David Potter, “Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint” (Oxford UP, 2015)
Thanks to the writings of Procopius and other detractors, the Byzantine empress Theodora (c. 495-548 CE) has long been viewed as a depraved and spiteful woman who was a negative influence on her husba...
26 Jun 201657min
Marlene Trestman, “Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin” (Louisiana State UP, 2016)
As a trailblazing attorney, Bessie Margolin lived a life of exceptional achievement. At a time when the legal profession consisted almost entirely of men, she earned the esteem of her colleagues and r...
26 Jun 20161h 22min
Thomas Knock, “Rise of a Prairie Statesman: The Life and Times of George McGovern” (Princeton UP, 2016)
George McGovern is largely remembered today for his dramatic loss to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential campaign, yet he enjoyed a long career characterized by many remarkable achievements. In Ris...
19 Jun 20161h 17min
Ed Berlin, “King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era” (Oxford UP, 2016)
Few composers dominate a genre of music as completely as did Scott Joplin. From the publication of his iconic Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 onward his ragtime compositions came to serve as the soundtrack of ...
15 Jun 20161h 2min
Steve Kemper, “A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham” (W. W. Norton, 2016)
In A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham (W. W. Norton, 2016), freelance journalist Steve Kemper details the adventurous, wandering life of the man who later inspired the c...
13 Jun 201632min
Roger Daniels, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road to the New Deal, 1882-1939” (U Illinois Press, 2015)
For all that has been written about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, many misconceptions about the man and his achievements continue to persist. Roger Daniels seeks to correct these in a new two-volume biog...
2 Jun 201658min
Brooke Hauser, “Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman”
“Women’s history, if they had any, consisted in their being beautiful enough to become events in male lives,” the feminist academic Carolyn R. Heilbrun noted in a series of 1997 lectures, suggesting t...
20 Mai 201648min
Mel Scult, “The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan” (Indiana UP, 2013)
In The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Indiana University Press, 2013), Mel Scult, professor emeritus at Brooklyn College, explores the ways in which Mordecai Kaplan, the only rabbi to...
16 Mai 201629min
