, enabled him to study poetry with aristocratic teachers and have his compositions read by the retired emperor, and gave birth to two of his sons. Writing after Yoshiyasu’s retirement, she recalled it all—from the glittering formal visits of the shogun and his entourage to the passage of the seasons as seen from her apartments in the Yanagisawa mansion.In the Shelter of the Pine is the most significant work of literature by a woman of Japan’s early modern era. Featuring Machiko’s keen eye for detail, strong narrative voice, and polished prose studded with allusions to Chinese and Japanese classics, this memoir sheds light on everything from the social world of the Tokugawa elite to the role of literature in women’s lives. Machiko modeled her story on The Tale of Genji, illustrating how the eleventh-century classic continued to inspire its female readers and provide them with the means to make sense of their experiences. Elegant, poetic, and revealing, In the Shelter of the Pine is a vivid portrait of a distant world and a vital addition to the canon of Japanese literature available in English.Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography