New Books in Biography

Mar 08 2025 1696 ep. 57 mins 3.4k

New Books in Biography Podcast artwork

Interviews with Biographers about their New Books

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Society & Culture History

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Ariane Sherine, "The Real Sinéad O'Connor" (White Owl, 2024)

Mar 08 2025 51 mins

Sinéad O'Connor, renowned for her angelic voice and activism, overcame a tumultuous upbringing to become a global protest singer and advocate for social justice. O'Connor achieved worldwide success as an angel-voiced, shaven-headed Irish singer of heartfelt songs, but she was far more than just a pop star - she was also an activist and a survivor. Reeling from a troubled childhood

Rachelle Bergstein, "The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us" (Atria, 2024)

Mar 07 2025 47 mins

Everyone knows Judy Blume. Her books have garnered her fans of all ages for decades and sold tens of millions of copies. But why were people so drawn to them? And why are we still talking about them now in the 21st century? In The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (Atria, 2024), her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a m

Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa" (Chicago UP, 2023)

Mar 05 2025 45 mins

This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped shape the new imperial order in Africa. Richard Dorsey Mohun spent his career circulating among the eastern United States, the cities and courts of Europe, and the African continent, as he served the US State Department at some points a

Elizabeth T. Craft, "Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Mar 05 2025 50 mins

George M. Cohan was one of those rare Broadway figures who was a composer, lyricist, playwright, performer, director, theater owner, and star actor. He could, quite literally, do it all. In his day, he was famous as the "Yankee Doodle Boy" from his hit song and as the "Man Who Owned Broadway" from his musical of the same name. Cohan's songs and shows captured the spirit of an era w

Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, "Bong Joon Ho" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

Mar 04 2025 46 mins

Successful cult films like The Host and Snowpiercer proved to be harbingers for Bong Joon Ho's enormous breakthrough success with Parasite. In Bong Joon Ho (U Illinois Press, 2024), Joseph Jonghyun Jeon provides a consideration of the director's entire career and the themes, ambitions, techniques, and preoccupations that infuse his works. As Jeon shows, Bong's sense of spatial and

Paul Lisicky, "Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell" (HarperOne, 2025)

Mar 04 2025 22 mins

Paul Lisicky remembers when he first heard Joni Mitchell on the radio, and when he found one of her records in a bin at Korvettes. He was inspired by her musicality, her poetry, and her willingness to defy musical conventions. Nearly every one of her songs spoke to him in some way. As a budding songwriter whose music was widely performed in churches around the country, he was motiv

Michael Visontay, "Noble Fragments: The Gripping Story of the Antiquarian Bookseller Who Broke Up a Gutenberg Bible" (Scribe, 2024)

Mar 04 2025 60 mins

One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg Bible, and sold it off in individual pages. In 1921, Wells’ audacity scandalized the rare-book world. The Gutenberg was the first substantial book in Europe to have been printed on a printing press. It represented the democratizati

John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

Mar 04 2025 48 mins

In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerbated existing and created new problems of piracy across the globe. The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World (Amsterdam UP, 2024) addresses these early modern problems in three sections: first, states' attempts to exercise jurisd

Isabel Moreira, "Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Mar 03 2025 65 mins

This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in contemporary sources as beautiful and intelligent, she rose to power through her marriage to the short-lived King Clovis II. As regent for her young son, she promoted social and political reforms in Francia that included the rescue a

Florence Martin, "Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

Feb 25 2025 78 mins

Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) unfolds and analyzes the work of Moroccan director, producer, and scriptwriter Farida Benlyazid, whose career extends from the beginning of cinema in independent Morocco to the present. This study of her work and career provides a unique perspective on an under-represented cinema, the gender politics of cinema in Moroc