Timothy Shenk, “Maurice Dobb: Political Economist” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013)
The British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb is now largely forgotten. That’s too bad for a number of reasons. He was a brilliant thinker who wrote some of the most insightful analyses of the developmen...
22 Feb 20141h 3min
Robert Neer, “Napalm: An American Biography” (Harvard UP, 2013)
Just as there is no one way to write a biography, nor should there be, so there is no rule dictating that biography must be about the life of a person. In recent years, the jettisoning of this traditi...
13 Feb 201447min
Michael O’Brien, ed., “The Letters of C. Vann Woodward” (Yale UP, 2013)
Few historians have influenced their field the way that C. Vann Woodward (1908-99) changed the writing of southern history. First at Johns Hopkins and then at Yale, Woodward’s books, reviews, and ment...
5 Feb 201457min
Adam Henig, “Alex Haley’s Roots: An Author’s Odyssey” (2014)
Alex Haley’s 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family still stands as a memorable epic journey into the history of African Americans during the enslavement period and after. The 1977 televised ...
5 Feb 201444min
Patricia Ebrey, “Emperor Huizong” (Harvard University Press, 2014)
Patricia Ebrey‘s beautifully written and exhaustively researched new book introduces readers to an emperor of China as artist, collector, father, ruler, scholar, patron, and human being. Emperor Huizo...
3 Feb 20141h 6min
Lauren Coodley, “Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013)
Everybody knows the author of The Jungle was Upton Sinclair (or, if they’re a little confused, they might say Sinclair Lewis). As Lauren Coodley shows in her new biography Upton Sinclair: California ...
1 Feb 201457min
Clare Mulley, “The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville” (St. Martin’s, 2013)
It’s almost a cliché by now to say that we need stories of strong women, but that doesn’t lessen the fact that we do. And biography is a field uniquely poised to transmit such stories- of compelling,...
31 Jan 201441min
Xolela Mangcu, “Biko: A Life” (Tauris, 2013)
Host Jonathan Judaken speaks with Xolela Mangcu, biographer of Anti-Apartheid leader Steve Biko, about the life and murder of Steve Biko, as well as the struggle for equality in South Africa under Apa...
25 Jan 201433min
