Denise Von Glahn, “Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life” (U Illinois Press,
There are few living American classical composers for whom an academic biography has been published, but Libby Larsen deserves this type of study. At the opening of her book, Libby Larsen: Composing a...
26 Jun 20181h 3min
Natalie Robins, “The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling” (Columbia UP, 2017)
In her new book, The Untold Journey: The Life of Diana Trilling (Columbia University Press, 2017), Natalie Robins examines the life of writer and socialite Diana Trilling (1905-1996). Trilling wrote f...
22 Jun 201853min
Victor Li, “Nixon in New York: How Wall Street Helped Richard Nixon Win the White House” (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2018)
In 1962 Richard Nixon suffered a humiliating defeat in the California gubernatorial election, one that led him to declare an end to his career in politics. What followed was one of the most remarkable...
20 Jun 20181h 4min
Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide” (Princeton UP, 2018)
As a graduate student, I spent quite a bit of time explaining to people how we needed to pay much more attention to the history of World War One in the East. What I didn’t realize is that we needed t...
19 Jun 20181h 22min
Jacqueline Jones, “Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical” (Basic Books, 2017)
The award-winning author Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History at the University of Texas. Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical (Basic Bo...
18 Jun 201853min
William E. Ellis, “Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of an American Humorist” (UP of Kentucky, 2017)
Today Irvin S. Cobb is remembered primarily as an author of humorous tales about life in Kentucky. Yet as William E. Ellis describes in his book Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of an American Humoris...
13 Jun 201852min
Lisa Walters, “Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science, and Politics” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
As a 17th-century noblewoman who became the first duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the writer and philosopher Margaret Cavendish has often been viewed as a royalist and a conservative within the contex...
12 Jun 201849min
Ronald P. Loftus, “The Turn Against the Modern: The Critical Essays of Taoka Reiun (1870-1912)” (Association for Asian Studies, 2017)
Taoka Reiun (1870-1912) was a literary critic and thinker who was active from the early 1890s in Meiji period Japan. Not satisfied with the meaning of bunmei kaika (“civilization and enlightenment”), ...
8 Jun 20181h 13min
