Joseph McBride, "George Cukor's People: Acting for a Master Director" (Columbia UP, 2024)
The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam's Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cukor is widely admired but often misunderstood. Reductive...
21 Dec 20241h 52min
Paul French, "Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)
When defenders of the British royal family scrounged around for dirt on Wallis Simpson, the divorced U.S.-born fiancee of King Edward VIII, they often highlighted her year spent in China—often sharing...
19 Dec 202446min
Dianne Ashton and Melissa R. Klapper, "The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai" (NYU Press, 2024)
Emma Mordecai lived an unusual life. She was Jewish when Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population of the Old South, and unmarried in a culture that offered women few options other than mar...
15 Dec 202456min
Emanuela Trevisan Semi, "Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers" (Centro Primo Levi, 2018)
Emanuela Trevisan Semi’s Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers (Centro Primo Levi, 2018) is an insightful biographical study of a key figure among Ethiop...
14 Dec 20241h 34min
Beth Kaplan, "Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin" (Syracuse UP, 2007)
Born of an Anglican mother and a Jewish father who disdained religion, Kaplan knew little of her Judaic roots and less about her famed great-grandfather until beginning her research, more than twenty ...
12 Dec 20241h 6min
David J. Collins, SJ, "Disenchanting Albert the Great: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Magician" (Penn State UP, 2024)
David J Collins, SJ joins Jana Byars to talk about Disenchanting Albert the Great: the Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Magician (Penn State Press, 2024). Albert the Great (1200–1280) was a prominent ...
12 Dec 20241h 4min
Rebecca Brenner Graham, "Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany" (Citadel Press, 2025)
She was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving Labor Secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these celebrated accomplishments there is another dimensio...
10 Dec 202443min
Henri Colt, "Becoming Modigliani" (Rake Press, 2024)
Becoming Modigliani (Rake Press, 2024) is a comprehensive biography that delves into the troubled life of the Jewish-Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.; Written by Dr. Henri Colt, an internationally re...
9 Dec 202454min
