Seymour M. Hersh, “Reporter: A Memoir” (Knopf, 2018)
In about 1978, I found myself in my high school library. I don’t know why I was there except to say I was probably on detention; I didn’t do a lot of reading in those days. In any event, I was wanderi...
10 Sep 20181h
Marc Leeds, “The Vonnegut Encyclopedia” (Delacorte Press, 2016)
Originally published in 1994, Marc Leeds’ The Vonnegut Encyclopedia (Delacorte Press, 2016) was initially conceived of as a comprehensive A-Z guide to the expansive oeuvre of the American author Kurt ...
5 Sep 20181h 40min
Richard A. Billows, “Before and After Alexander: The Legend and Legacy of Alexander the Great” (The Overlook Press, 2018)
The achievements of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great are often presented as primarily the work of a singular genius. As Richard A. Billows demonstrates in his book Before and After Alexand...
23 Aug 201856min
Brian Abrams, “Obama: An Oral History, 2009-2017” (Little A, 2018)
Brian Abrams interviewed more than 100 people – Democrats, Republicans, cabinet officials, White House aides, campaign operatives, congresspeople and activists – to piece together a comprehensive oral...
21 Aug 201844min
Jenny Hale Pulispher, “Swindler Sachem: The American Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, and Conned the King of England” (Yale UP, 2018)
In Swindler Sachem: The American Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, and Conned the King of England (Yale University Press, 2018), Brigham Young University Associate Professor Jenn...
20 Aug 20181h 8min
Bob Brody, “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age” (Heliotrope Books, 2017)
There comes a time in every man’s life when he’s got to grow up. Personally, I found growing up very hard. I went to college and fell in love with it. And what’s not to love? You meet really interesti...
16 Aug 20181h 1min
Duane W. Roller, “Cleopatra’s Daughter: And Other Royal Women of the Augustan Era” (Oxford UP, 2018)
For the most part women in the classical world have suffered from what Duane W. Roller terms “near-invisibility,” obscuring the consequential roles that at times they played in government and politics...
10 Aug 201843min
Vanessa Valdés, “Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg” (SUNY Press, 2018)
As every scholar of African Americans knows, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is an essential resource for black history. But who was Schomburg? In Diasporic Blackness: The Life...
3 Aug 20181h 7min
