June Purvis, “Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography” (Routledge, 2018)
Despite her prominent role in the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain, Christabel Pankhurst has not received the same degree of attention from scholars that had been given to her mother Emmelin...
3 Apr 201839min
Bonnie Anderson, “The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer” (Oxford UP, 2017)
As a believer in free thought, a campaigner for women’s rights, and as a supporter of abolition, Ernestine Rose had no shortage of causes to advocate. In The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, ...
26 Mar 201847min
Alexander Orwin, “Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi” (U Penn Press, 2017)
Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950) a philosopher who wrote on politics, metaphysics, and logic as well as mathematics, psychology, and music, was known by Jews, Christians, and Muslims as the “secon...
19 Mar 201844min
Andrew Lees, “Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment” (Notting Hill Editions, 2017)
Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill Editions, 2017) is a fascinating account by one of the world’s leading and most decorated neurologists of the profound influence of...
12 Mar 20181h 3min
Jean R. Freedman, “Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics” (U Illinois Press, 2017)
When folklorist Jean Freedman first met Peggy Seeger in 1979, Freedman was an undergraduate on her junior year abroad in London, while her American compatriot had been living in the UK for two decades...
8 Mar 20181h 6min
Sterling Murray, “The Career of an Eighteenth-Century Kapellmeister: The Life and Music of Antonio Rosetti” (U Rochester Press, 2014)
Though he never enjoyed the fame of his contemporaries Mozart and Haydn, Antonio Rosetti was a successful composer whose works received a wide audience. In his book, The Career of an Eighteenth-Centur...
5 Mar 201854min
David Weinstein, “The Eddie Cantor Story: A Jewish Life in Performance and Politics” (Brandeis UP, 2017)
Eddie Cantor was once among the most popular performers in the United States. He was influential and innovative on stage, radio, and film from the early twentieth century though the early 1960s. He is...
5 Mar 20181h 1min
Daniel B. Schwartz, “The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image” (Princeton UP, 2012)
Benedito/Baruch/Benedict Spinoza (1623-1677) lived at the crossroads of Dutch, scholastic, and Jewish worlds. Excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam at 23, his works would later be put ...
2 Mar 201859min
