Share this:

April 2017 | Volume 12 | Number 2 Conference Preview: James There's Still Time to Register Atlas in Conversation with for the 2017 BIO Patricia Bosworth Conference!

Panel sessions and tours are filling fast for the Eighth Annual BIO Conference on May 19–21 at Boston’s Emerson College. Members receive a discount by using a registration code. Anyone who needs the code can contact Membership Coordinator Lori Izykowski. Learn more about the open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com conference and register here.

From the Editor In a panel called "Biography and and Patricia Bosworth will As the BIO conference draws Style," James Atlas . . . discuss breaking the rules of closer, the various committees are biography and making it hard at work on last-minute work anyway. arrangements. In this issue of TBC, James Atlas gives a preview of his talk with Patricia Bosworth, which By James Atlas is sure to be one of the highlights Patricia Bosworth (“Patti,” as she is known to her wide circle of friends) has of Saturday’s events. And while we been a vivid presence on the New York literary scene for as long as I can like to think the conference is the remember—which is beginning to be a very long time. Her parties, held in a book- best way for biographers to learn and art-filled apartment in Hell’s Kitchen that looks as if it had time-traveled from how to hone their craft, biographers in the New York metro the West Village of the 1920s, are the kind where you walk in and want to talk to area recently had several everyone in the room at once. Some of them are high-profile—I have spotted opportunities to hear some of the Dick Cavett and Judy Collins, among other “notables,” as we call them in top practitioners—including Chicago; others were mere “writers,” but some of the most interesting ones in several BIO members—speak on town. They are the kind of parties where the host has to flick the lights on and biography. We have brief recaps of off in order to remind guests to leave. three of those events this month. Next month, look for an interview What’s the draw? I once moderated a panel on biography in some gilded with BIO Award-winner Candice Pittsburgh auditorium with Patti, who had written a fine biography of Brando for Millard. the Penguin Lives series, and two other Penguin alums, Wayne Koestenbaum I’d like to put out the call (Warhol) and Bobbie Ann Mason (Elvis). The auditorium was packed (if you once again for help writing want to get an audience, leave New York), and though it was some years ago summaries of the panels at the now, I remember her making the culture-hungry crowd laugh and laugh at her conference next month. If you’re attending and are interested, descriptions of Brando’s outlandish behavior. open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com descriptions of Brando’s outlandish behavior. please email me. She is as fun to be with one-on-one as in front of 600 people, at once brassy I’ll close by offering my and vulnerable, warm and entertainingly direct. So it is with her books: the apologies to Michael Owen, who biographies of Jane Fonda and Montgomery Clift radiate insight and empathy; the earlier informed me that his Go memoirs are tragic but also manage to capture the vanity of the Actors Studio Slow: The Life of Julie London will where she apprenticed for a stage career in the 1950s. be released in July, but I neglected to include it in last Patti’s most admirable trait is her candor. At the party for her latest book, The month’s listing of spring and Men in My Life, she stood up at the podium and spoke of the suicides of her summer titles. Look for more info brother and father with a matter-of-factness that took her well-wishers by on the book in the July “News and surprise: You can’t just talk about these things in public. But she did, and I’m Notes.”

sure she will—about that and much, much more—when I interview her at the Yours, BIO conference in Boston this spring. Don’t miss it. Michael Burgan

Finalists Announced for Hazel BIO Members Rowley Prize Receive Discount to The 2017 Hazel Rowley Prize Committee has chosen three Nonfiction finalists for the award for the best proposal for a first Writers’ biography. They are, in alphabetical order: Conference Eric M. Nishimoto, for Arthur’s War, the story of his The seventh annual Nonfiction uncle, Arthur Nishimoto, a volunteer in the segregated, Writers Conference on May 3–5 all-Japanese 442nd Regimental Combat Team that is offering BIO members a 33 fought in Europe during WWII, becoming the most percent discount. This virtual decorated unit in U.S. history. The late Hazel event sponsored by the open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com The late Hazel Diana Parsell, for A Great Blooming, the biography of event sponsored by the Rowley was an Nonfiction Authors Association accomplished Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, an intrepid late- features 15 speakers over the biographer and nineteenth/early-twentieth century American traveler to three days, with all sessions early supporter Asia, who had the idea to plant Japanese cherry trees of BIO. in Washington, D.C., and made it happen. conducted by phone or Skype. Jeffrey Lawrence Yastine, for Battle the Wind: Elmer Use the code PARTNER33 to and Lawrence Sperry, father and son inventors and receive the discount. The aircraft pioneers from the first half of the twentieth conference is also offering BIO a century, whose legacy lives on in the technology we scholarship for one of its take for granted today. members to cover the entire cost of the event. If you’re interested The final judging is being done by distinguished biographers Blake Bailey and in the scholarship, email TBC by Amanda Vaill. The winner will be announced prior to the BIO conference in May midnight, April 15. One name and will receive the prize there. The winner receives a $2,000 prize, a careful will be drawn at random. You reading from at least one established agent, a year’s membership in BIO, and can learn more about the publicity through the BIO website, The Biographer’s Craft, and other outlets. conference here. The members of the Hazel Rowley Prize Committee are Susan Butler, Jennifer Cockburn, Cathy Curtis, Kavita Das, Deirdre David, Gayle Feldman, Dean King, and Roy Schreiber. Author's Query

Cathy Curtis sent along this The Evolution of Political request for help: I am looking for reliably Passions documented resources (nonfiction or specific archival By Jane Lincoln Taylor materials) offering details about everyday life in New York City At this time of heightened interest in all things open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com At this time of heightened interest in all things during the 1940s. political, an enthusiastic audience convened for Please email Cathy if you have the eighth annual Leon Levy Conference, information. Political Icons: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, at the CUNY Graduate Center on March 8. Kai Bird, the new executive director of the Sold to Publishers Leon Levy Center for Biography and author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Stacy Schiff Ames welcomed a distinguished roster of Untitled biography of Samuel Adams sold to Little, Brown speakers. In his opening remarks, Bird noted, Kai Bird, the new executive by Eric Simonoff at with a nod to Citizen Kane, that biographers director of the Levy Center, is William Morris Endeavor currently working on a need to be “relentless, stubborn, charming, biography of Jimmy Carter. seductive, and at times even annoying and Julia Pierpont and Manjit Thapp demanding” in their search for each subject’s The Little Book of Feminist Saints “Rosebud.” One theme arising over the course sold to Random House by Elyse Cheney at of the afternoon was the mutability of political passions; they may start with Elyse Cheney Agency family, personality traits, and community mores, but they evolve—whether they’re reinforced or reversed—through emotional reactions to lived experience. Nicola Tallis The first panel, “Liberal Icons,” began with a discussion of the challenge for Elizabeth’s Rival: The Life of Lettice biographers of addressing our current political situation. “We are faced with the Knollys, Countess of Leicester nearly impossible task of figuring out how we are supposed to make sense of the sold to Pegasus by Andrew Lownie at recent past and narrate the path forward,” said David Nasaw, the panel’s Andrew Lownie Literary Agency moderator and author of The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy. The panelists spoke of being inspired by their liberal Eric Wilson subjects, whose lives were linked by their progressive ideas, particularly on race. Dream Child: A Life of Charles Lamb sold to Yale University Press Patricia Bell-Scott, author of The by Matt McGowan at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com the Frances Goldin Literary Agency Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a

Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Szwed and the Struggle for Social Justice, introduced Untitled biography of Harry Smith Murray, who was a writer, a lawyer, and the sold to Farrar, Straus & Giroux first African American woman ordained an by Sarah Lazin at Sarah Lazin Books Episcopal priest. In 1942, Murray wrote a Lynne Olson brash letter to FDR, criticizing his stance on Untitled biography of civil rights as “too measured,” and sent Marie-Madeleine Fourcade Eleanor a copy. The women’s initial dispute sold to Random House (Eleanor was distressed about the same issues, by Gail Ross at the Ross Yoon Agency but disliked Murray’s tone) turned into a cherished friendship. Tomiko Brown-Nagin Civil Rights Queen Blanche Wiesen Cooke, who’s just (Constance Baker Motley) published volume three of her biography of Patricia Bell-Scott was a sold to Pantheon Eleanor Roosevelt, confirmed the First Lady’s cofounder of the National by Gloria Loomis at Watkins Loomis deep interest in improving social conditions; Women’s Studies Association. she asked nearly everyone she met, “What do Tony Castro you want? What do you need?” and felt that Joe DiMaggio and the Great American Dream popular movements, not politicians, create real change in the world. sold to University of New Mexico Press Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner David Levering-Lewis, continuing these by Leticia Gomez at themes, discussed The Improbable Wendell Willkie, his upcoming book on the Savvy Literary Services liberal, Republican presidential candidate. Levering-Lewis noted Willkie’s influential, prescient work One World, one of the fastest-selling books of all time; Leslie Brody his support for civil rights; and his opposition to isolationism. Murray, Bell-Scott Sometimes You Have to Lie (Louise Fitzhugh) said, was heartened by Willkie’s speech linking racism and imperialism. sold to Seal Press When asked how biographers turn history into literature, Levering-Lewis said it by Wendy Sherman at helps to cultivate a “Ouija-board atmosphere” to inhabit the subject’s life Wendy Sherman Associates open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com imaginatively; it involves “art and intuition and luck and research.” Cook compared the effort to writing poetry; she starts by rereading Virginia Woolf, to have those Marcia Biederman rhythms in her head as she writes. Bell-Scott surrounds herself with objects and Restauratrice: How Patricia Murphy Became a Real-Life Mildred Pierce photographs connected to her subjects, and plays the music they liked to listen to. sold to SUNY Excelsior The afternoon’s second talk featured Daniel Oppenheimer in conversation with by Matt DiGangi at Bresnick Weil Kai Bird. Oppenheimer’s recent book, Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left Literary Agency and Reshaped the American Century, focuses on six men—Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Rebecca Donner Christopher Hitchens—who all began as liberals but later took a conservative turn. All the Frequent Trouble of Our Days (Mildred Harnack) Their political journeys, woven together, offer an intellectual history of nearly 100 sold to Lee Boudreaux Books years. Each had a personal turning point that drove him away from the left. Chambers Jay Cost was a Communist spy who became a rabid anti-Communist. Burnham, a Untitled biography of Alexander Trotskyist, broke with the party in the 1930s, eventually writing for the National Hamilton and James Madison Review. Reagan once idolized FDR, but got caught up in General Electric’s anti- sold to Basic Books union culture and became a hero of the right. Podhoretz, who as editor-in-chief Patti Hartigan moved the magazine Commentary further left, turned neoconservative. Horowitz, August Wilson: The Kiln in Which He once a Marxist and the editor of Ramparts, was shaken by the death of a friend at Was Fired the hands of the Black Panthers and is now a Trump supporter. The most sold to 37 Ink iconoclastic of the bunch, Hitchens, never moved all the way right, but he reacted by Lane Zachary of to 9/11 by growing increasingly conservative on foreign-policy issues. Aevitas Creative Management Oppenheimer, raised in a leftist household, is still on that end of the spectrum, Xi Lian but approaches his subjects empathetically. All six, he said, “lived politics all the Blood Letters way down.” They wanted “a coherent picture of the political world,” so when (Lin Zhao) their left-wing visions were challenged by events, they couldn’t move slightly sold to Basic Books right; they altered their positions dramatically. Bird suggested that they “flipped by Peter Bernstein at really hard;” when true believers lose faith, they don’t go halfway. Oppenheimer Bernstein Literary Agency open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com agreed, adding that reason played only a modest role in these rightward political John Boessenecker odysseys; they were laced with personal disappointment. Ride the Devil’s Herd The politics of the presidency was the subject of the third panel, “Presidential (Wyatt Earp) Transitions,” featuring Robert Dallek, who has written on FDR, JFK, LBJ, and sold to Hanover Square Press Nixon; John Farrell, who wrote Richard Nixon: The Life; and Michael Tomasky, by Claire Gerus at Claire Gerus author of Bill Clinton. Meg Jacobs (co-author of Conservatives in Power: The Literary Agency Reagan Years) led the discussion. The peaceful transfer of power has often been Zachary Carter awkward; according to Dallek, Hoover refused to speak to FDR when they met The Price of Peace: John Maynard after the election. The panelists agreed with Jacobs, however, that the virulence of Keynes, The Great War, and the Idea Trump’s attacks on his predecessor are unprecedented. that Transformed the World The talk turned to which presidents were committed to their political beliefs sold to Random House (e.g., Obama, Carter) and those who were merely expedient. Farrell noted the by Howard Yoon at Ross Yoon Agency many parallels between Nixon and Trump, who both practiced a “politics of Lee Standiford grievance” and manipulated people’s insecurities. Tomasky said that Clinton’s The Rapture of Elephants reputation for expediency was overstated and that he took courageous stands. (John Ringling, P. T. Barnum, Dallek, asked if he would like to write Trump’s biography, suspected that Trump and James Bailey) will not likely leave the tapes historians love, but felt he will be a magnet for sold to Public Affairs biographers anyhow. It will be compelling to see what specific epiphanies will by Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management illuminate, for future generations, Trump’s own political transformations.

Ryan Cole Jane Lincoln Taylor is a freelance book editor and writer with a particular interest in biography. Lighthorse Harry Lee sold to Regnery History by Deborah Grosvenor at Grosvenor Carla Kaplan on Jessica Literary Agency John Bruning Mitford, Muckraker The Race of Aces: Five Men and the Quest to Become America’s Greatest open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com By Dona Munker, New York Fighter Pilot sold to Hachette Books Correspondent by Jim Hornfischer at Hornfischer Carla Kaplan’s previous biographies, Literary Management Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters Eileen Rivers (2002) and Miss Anne in Harlem: The Women of the Front Lines White Women of the Black Renaissance sold to Da Capo Press (2013), made it clear that she likes by Joelle Delbourgo of women rebels. Her current project, Joelle Delbourgo Associates Something to Offend Everyone: The Muckraking Life and Times of Jessica Erik Larson The Splendid and the Vile Mitford, which she discussed at the (Winston Churchill) Spring, 2017 Dorothy O. Helly Works- sold to Crown in-Progress Lecture of New York by David Black at the David Black City’s Women Writing Women’s Lives Literary Agency Carla Kaplan was the founding director Seminar, makes it clear that she of Northeastern University's Humanities especially likes them when they’re Gerrick Kennedy Center. Parental Discretion is Advised: empathetic, combative, and have a The Rise of N. W. A. and the Photo by Robin Hultgren talent for being “laugh-out-loud Dawn of Gangsta Rap funny”—qualities Jessica Mitford used sold to Atria to breathe new life into the venerable Gilded Age tradition of muckraking. by William LoTurco at Born in 1917, into a family of down-at-the-heels English gentry, Mitford— Aevitas Creative Management known as “Decca” to her family and friends—was one of six girls so attractive David Mendell that they were known as “the beautiful Mitford sisters.” Their parents’ social and America’s Team: The Story of Jackie political views, however, gave fresh meaning to the term “reactionary,” and three Robinson West, the Fall of a Little of the sisters, as well as a brother, grew up to become avowed fascists. Kaplan League National Champion, and the said that Little Decca, by contrast, was “one of those children who seem born Unmaking of Youth Baseball open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com unable to accept what they see as the unfair status quo.” Prevented from attending sold to Chicago Review Press school by her father, who considered the outside world “a damned sewer,” she by Jim Hornfischer at Hornfischer Literary Management educated herself by plowing through books in the family library and by engaging in

witty, mutually devastating arguments with her clever sisters. The ongoing habit of Averell “Ace” Smith sisterly demolition left a permanent imprint: For the rest of her life, Kaplan said, The Pitcher and the Dictator cheerful phrases like, “Do admit I’m right” and “Do give in” remained hallmarks of (Satchel Paige and Mitford’s ordinary conversation. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo) Longing to leave home, in her late teens Mitford eloped with Esmond Romilly, a sold to University of Nebraska Press by Jill Marsal at the Marsal Lyon second cousin, and in 1939 they emigrated to the United States, where she evolved Literary Agency into a full-blown radical. After Romilly was killed in the war, she married a Jewish- American civil rights and union lawyer named Robert Treuhaft. They settled down W. C. Jameson together in the congenial left-wing atmosphere of Oakland, California, and Mitford, Texas Train Robberies: now a member of the Communist Party, threw herself into the cause of civil rights True Stories of Notorious Bandits and and social justice. (Both she and Treuhaft eventually became disillusioned with the Infamous Escapades sold to Lone Star Books Communist Party and resigned from membership.) by Sandra Bond at In 1961, Mitford began investigating the unscrupulous business practices used Bond Literary Agency by the American funeral industry to exploit grieving families. Her research and interviewing for The American Way of Death were “prodigious,” but Kaplan Stuart Smith emphasized that Mitford’s aim wasn’t “journalistic objectivity”; it was to assemble The Most Dangerous Man in Europe: the grim details and grisly facts in a way that she knew her audience would be The Reputation of Colonel Otto Skorzeny sold to Osprey unable to resist (“Do admit I’m right”). When her publisher complained that too by Andrew Lownie at many of the details were offensive, Mitford added more. The book’s narrative Andrew Lownie Literary Agency persona (“an average housewife turned savage muckraker”) was similarly subversive; its jacket showed the author sitting in a primly conservative suit on a bench in a long, marble-walled mausoleum, a tour guide who proposed to take her Please Keep readers “undertaker hunting” through the gory, absurd, comically grotesque gallery Your Info of American burial practices. An instant bestseller, The American Way of Death open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API Current pdfcrowd.com prompted a congressional investigation into the funeral industry, helped to inspire Current the film The Loved One, and has not been out of print since its publication in 1963. Making a move or just It also made the former British debutante one of the leading lights of American changed your email? We ask investigative journalism. BIO members to keep their Kaplan said that Mitford “relished the role of scourge” and considered that “her contact information up to targets deserved what they got.” At the same time, she believed that when date, so we and other presented with evidence, “average people armed with factual information would members know where to find make sensible choices” from which positive social change would grow. None of you. Update your information Jessica Mitford’s subsequent books achieved the popularity of The American Way in the Member Area of the of Death, but she remained a beloved literary icon, and by the time she died in BIO website. 1996, she had amassed more than 500 boxes of materials, of which over 12,000 items were letters, many from fans. Kaplan acknowledged that dealing with this enormous archive poses a serious Membership Up challenge for what will be her first trade biography, but a greater challenge is one of craft. Many of her younger readers, Kaplan noted, lack the historical memory for Renewal? that would allow them to appreciate fully what Mitford accomplished by Please respond promptly to combining facts with witty empathy—empathy for her subject’s point of view as your membership renewal well as her readers’—to win an argument. Pointing out that we live at a time when notice. As a nonprofit factual truth is under relentless assault, Kaplan said that she hopes that her organization, BIO depends on biography will be able to show the brilliance with which Mitford went about members’ dues to fund our remedying public ignorance. “This book,” she said, “has to be funny. The more I annual conference, the can capture her own voice, the better this book will be.” She has plenty to work publication of this newsletter, with. and the other work we do to Dona Munker is the writer and co-author (with Sattareh Farman Farmaian) of Daughter of Persia: support biographers around A Woman’s Journey from Her Father’s Harem through the Islamic Revolution. She is currently the world. When renewing, working on a book about the affair of Sara Bard Field and C. E. S. Wood. Her blog, “Stalking the please make sure the contact Elephant,” is about how biographers imagine and tell other people’s lives. open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Elephant,” is about how biographers imagine and tell other people’s lives. information we have for you is up to date. Well Schooled in Women’s Lives Are You a Student?

By Jane Lincoln Taylor Or do you know one who is Megan Marshall, the author of Elizabeth interested in biography? BIO Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, which is now has a special student making waves for its unusual format, was membership rate. Visit the once a student of Bishop’s at Harvard. She BIO website to find out more. never expected to write about her teacher, but after publishing other acclaimed biographies, she found herself moving inexorably in Bishop’s direction. Her subtitle comes from an early sestina by Bishop; her chapter titles are key words from the poem. These chapters are interleaved with passages of memoir by Marshall, which she hoped would open up the biography to readers Megan Marshall won the Pulitzer who were not students of poetry. Prize for her previous “I wanted to write a biography that read as book, Margaret Fuller: A New much like a novel as possible,” said Marshall American Life. on March 28, at the Center for the Study of Photo by Gail Samuelson Transformative Lives at NYU. In “Writing The President's Letter Women’s Lives,” Marshall was interviewed by open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Philip Kunhardt, whose own biographical subjects include Lincoln and P. T. The Biographer’s Shrink, Part Barnum. Kunhardt explored what drew Marshall to writing the lives of women. One Her earlier biographies are The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited “Writing a book is a horrible, American Romanticism, about nineteenth-century siblings influential in education, exhausting struggle, like a long and Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, about a brilliant writer and editor in bout of some painful illness. One Emerson’s circle. would never undertake such a “It was women’s stories that drew me to history,” Marshall noted. Her thing if one were not driven on by grandmothers were storytellers, delighting her with tales from their childhoods. some demon whom one can Early on, she was intrigued by school stories. Marshall shared photos of neither resist nor understand.” educational artifacts from her subjects’ lives. (She was moved to find in Bishop’s —George Orwell inconsistent report cards an “A+” in “Neatness”—evidence of Bishop’s need to Not all of us share George find control in an unruly life.) Orwell’s grim experience of the Marshall spoke of “Ur-stories” that stand behind later works. As a child, she writing process, but we can all loved stories about girls in other countries, which deepened her experience of agree that writing biographies empathy, a requisite for her craft. The Peabody Sisters, she said, resonates with requires stamina and pluck. It is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, which presented schoolrooms as places difficult for us to understand the where women could excel. Margaret Fuller brought to mind Frances Hodgson demons that compel us to endure Burnett’s Sara Crewe, about a brilliant pauper who, like Fuller, made her way in a the rigors of unearthing a life. As man’s world after her father’s death. Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Pulitzer Prize-winner Stacy Schiff Years, about a wooden doll who traveled the world, passed from one girl to has written, “The biographer has another, reminded Marshall of Bishop: constrained, shy, passed as a child from two lives: the one she leads, and relative to relative, and living a peripatetic life as she wrote. the one she ultimately Marshall uncovered sources unused by previous Bishop biographers, including understands. The first is a muddle correspondence with her last lover and with a psychiatrist. Marshall discussed the of misgivings and difficult decisions a biographer must make when using such personal accounts, misapprehensions . . . the second noting the importance of distinguishing “in-the-moment confidences,” reflecting —the life the biographer pins to only passing emotions, from material that illuminates larger aspects of a life. To the page—has themes. . . . What open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com only passing emotions, from material that illuminates larger aspects of a life. To manifests as suspense on the page provide balanced, responsible accounts, she said, biographers shouldn’t suppress feels disconcertingly like anxiety information, but must understand its context. in real life.” Her imagination was sparked into empathy for these women. “As a biographer, As we toil over our pages, I am putting on the clothes of my subjects—imaginatively inhabiting their lives,” many of us encounter moments or Marshall said. “I think of myself as an accompanist, and the subject is the periods when we feel flooded with soloist.” confusion, doubt, or self- condemnation. Carl Rollyson is an exception. He told me, “I never Mayborn/BIO have moments of doubt. I am driven by the self-delusion that I Biography am writing a biography that I am uniquely equipped to write. Fellowship Awaits Writing biography is a joy for me, and never a dread.” No wonder Your Application Carl has written 16 biographies (including four for young adults After a year’s hiatus, the Mayborn/Bio Biography and children) over the last 30 Fellowship is once again accepting applications for a years. creative residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and free Past Mayborn/BIO fellow But for the rest of us it helps registration to the BIO and the Mayborn conferences. Diana Parsell is in the to hear about the struggles of our The deadline to apply is May 12. running for this year's most distinguished biographers. Hazel Rowley Prize. The fellowship, collaboratively supported by two “Mine are the full ‘doubt-seasons’ of the leading narrative nonfiction conferences, was of which Frank O’Hara wrote,” begun in 2010. It was modeled on an earlier residency program that included Stacy Schiff confided, “And there among its first fellows Abigail Santamaria, who was then in the early stages of are four of them a year. In my writing her 2015 book Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. experience every book is Lewis, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. impossible until the moment when —suddenly, shockingly, and open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com The idea behind the fellowship is to provide a concentrated period of —suddenly, shockingly, and uninterrupted time, as well as mentoring by biographer James McGrath Morris, fleetingly—it isn’t.” Last year’s during a two- to three-week creative residency in a casita in the foothills of the BIO Award-winner Claire Tomalin acknowledged having “grim Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Santa Fe. At the end of the stay, the fellow is moments of doubt and despair” invited to do a reading attended by writers, editors, and often an agent. while writing critically acclaimed “The privilege and import of being a Mayborn Fellow in Biography is not lost books on Jane Austen, Charles on this fledgling author,” said Eric Nishimoto, the 2012 recipient and a finalist for Dickens, and Thomas Hardy this year’s Hazel Rowley Prize. “To learn the craft and develop my book under the (among others). Writing “never ‘biographers’ biographer’ is the opportunity of a lifetime for which the Mayborn, gets any easier,” two-time Pulitzer in so many diverse ways, has prepared me.” Other recipients have included BIO Prize-winner Robert Caro told me, members Judith Bula Wise, Brian O’Leary, and Diana Parsell, another finalist for “You have to learn all the lessons the Hazel Rowley Prize. the hard way.” The committee charged with selecting a recipient evaluates applicants on three The demons driving our criteria: writing are not disconnected from the critical voices playing on our A viable biographical project clearly described. mental radio. During moments of Proof that sufficient research has been or will be completed before the vulnerability, our inner editor residency, so that the time will be used for writing. relishes the opportunity to swoop Evidence that the residency could play an important role in the development in with harsh judgments. As a of the project. psychologist and a biographer, I The fellowship includes: am interested in helping writers surmount stressful self-talk and Free registration to a future Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. pessimistic reactions to the Free registration to a future Biographers International Conference. roadblocks that inevitably litter our Two- to three-week creative residency in Santa Fe with mentoring from path. The more effectively we edit James McGrath Morris. our tired old bedtime stories, the A reading at the end of your stay. more our creativity will flourish. My books explore how we open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com $500 to help defray costs. My books explore how we develop character and how we For more information and to apply, go here. use power in a humane manner, but I also write to heal my relationship with my father, to Shorts establish my own authority, and to re-fashion my experience of being College Takes Holocaust Denier’s Biography Off Open Shelves an outsider. I suspect there are a After receiving a complaint from Irene Lancaster, a scholar of Jewish history, multitude of other motivations and Roskill Library at Churchill College, Cambridge, removed David inspirations of which I am dimly Irving’s Churchill’s War from public display. Lancaster was visiting the library to aware. do research and saw Irving’s book on display, leading to her letter of complaint. Raised by a perfectionistic Irving was convicted in Austria in 2006 for breaking that country’s law against father, I used to struggle with an denying the reality of the Holocaust. He also lost a libel case he brought against internal critic saying, “You are not Deborah Lipstadt, who wrote negatively about him and his work in her smart or talented enough.” While book Denying the Holocaust. Responding to Lancaster’s complaint, the college writing biographies about political said it would limit access to the book, making it available by request only. As outsiders and emotionally reported by Christian Today, the college told Lancaster that “[Irving’s] books are complicated presidents, I held, however foul the views contained therein, so that others can challenge them rigorously challenged my “not and refute them. . . .We do not wish inadvertently to suggest that we endorse good enough” voice; it has now Irving in any way—we emphatically do not.” become a light refrain rather than a strong presence. My passion Biography “Banned” at Symphony Event and determination to recreate life A biography of famed Canadian singer Rita MacNeil was not available for sale at a stories that resonate, I believe, recent tribute concert to her in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a move that the publisher account far more for my of I’m Not What I Seem: The Many Stories of Rita MacNeil’s Life said amounted accomplishments than does any to a ban on the book. In addition, the biographer, Charlie Rhindress, was not talent I possess. allowed to speak before the event honoring MacNeil. As reported by the CBC, We need grit to cope with the dead ends and roadblocks strewn open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com James Lorimer of Formac Publishing said that the decision to prevent sales of the dead ends and roadblocks strewn book and stop its author from speaking “in my mind, equals a ban.” Rhindress along our biographical journey. thought that characterization was a bit strong, though he expressed disappointment Psychologist Angela Duckworth’s at not being able to speak. For their part, Symphony Nova Scotia and MacNeil’s research suggests grit, the ability son, Wade Langham, said they simply wanted to focus book sales on MacNeil’s to meld passion with persistence over time, is a key factor in long- 1998 autobiography, On a Personal Note. term success. It may count more BIO Members Featured at Writers’ Conference than intelligence and talent in Kate Buford and John A. Farrell are two of several BIO members who will take predicting high levels of part in the fifth annual Washington Writers’ Conference on April 28–29 in achievement. Most importantly, Hyattsville, Maryland. For more information on the conference, go here. grit can be learned through practice. Saul Bellow’s Philosopher Looks at the Biography/Memoir Hybrid biographer, James Atlas, has had Writing for the website Literary Hub, philosophy professor John Kaag recently plenty of experience persisting in explored what he called “genre-transgressing works,” which include “biographies the face of big roadblocks. about writers, by writers, writing about themselves. Or memoirs by writers, “Everything was an obstacle with writing biographies about other authors.” Looking at the blending of genres led Saul Bellow,” Atlas told me. “I Kaag to ask, shouldn’t history and biography be objective, “a direct and accurate spent a decade trying to get him to representation of life in every detail?” He answered his own question this way: acknowledge that I was writing “Well, not exactly.” He then went on to defend the “memoir-cum-biography,” his biography. Twice I arrived at using Megan Marshall’s Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast as an example. the University of Chicago and You can read Kaag’s take on that book and the larger issue of “putting the I in found that he had closed the biography” here. And you can hear Marshall at the BIO Conference in Boston next archives to me.” Atlas captures month as she takes part in the panel, “Women in Love.” the essence of grit: “You drive that Avis Rent a Car,” he says, “to Authors Guild Offers Online Seminars see the old man who can’t The Authors Guild announced last month the second series of webinars it’s remember anything anyway,” and offering as part of its program, A Writer’s Guide to the New Publishing then you keep on going for the long haul. open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Ecosystem. The topics include “The Future of Fair Use” and “International long haul. Copyright Law.” Go here for more information on the webinars, which are open to As you deal with blocked non-members of the guild; note that the RSVP links in the PDF are not active, but access to archives, withdrawal of you can get more information by emailing the guild. (Thanks to TBC’s New York literary agreements, and rejection correspondent, Dona Munker, for passing this along.) of your requests for interviews, consider James Atlas’s hard- earned advice: “Thrust forward in Board Member the belief and the conviction that you are the one to write this book, Interview it needs to be done, and it will get done.” Six Questions However much we hope to escape our own untidy psyches, with James writing lives inevitably becomes a McGrath Morris self-prescribed course of psychotherapy. Being a biographer What is your current project and at may not be a job for the faint- what stage is it? hearted, but it is perfect for That’s simple—trying to persuade authors who relish an intellectual people to buy and read my new book stretch, like to test their persistence, and who want to The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, James McGrath Morris was one of the deepen their compassion for Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made founders of BIO and is the consutling themselves and the people they and Lost in War, out this month. I editor of TBC. live with, on and off the page. worked in publishing thirty years ago. Photo by Janet Harris, Courtesy of the The Biographer’s Shrink will Now with all the changes that have Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social continue in future columns with Change transpired in that world, I have no idea Part II, The Phases of Book what sells a book. Despair, and Part III, Living with Our Internal Editor. I will show open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Who is your favorite biographer or what is your favorite biography? Our Internal Editor. I will show W. A. Swanberg. how we can strengthen our capacity to succeed in the face of A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Swanberg got an editing job in New York internal and external obstacles. during the Great Depression. After World War II, during which he worked in the Office of War Information, he turned to freelance writing. Scribner’s bought his Will first biography. It was on Civil War general Daniel Edgar Sickles. He went on to Will Swift write eight more biographies before his death in 1992. BIO President My favorite of his was his biography of Norman Thomas. Of course, I became intimately familiar with his 1967 biography of Joseph Pulitzer because my Pulitzer biography was the first major one since Swanberg published his. When my book came out, the often-irascible Washington Post reviewer Jonathan Yardley wrote, “There have been other biographies of Pulitzer, most notably W. A. Swanberg’s published in 1967, but James McGrath Morris’s is the best.” As I considered Swanberg my mentor, though sadly we never meant, I was both happy and taken back about the comment. Happy that my book was regarded as better than that of my role model but sad in recognizing how biographers, over time, tend to replace our earlier colleagues. That’s not something that happens to novelists.

What have been your most satisfying moments as a biographer? Probably bringing attention to interesting people whom history forgot. This was particularly true with my biography Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, The First The Biographer's Diary Lady of the Black Press. Payne was a significantly important civil rights reporter who worked for the Chicago Defender, a nationally circulated African-American by Cathy Curtis newspaper. But after her death in 1991, no one had done a biography of her. In Biography vs. Memoir fact, her papers lay mostly un-catalogued in various archives. Only those in the Library of Congress were organized and accessible. It was a struggle but I won Sometimes I think of memoir as biography’s evil twin. A memoir is open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com permission to examine her papers in those other locations and then located people biography’s evil twin. A memoir is who knew her. a direct pipeline to the author’s My biography, published in 2015, is now on the shelf in many libraries, and I memories and beliefs. Writers are like the idea that future generations can learn about this extraordinary woman. free to spin a compelling tale of substance abuse, toxic What have been your most frustrating moments? relationships, personal growth, Being a biographer is constantly frustrating. I wanted, for instance, to write a heroic battles with disease, or biography of Edward Bellamy and found out his papers were burned in a fire. I religious revelation. There is no regularly come up with ideas for biographies that are immediately shot down. But need to be scrupulously truthful maybe the most frustrating moment was when I worked on my biography of (hey, that’s how I remember it!) Joseph Pulitzer. I kept finding tantalizing hints of letters by wife Kate Pulitzer and or to ferret out other people’s soon learned most of her papers were thrown out, a fate not uncommon to the potentially conflicting documents of women in the past. recollections. One research/marketing/attitudinal tip to share? Conversations can be totally That’s easy. One should start writing a biography the day one dreams up the invented. Whatever was going on project. When you think about it, the proposal is actually a short first draft. So I in the world at the time may be believe it’s a mistake to think one can research the book and then write it. The mentioned or ignored, according research and writing go hand in hand. Often you don’t know what it is you need to to the author’s whim. Terrible research until you try to tell the story. So my advice to everyone is that one start events can be revealed in writing right away. In short, write 1 percent of the time, research 99 percent of stomach-churning detail. The tone the time at the beginning of the project, until you are writing 99 percent of the time can be gracious, sentimental, and researching 1 percent of the time. humorous, joyous, or bitter. Authors are free to toss in recipes, inspirational poetry, or lists of Prizes lessons learned, free to pepper the pages with slang and four-letter National Book Critics Circle Award words. open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com words. Ruth Franklin’s Shirley Jackson: A Rather A serious biography, on the Haunted Life won the National Book other hand, is obliged to adhere to Critics Circle Award for Biography. certain unwritten rules, including Accepting her honor, Franklin said that truthfulness, research that surveys biography, perhaps more than any other the widest possible range of genre, “is written by many hands,” and sources, avoidance of ax-grinding she thanked the people who took time to and fake dialogue, careful At the BIO conference in Boston next speak to her, Franklin’s children for their documentation, discretion in month, Ruth Franklin will take part in cooperation, and the “people I never got to portraying intimate and disturbing the panel, "Women in Love." meet who preserved Jackson’s letters for scenes, and normative language. me one day to find.” Shirley Jackson and Memoirs are relaxing to read the winners in over five categories were chosen by the board of directors of the because they more closely National Book Critics Circle, an organization of literary critics and editors. resemble popular fiction and RBC Taylor Prize movies. No wonder that memoir Ross King won the RBC Taylor Prize for his biography Mad Enchantment: Claude devotees who venture into the Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies. The jury called King’s book “elegantly thickets of biography can feel written and superbly researched” and said it “will be essential reading for all who bored or betrayed. They thought want to understand the intersection of politics, nationalism, and culture in France they would be able to gallop during the First World War.” The RBC Taylor Prize honors the best Canadian through someone’s life in the nonfiction book of the previous year and comes with a cash award of Can$25,000 manner they’re used to, but ($18,640). names and dates and explanations are slowing them down. National Award for Arts Writing I think that BIO would do well Rachel Corbett won the National Award for Arts Writing for You Must Change to initiate memoir and fiction Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin. Also known as readers into the pleasures of our the Marfield Prize, the award is given annually by the Arts Club of Washington, kind of book through public D.C., to honor the author of a nonfiction book about the visual, literary, or discussions and posts on popular open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com discussions and posts on popular performing arts. On May 3, Corbett will attend a free public discussion of her blogs. What if BIO held a “What book at 6:30 p.m. at the Arts Club, located at 2017 I St. NW. Biography Means To Me” contest Audie Awards —not for us, but for the people The Audio Publishers Association has announced the finalists for its Audie we want to read our books. The Awards, given to the best recorded books and other spoken works. In the prize could be lunch or drinks History/Biography category, the finalists are: with a biographer, or a chance to take part in a public forum about In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the biography. Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors by Doug Stanton, narrated by Mark This contest could be a way of Boyett broadening our educational Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman, narrated by Jonathan Keeble component to embrace the reading A Time to Die by Robert Moore, narrated by Pete Cross public, without whom we would Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of be reduced to writing rather bitter the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick, narrated by Scott Brick memoirs of our own. The Year of Lear by James Shapiro, narrated by Robert Fass Winners will be announced on June 1. BIO's Board of Directors Research Tip Will Swift, President Deirdre David, Vice President The Modernist Journal Project If your subject was involved in the rise of modernism in the English-speaking Marc Leepson, Treasurer world, he or she may have contributed to one or more of the journals found Dean King, Secretary online at the Modernist Journal Project (MJP). A collaboration between Brown Kate Buford University and the University of Tulsa, the project has digital copies of many Cathy Curtis journals published between 1890 and 1922. The titles include McClure’s, The Oline Eaton open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Oline Eaton Crisis, Scribner’s, The Masses, and The Smart Set. Learn more about the MJP John A. Farrell here. Gayle Feldman Beverly Gray Obituaries Anne Heller Kitty Kelley Herbert Parmet Joshua Kendall Historian Herbert Parmet died January 25, in Newton, Massachusetts. He was 87. Heath Lee The son of immigrants, Parmet’s parents named him after Herbert Hoover, James McGrath Morris who was president at the time of his birth. Parmet received his undergraduate Hans Renders degree at SUNY Oswego and did graduate work at Queens College and Columbia Sonja Williams University before becoming a teacher. He co-wrote his first biography, of Aaron Burr, while teaching high school. He later taught at a New York community college before becoming a professor of history at the Graduate Center at the City Advisory Council University of New York. As a biographer, Parmet was best known for his books on U.S. presidents. His subjects included Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Debby Applegate, Chair Kennedy, and George H. W. Bush. His last book was Richard M. Nixon: An James Atlas American Enigma, published in 2008. Taylor Branch Douglas Brinkley Nicholas Mosley Robert Caro Nicholas Mosley, a novelist and biographer, died February 28, in London. He was 93. Tim Duggan When Mosley began his writing career in the 1950s, a publisher suggested he Amanda Foreman use a pen name to distance himself from his infamous father, Sir Oswald Mosley. Irwin Gellman The elder Mosley had founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932 and was an Michael Holroyd ardent supporter of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Mosley ignored the Eric Lax open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com suggestion and won fame as the writer of experimental novels. His nonfiction David Levering Lewis work included a two-volume study of his father’s life, written with the help of Andrew Lownie papers his father gave him after the two reconciled following a long falling out. Megan Marshall Mosley also wrote biographies of the poet Julian Grenfell and Leon Trotsky. John Matteson Jimmy Breslin Alice Mayhew Jimmy Breslin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York columnist and an author, died Jon Meacham March 19, in Manhattan. He was 88. Andrew Morton Breslin began his career in journalism as a copy boy before moving on to cover Joanny Moulin sports. He became a news columnist for the New York Herald Tribune in 1963, Arnold Rampersad and during his long career he became famous for championing New York’s Stacy Schiff underdogs and average Joes while challenging its elites. Noted for a polarizing personality, the New York Times wrote of Breslin, “Love or loathe him, none could Martin J. Sherwin deny Mr. Breslin’s enduring impact on the craft of narrative nonfiction.” Along T.J. Stiles with writing for several New York newspapers, Breslin published fiction and Jean Strousse nonfiction books, including biographies of Damon Runyon and Branch Rickey. William Taubman Terry Teachout Christina Vella Christina Vella, a historian and author of several biographies, died March 22, in New Orleans. She was 75. After completing her undergraduate degree through correspondence courses, The Biographer's Craft Vella went on to earn a PhD in history at Tulane, where she also taught. Her dissertation became her first book, Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Editor Baroness de Pontalba, which made several prominent “Best Book” lists for 1997. Michael Burgan Her other books included George Washington Carver: A Life (2015). At the time of her death, Vella had just completed a biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Consulting Editor open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com James McGrath Morris

The Writer's Life Copy Editor Margaret Moore Booker Tips for the Digital Nomad Freelance writers and independent scholars have long had Correspondents the freedom—or necessity—of working in many different United Kingdom Andrew Lownie locales. They can easily be digital nomads, a phrase that

was the title of a 1997 book that predicted the rise of greater freedom for people in Netherlands all fields. Mike Elgan, writing for Fast Company, recently looked at resources for Hans Renders digital nomads, what he called “the digital nomad industrial complex.” One tool is the app Work Hard Anywhere, a user-rated list of the best places to work when on India the go, from public spaces to coworking offices. Another resource is Hoffee: Ashok R. Chandran

similar to AirBnB, it lets the wandering writer rent temporary space in private Australia/New Zealand homes. Nomads tired of landing in hotels with abysmal WiFi service will like Hotel Todd Nicholls Wifi Test, a website that rates hotels by the speed of their Internet service. See Elgan’s full list of resources here. United States Sandra Kimberley Hall Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy (Hawaii) would. —Zadie Smith Pat McNees (Washington, D.C.)

News and Notes Dona Munker (New York) In our list last month of upcoming spring and summer releases, we included Stuart Isacoff’s To contact any of our correspondents, click here. When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn’s open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Cold War Triumph, and Its Aftermath for April but neglected to mention that he is a BIO member. Other members with titles out this month are John J. Winters, with a biography of Sam Shepard, and Mary Lynn Bayliss, with The Dooleys of Richmond: An Irish Immigrant Family in the Old and New South. In paperback this month is “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination by Annette Gordon-Reed and Stuart Isacoff's previous books include The Natural Peter S. Onuf and Michael McGregor’s Pure History of the Piano. Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax. This month’s listing of new sales features Stacy Schiff, who will be writing a biography of Samuel Adams. Abigail Santamaria and Ruth Franklin were included on The Gernert Company’s roundup of, in its words, “kickass female authors,” in honor of International Women’s Day. Congratulations to Ruth for winning the National Book Critic Circle’s award for best biography for Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. Ruth also recently reviewed The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon for the New York Times Book Review. For Women’s History Month, the Christian Science Monitor listed Megan Marshall’s Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast as one of three “captivating biographies.” Also for Women’s History Month, the “lifestyle blog” Thirty on Tap included James McGrath Morris’s Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press as one of six “must reads.” School Library Journal included Catherine Reef’s biography of Florence Nightingale as one of the 15 STEM titles that celebrate women in science. Back in February, James Atlas wrote “Headed for open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com the Graveyard of Books” for the New York Times Book Review. You can read it here. John A. Farrell has been busy of late. After the publication of his Richard Nixon: The Life, he appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews to discuss the similarities between his subject and Donald Trump and wrote an article with a similar theme for Vox. John’s book was also listed as “new and noteworthy” by USA Today. Jon Meacham was quoted by several media outlets when President Trump visited the Hermitage, the former home of Andrew Jackson, one of Jon’s subjects. Jon also appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio; you can listen to the program here. Earlier this year, C. M. Mayo, a native of El Paso, was elected to the Texas Institute of Letters. Jessica Max Stein recently posted an excerpt from her work-in-progress on Muppet performer Richard Hunt. Stephen H. Grant did an interview with the New Books Network on his Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger. Stephen informed us he’ll be discussing the book this October at several events in the UK, including the Festival of Ideas at Cambridge University. In March, Stacy Schiff was the latest BIO member to speak at the William B. Crawley Great Lives Lecture Series at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. She discussed her most recent book, The Witches. Stacy also reviewed Richard Holmes’s The Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer in the March 26 edition of the New York Times Book Review, which you can read here. Also last month, Carolyn J. Brown discussed her new book, The Artist’s Sketch: A Biography of Painter Kate Freeman Clark in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as part of a lecture series celebrating Mississippi’s bicentennial, hosted by the University of Southern Mississippi University Libraries’ Special Collections. Louise (Lucy) W. Knight gave a lecture in March called “Untold Stories: Enslaved People in the Home of the Grimké Family” at the Evanston History Center. It was based on her research for her forthcoming biography of Sarah and Angelina Grimké. Earlier in April, T. J. Stiles open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com spoke in Portland, Oregon, as part of the Mark O. Hatfield Distinguished Historians Forum. BIO was well represented at last month’s Virginia Festival of the Book. The members taking part were Kenneth Ackerman, Catherine Clinton, Ruth Franklin, Ted Geltner, Robert Kanigel, Michael Kranish, and David O. Stewart. Carl Rollyson’s review of Kay Redfield Jamison’s Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania & Character appears in this month’s The New Criterion. You can read it here. On April 19, Carl will be at the University of Virginia speaking on William Faulkner. Marlene Trestman spoke about her book, Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin, this month at the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia’s event in honor of Equal Pay Day. Also this month, Marc Leepson gave his first talk on his upcoming Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler from the Vietnam War and Pop Stardom to Murder in Leesburg, Virginia.

Send us your news!

In Stores

open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Sam Shepard: A Life The Dooleys of Richmond: An Irish by John J. Winters Immigrant Family in the Old and New (Counterpoint) South by Mary Lynn Bayliss When the World Stopped to Listen: Van (University of Virginia Press) Cliburn’s Cold War Triumph, and Its Aftermath Milosz: A Biography by Stuart Isacoff by Andrzej Franaszek, translated by (Knopf ) Aleksandra Parker and Michael Parker (Belknap Press) Obama: The Call of History by Peter Baker Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and (Abrams) Home Runs in the Shadow of War by Ron Kaplan Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, (Sports Publishing) Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Sarazen: The Story of a Golfing Legend Europe and His Epic Moment by John Julius Norwich by David Sowell (Atlantic Monthly) (Rowman & Littlefield) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com 30 Days a Black Man: The Forgotten Bruce Goff: Architecture of Discipline in Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South Freedom by Bill Steigerwald by Arn Henderson (Lyons Press) (University of Oklahoma Press)

Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, The Boatman: Henry David Thoreau’s Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce River Years War by Robert M. Thorson by Daniel J. Sharfstein (Harvard University Press) (W. W. Norton) Beyond the Inquisition: Ambrogio Catarino The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Politi and the Origins of the Counter- Peoples Temple Reformation by Jeff Guinn by Giorgio Caravale, translated by Don (Simon & Schuster) Weinstein (University of Notre Dame Press) Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg Harry Langdon: King of Silent Comedy (Oxford University Press) by Gabriella Oldham and Mabel Langdon (University Press of Kentucky) Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night by Jason Zinoman Chrissie Hynde: A Musical Biography (HarperCollins) by Adam Sobsey (University of Texas Press) Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Edward Seymour: Lord Protector: Tudor Profiling King in All but Name by Michael Cannell by Margaret Scard (Minotaur) (The History Press)

open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli’s Lifelong Years Quest for Freedom by Wayne Franklin by Erica Benner (Yale University Press) (Allen Lane)

Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne: A The Ladies of Llangollen: Desire, Life in Several Acts Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of by Robert Hofler Criticism (University of Wisconsin Press) by Fiona Brideoake (Bucknell University Press) Jane Welsh Carlyle and Her Victorian World: A Story of Love, Work, Marriage, Robert Fortune: A Plant Hunter in the and Friendship Orient by Kathy Chamberlain by Alistair Watt (Overlook) (Royal Botanic Gardens)

Prince Charles: The Passions and Hugh Casey: The Triumphs and Tragedies Paradoxes of an Improbable Life of a Brooklyn Dodger by Sally Bedell Smith by Lyle Spatz (Random House) (Rowman & Littlefield)

The Black Hand: The Epic War Between So High a Blood: The Story of Margaret a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Douglas, the Tudor that Time Forgot Secret Society in American History by Morgan Ring by Stephan Talty (Bloomsbury USA) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Radicalism and Reputation: The Career of Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Bronterre O’Brien Curry by Michael J. Turner by Marcus Thompson (Michigan State University Press) (Touchstone) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Photography and American Coloniality: Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Eliot Elisofon in Africa, 1942–1972 Henry VIII’s True Wife by Raoul J. Granqvist by Amy Licence (Michigan State University Press) (Amberley) Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, The Destruction of Hillary Clinton Secrets, and Lies in France’s Indian Ocean by Susan Bordo Colonies (Melville House) by Sue Peabody (Oxford University Press) Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker Emmeline B. Wells: An Intimate History by Stephen Galloway by Carol Cornwall Madsen (Crown Archetype) (University of Utah Press)

Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty America’s Best Female Sharpshooter: The by John B. Boles Rise and Fall of Lillian Frances Smith (Basic Books) by Julia Bricklin (University of Oklahoma Press) Alexander Hamilton’s Revolution: His Vital Role as Washington’s Chief of Staff The Whisky King: The Remarkable True by Phillip Thomas Tucker story of Canada’s Most Infamous (Skyhorse Publishing) Bootlegger and the Undercover Mountie on His Trail My Fellow Soldiers: General John by Trevor Cole Pershing and the Americans Who Helped (HarperCollins) Win the Great War by Andrew Carroll My Brother’s Keeper: George McGovern (Penguin) and Progressive Christianity by Mark A. Lempke H. H. Holmes: The True History of the (University of Massachusetts Press) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com White City Devil by Adam Selzer The Late Lord: The Life of John Pitt—2nd (Skyhorse Publishing) Earl of Chatham by Jacqueline Reiter The Man Who Designed the Future: (Pen and Sword) Norman Bel Geddes and the Invention of Twentieth-Century America Death Was Their Co-Pilot: Aces of the by B. Alexandra Szerlip Skies (Melville House) by Michael Dorflinger (Pen and Sword) Arnie: The Life of Arnold Palmer by Tom Callahan John F. Kennedy: The Life and Death of a (Harper) US President by Charlotte Montague The Lowells of Massachusetts: An (Chartwell Books) American Family by Nina Sankovitch The Rabbinate in Stormy Days: The Life (St. Martin’s Press) and Teachings of Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac HaLevi Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Israel Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story by Shaul Mayzlish of a Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible (Gefen Publishing House) Year by Peter Brooks The Gaithers and Southern Gospel: (Basic Books) Homecoming in the Twenty-First Century by Ryan P. Harper Monsters of the Ivy League (University Press of Mississippi) by Steve Radlauer and Ellis Weiner (Little, Brown and Company) American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream 42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson by Julia L. Mickenberg Story (University of Chicago Press) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com by Ed Henry (Thomas Nelson) The Rise and Fall of Owain Glyn Dŵr: England, France and the Welsh Rebellion in Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son the Late Middle Ages by Paul Dickson by Gideon Brough (Bloomsbury) (I.B. Tauris)

Pirate Women: The Princesses, Great Desert Explorers Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the by Andrew Goudie Seven Seas (Silphium Press) by Laura Sook Duncombe (Chicago Review Press) Lady Anne Blunt in the Middle East by Lisa Lacy Maximum Harm: The Tsarnaev (I.B. Tauris) Brothers, the FBI, and the Road to the Marathon Bombing Frederick Novy and the Development of by Michele R. McPhee Bacteriology in Medicine (ForeEdge) by Powel Harold Kazanjian (Rutgers University Press) Urban Shocker: Silent Hero of Baseball’s Golden Age Proust and His Banker: In Search of Time by Steve Steinberg Squandered (University of Nebraska Press) by Gian Balsamo (University of South Carolina Press) Lincoln’s Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac M. S. Swaminathan: Legend in Science and by Stephen W. Sears Beyond (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by P. C. Kesavan (World Scientific Publishing Company) Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter The Lawyers Who Made America: From open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com by Matthew Dennison Jamestown to the White House (Pegasus Books) by Anthony Arlidge (Hart Publishing) Notes from the Velvet Underground: The Life of Lou Reed The Life of Robert Frost by Howard Sounes by Henry Hart (Transworld Publishers) (Wiley-Blackwell)

The Trials of Walter Ogrod: The Talleyrand in London: The Master Shocking Murder, So-Called Confessions, Diplomat’s Last Mission and Notorious Snitch That Sent a Man to by Linda Kelly Death Row (I.B. Tauris) by Thomas Lowenstein (Chicago Review Press) Navigating a Life: Henry Bloch in World War II The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe by John Herron and Mary Ann Wynkoop Norman Story (BkMk Press) by Tim O’Connor (Brown Books Publishing Group) Charlie Chaplin: A Political Biography from Victorian Britain to Modern America Manderley Forever: A Biography of by Richard Carr Daphne du Maurier (Routledge) by Tatiana de Rosnay, translated by Sam Taylor Odd Man Out: The Fascinating Story of (St. Martin's Press) Ron Saunders’ Reign at Aston Villa by Graham Denton Three Minutes to Doomsday: An Agent, a (Pitch Publishing) Traitor, and the Worst Espionage Breach in U.S. History Fearless Freddie: The Life and Times of by Joe Navarro Freddie Mills (Scribner) by Chris Evans open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com (Pitch Publishing) Man-Hunters of the Old West by Robert K. DeArment John (University of Oklahoma Press) by Nick Vincent (Allen Lane) Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South Lost Warriors of the Forgotten War: by Leonard Rogoff Seagrim and Pagani’s War in the Burma (University of North Carolina Press) Jungle by Philip Davies Suncoast Empire: Bertha Honore Palmer, (Atlantic Publishing) Her Family, and the Rise of Sarasota, 1910–1982 Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient by Frank A. Cassell Philosopher (Pineapple Press) by Edward J. Watts (Oxford University Press) David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet Force of Nature: George Fell, Founder of by Thomas Dilworth the Natural Areas Movement (Jonathan Cape) by Arthur Melville Pearson (University of Wisconsin Press) Lou Harrison: American Musical Maverick Hayim Nahman Bialik: Poet of Hebrew by Bill Alves and Brett Campbell by Avner Holtzman, translated by Orr (Indiana University Press) Scharf (Yale University Press) Rough Justice: The True Story of Agent Dronkers, the Enemy Spy Captured by the Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble British of Chicago by David Tremain by Paul Steinbeck (Amberley) (University of Chicago Press) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Mrs Keppel: Mistress to the King The Stranger in the Woods: The by Tom Quinn Extraordinary Story of the Last True (Biteback Publishing) Hermit by Michael Finkel Hemingway’s Brain (Knopf) by Andrew Farah (University of South Carolina Press) Lalo Alcaraz: Political Cartooning in the Latino Community James Hunt by Hector D. Fernandez L’Hoeste by Maurice Hamilton (University Press of Mississippi) (Blink Publishing)

To Raise and Discipline an Army: Major General Enoch Crowder, the Judge Advocate General’s Office, and the Realignment of Civil and Military Relations in World War I by Joshua E. Kastenberg (Northern Illinois University Press)

Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940– 1941 by Mike Bechthold (University of Oklahoma Press)

The Life and Times of General Andrew Pickens: Revolutionary War Hero, American Founder by Rod Andrew open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com (University of North Carolina Press)

Breaker Morant: The Final Roundup by Joe West and Roger Roper (Amberley)

Bob Crow—Socialist, Leader, Fighter: A Political Biography by Gregor Gall (Manchester University Press)

Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg by Vanessa K. Valdés (SUNY Press)

Our Good and Faithful Servant: James Moore Wayne and Georgia Unionism by Joel McMahon (Mercer University Press)

On Strawberry Hill: The Transcendent Love of Gifford Pinchot and Laura Houghteling by Paula Ivaska Robbins (University of Alabama Press)

Elie Wiesel: Humanist Messenger for Peace by Alan L. Berger (Routledge) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves by Marie Jenkins Schwartz (University of Chicago Press)

Paperback

open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Idris Elba: So, Now What? Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the by Nadia Cohen Imagination (John Blake) by Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf Richard II and the Rebel Earl (Liveright) by A. K. Gundy (Cambridge University Press) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Paul Bartel: The Life and Films (Broadway Books) by Stephen B. Armstrong (McFarland) American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Therese Vanier: Pioneer of L'Arche, Hearst Palliative Care and Spiritual Unity by Jeffrey Toobin by Ann Shearer (Anchor) (Darton, Longman & Todd)

Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary A. E. Housman: A Single Life Journey of John L. Stephens and by Martin Blocksidge Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery (Sussex Academic Press) of the Lost Civilization of the Maya by William Carlsen Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life (William Morrow) by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine So Let It Be Written: The Biography of (Oxford University Press) Metallica’s James Hetfield by Mark Eglinton Major General Israel Putnam: Hero of the (Lesser Gods) American Revolution by Robert Ernest Hubbard Einstein: His Life and Universe (McFarland) by Walter Isaacson open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com (Simon & Schuster) Bale: World’s Greatest by Frank Worrall The Midnight Assassin: The Hunt for (John Blake) America’s First Serial Killer by Skip Hollandsworth Warriors, Saints, and Scoundrels: Brief (Picador) Portraits of Real People Who Shaped Wisconsin Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. by Michael Edmonds and Samantha Adams Snyder by Louisa Thomas (Wisconsin Historical Society Press) (Penguin Books) Joseph Carter Corbin: Educator The Last Goodnight: A World War II Extraordinaire and Founder of the Story of Espionage, Adventure, and University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Betrayal by Gladys Turner Finney by Howard Blum (Butler Center for Arkansas Studies) (Harper Perennial) Joe Gould’s Teeth Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and by Jill Lepore Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy (Vintage) Daughter by Barbara Leaming Captain “Hell Roaring” Mike Healy: (Thomas Dunne) From American Slave to Arctic Hero by Dennis L. Noble and Truman R. George Michael: The Life: 1963–2016 Strobridge by Emily Herbert (University Press of Florida) (Lesser Gods) American Huckster: How Chuck Blazer Jurgen Klopp: The Biography Got Rich from—and Sold Out—the Most by Elmar Neveling Powerful Cabal in World Sports (Ebury Press) by Mary Papenfuss and Teri Thompson open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com (Harper) The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt, A Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph Hegel’s Owl: The Life of Bernard Smith of American Natural History by Sheridan Palmer by Darrin Lunde (Power Publications) (Broadway Books) Speer: Hitler’s Architect The Whole Harmonium: The Life of by Martin Kitchen Wallace Stevens (Yale University Press) by Paul Mariani (Simon & Schuster) Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts: Diplomacy, War, and the The Six Wives & Many Mistresses of Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century Henry VIII: The Women’s Stories New England and Indian Country by Amy Licence by Julie A. Fisher and David J. Silverman (Amberley) (Cornell University Press)

Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Find Me a New Way to Die: Edith Piaf— Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the The Untold Story Justice that Money Can Buy: The by David Bret Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein (Oberon Books) by James Patterson, John Connolly, and Tim Malloy Charles Walters: The Director Who Made (Grand Central Publishing) Hollywood Dance by Brent Phillips Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert (University Press of Kentucky) Lax by Michael N. McGregor Winnie & George: An Unlikely Union (Fordham University Press) by Allison Murphy (Dufour Editions) We the People: The Modern-Day Figures open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Who Have Reshaped and Affirmed the The Animals’ Freedom Fighter: A Founding Fathers’ Vision of America Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the by Juan Williams Animal Liberation Front (Broadway Books) by Jon Hochschartner (McFarland) The Durrells of Corfu by Michael Haag Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen (Profile Books) Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman The Logician and the Engineer: How by Brooke Hauser George Boole and Claude Shannon (Harper) Created the Information Age by Paul J. Nahin Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood (Princeton University Press) Radical by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Bruce Dickinson: Maiden Voyage: The Trumbo Biography (University Press of Kentucky) by Joe Shooman (John Blake) Alcala Zamora and the Failure of the Spanish Republic, 1931–1936 The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee by Stanley Payne by R. David Cox (Sussex Academic Press) (Eerdmans) Dostoyevsky: A Life of Contradiction The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous & by Judith Gunn Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s (Amberley) First Supermodel by James Bone Richard III (Regan Arts) by Michael Hicks (The History Press) Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com by Michael Schulman Voice of the Old Wolf: Lucullus Virgil (Harper) McWhorter and the Nez Perce Indians by Steven Ross Evans Gordon Welchman: Bletchley Park’s (Washington State University Press) Architect of Ultra Intelligence by Joel Greenberg Emma Lazarus (Frontline Books) by Esther Schor (Schocken) Backstairs Billy: The Life of William Tallon, the Queen Mother’s Most Devoted Black Saint of the Americas: The Life and Servant Afterlife of Martín de Porres by Tom Quinn by Celia Cussen (The Robson Press) (Cambridge University Press)

Finding Sanity: John Cade, Lithium and Voice of Business: The Man Who the Taming of Bipolar Disorder Transformed the United States Chamber of by Greg de Moore and Ann Westmore Commerce (Allen & Unwin) by Richard Lesher and Dave Scheiber (Indiana University Press) Colonel Sanders and the American Dream Finding John Rae by Josh Ozersky by Alice Jane Hamilton (University of Texas Press) (Ronsdale Press)

Mrs. Luther and Her Sisters: Women in Louis Riel: Let Justice Be Done The Reformation by David Doyle by Derek Wilson (Ronsdale Press) (Lion Hudson) Katya & The Prince of Siam Wisconsin Literary Luminaries: From by Narisa Chakrabongse Laura Ingalls Wilder to Ayad Akhtar (River Books Press) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com by Jim Higgins (The History Press) Mickey Rooney: A Show Business Life by James A. Maceachern Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, S.J.: With an (McFarland) Undivided Heart by Silas Henderson The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Herschel’s (Ignatius Press) Astronomical Ambition by Claire Brock Heaven’s Wind: The Life and Teachings (Icon Books) of Nakamura Tempu—A Mind-Body Integration Pioneer Oupa, OBE: Family Man, Fighter, Friend; by Stephen Earle Major Richard Granville Nicholson (North Atlantic Books) by Shelagh Nation (30 Degrees South Publishers) Lana Turner: Hearts and Diamonds Take All Sisters of the Revolutionaries: The Story of by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince Margaret and Mary Brigid Pearse (Blood Moon Productions) by Teresa O’Donnell and Mary Louise O’Donnell Theresa May: The Downing Street (Merrion Press) Revolution by Virginia Blackburn The Ballad of Danny Wolfe: A Story of a (John Blake) Canadian Outlaw by Joe Friesen Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis (Signal) and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day The Pilgrimage and Conversion of by Katharine Lane Antolini Thomas Chalmers: Following His Journey (West Virginia University Press) from Anstruther to Glasgow by David C. Jackson Constantine (Lutterworth Press) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com by Werner de Saeger (The History Press) Fiery Joe: The Maverick Who Lit Up the West A Wife’s Heart: The Untold Story of by Kathleen Carlisle Bertha and Henry Lawson (University of Regina Press) by Kerrie Davies (University of Queensland Press) The Life of Yellowstone Kelly by Jerry Keenan Turing’s Vision: The Birth of Computer (University of New Mexico Press) Science by Chris Bernhardt Charles Urban: Pioneering the Non- (MIT Press) Fiction Film in Britain and America, 1897– 1925 The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall by Luke McKernan of Jack and Bobby (University of Exeter Press) by Richard D. Mahoney (Arcade Publishing) Helena Molony: A Radical Life, 1883– 1967 The Odyssey of Texas Ranger James by Nell Regan Callahan (Arlen House) by Joseph Luther (The History Press) George Russell (AE) and the New Ireland, 1905–30 The Salvager: The Life of Captain Tom by Nicholas Allen Reid on the Great Lakes (Four Courts Press) by Mary Frances Doner (University of Minnesota Press) Surreal Lovers: Eight Women Integral to the Life of Max Ernst The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A by Margaret Hooks Woman’s Work in Archaeology (La Fabrica) by Kathleen L. Sheppard open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com (Lexington Books) Flying into Danger: The Paul Brickhill Story So High a Blood: The Life of Margaret, by John Ramsland Countess of Lennox (Brolga Publishing) by Morgan Ring (Bloomsbury Publishing) Ruth Davidson: And the Resurgence of the Scottish Tories Elie Wiesel: Humanist Messenger for by Andrew Liddle Peace (Biteback Publishing) by Alan L. Berger (Routledge) Avis Glaze: The Children Cannot Wait by Roderick Benns Evelyn Dove (FriesenPress) by Stephen Bourne (Jacaranda)

The Promise of Francis: The Man, the Pope, and the Challenge of Change by David Willey (Gallery Books)

One in a Billion: The Story of Nic Volker and the Dawn of Genomic Medicine by Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher (Simon & Schuster)

Early Auden, Later Auden: A Critical Biography by Edward Mendelson (Princeton University Press) open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Amanuensis

Amanuensis: A person whose employment is to write what another dictates, or to copy what another has written. Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913).

(Note: This month's Amanuensis was taken from the transcript of an interview and has been slightly edited for clarity.)

When Reiner Stach had the idea of writing the biography—there are remarkably few biographies of Kafka, and he was surprised and dismayed at the paucity of material about Kafka’s life—there were plenty of studies of his works, but not of his life. And he, in investigating some of the particulars of Kafka’s childhood, realized that because some papers in Israel were not accessible to scholars, that there was a treasure trove there that he could not gain access to. So, he decided to start with—and there was a court case in the Israel courts about making these papers accessible to the public—the middle years, where the archival material was available to scholars and then to write about the final years. And his calculation was that, in the meantime, these papers would become available that applied primarily open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com to Kafka’s childhood, and that he’d be able to fill in the gaps there. Well, it didn’t happen exactly like that because there were various appeals in court. Even after the women holding onto these papers did not prevail in court, they appealed and the papers were still held in abeyance and nobody could get to them. So, Reiner Stach was able—through various basically anonymous sources that I can’t name either—[to] gain access to three volumes of Max Brod’s diaries, his literary executor’s diaries [which were the ones being held up]. [more]

“Shelley Frisch on Voice in Translation”

This email was sent to . To ensure that you continue receiving our emails, please add us to your address book or safe list. manage your preferences | opt out using TrueRemove®

open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com Subscribe to our email list

open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com