New Books in Biography & Memoir

A memoir of basketball, dedication, and longevity from Boston Celtics legend Robert Parish Growing up in the heart of Louisiana, Robert Parish and his three younger siblings played baseball, football, and tennis―but never basketball. Still, by seventh grade, Parish stood 6'6" and couldn't escape the attention of Coleman Kidd, the junior high basketball coach who saw potential before Parish could see it in himself. And though he was the worst player on the team that first season―handed the last jersey left, No. 00―it would become the number that now hangs in the Boston Garden rafters. In The Chief: The Story of the Boston Celtics’ Most Enigmatic Icon (Triumph, 2026), the famously reserved Parish opens up for the first time about the full scope of his life―from attending a predominantly white high school during the uneasy years of integration to becoming the anchor of one of the greatest teams in NBA history. With honesty, humility, and plenty of dry humor, Parish reflects on his start with the Golden State Warriors and his trade to Boston, the years alongside Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, the Celtics’ epic rivalries of the 1980s, and the later years with the Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls, finally walking away from the game on his own terms. Insightful, introspective, and powerful, The Chief is a rare look into the life of an NBA giant who always let his game do the talking―until now. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Salt lakes are some of the most beautiful and unusual landscapes that you can find on this planet, even as they can be quite alien to people used to fresh bodies of water. They're also uniquely threatened, both by everyday human activity such as farming and industry and by the looming problem of anthropogenic climate change. As the lakes dry up, the consequences to the surrounding ecosystems can be devastating; meanwhile, people who live nearby can suffer from declining air quality, toxic levels of exposure to minerals in the lakebeds, and long-term health concerns. In Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History (W. W. Norton, 2026) that's part memoir and part history and geography, Caroline Tracey describes a series of journeys across North America and Central Asia that brought her close to numerous different salt lakes. She outlines their history, the threats facing them, their ecological and cultural significance, and how people are trying to protect and conserve them. And even as she does the work of telling their history, she also makes clear the effect that these landscapes had on her in developing a greater understanding of her own sexuality and place in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The Gastronomica podcast returns to the air, bringing listeners new interviews with authors from the latest issues of Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies. In this episode, Alyssa James of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective hosts award-winning writer and historian Camille Bégin for a discussion of “Chiang Mai 2015,” a creative nonfiction account of a family trip and a search for sustenance that becomes entangled with questions of illness, climate, and care. In her memoir of failed culinary tourism, a story set against the smoky skies of northern Thailand, Camille asks what it means to travel, to look for meaning, and to eat ethically. In conversation with Alyssa, Camille talks about how the haze shapes her story, reflects on the politics of culinary tourism, and shows how food can become a small anchor in times of crisis. “Chiang Mai 2015” was published in the Spring 2025 issue of Gastronomica (25.1) and is available online here. Camille Bégin is the author of Taste of the Nation: The New Deal Search for America’s Food (University of Illinois Press, 2016). Her personal essays have appeared in Gastronomica, Adelaide Magazine, and the scientific journal, Brain. She is currently writing a food memoir called Crumbs: A Trail of Taste and Illness. Website here Alyssa A. L. James is an anthropologist and postdoctoral scholar at the USC Society of Fellows. Her current book project, Revival Grounds, examines coffee, heritage, and temporality in Martinique. Learn more here Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Melissa Auf der Maur's new memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir(DaCapo, 2026) is a remarkably open-hearted, clear-eyed memoir of the '90s Alternative era by the bassist of Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins Even the Good Girls Will Cry begins with Auf der Maur's bohemian upbringing in Montreal, where her early, deep connection to art and music gave her entry to the colorful and thriving local creative scene. Working as a cassette DJ and ticket girl, she would see (and sometimes meet) the luminaries who'd pass through town--Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, Pavement, Sonic Youth. Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a long-shot fan letter to a PO Box, her band Tinker scored a life-changing opening slot for The Smashing Pumpkins and, sensing her natural talent on bass, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love, just one of the many uncanny threads that weaves destiny throughout this riveting memoir. Whisked from her local scene and thrust into the eye of a hurricane of grief on a global stage, Melissa joined Hole for the band's 1994 Live Through This world tour just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with Courtney Love at the center of it all. It was a tour of passionate intensity, as a chaotic yet stunningly powerful band constantly threatened to spin out of control. Melissa brings the reader with raging intimacy into the action, offering a heroic portrait of the unforgettable Courtney Love as she howled into the darkness as if to keep grief at bay. That was only the beginning of Melissa's journey through alternative rock. Part rock memoir, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrapbook, Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a behind-the-scenes rock 'n' roll memoir with a soulful intimacy and mystic undertone that sets it apart from memoirs by her peers. It is a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade, artistically capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The military general who became Emperor Hirohito’s prime minister, Tojo Hideki is most often remembered as an iron-fisted leader who dragged Japan into World War II and—after spectacular losses—was eventually executed as a war criminal. Yet Tojo was far more than his ignominious end. In fact, as Dr. Peter Mauch argues in Tojo: The Rise and Fall of Japan's Most Controversial World War II General (Harvard University Press, 2026), he was one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished military statesmen. Over a career of some forty years, Tojo successfully launched himself into the highest echelons of political power. He was not only a tactical genius, Dr. Mauch shows, but also a savvy administrator, a fierce imperialist, and a deeply loyal advisor to the emperor. Tojo’s career took off with the notorious Kwantung Army in Manchuria, where he played a key role in escalating the Sino-Japanese War during the 1930s. As he rose through the ranks, becoming minister of war and then army chief of staff, he honed the efficiency of the Imperial Army and enhanced its influence within the emperor’s court. All the while, he deftly negotiated the fractious military rivalries that arose wherever he went. Brilliant, ambitious, and often ruthless, Tojo reached political heights that were perhaps matched only by his precipitous fall in the final months of World War II. Layered and evocative, Tojo is at once a riveting military history of Showa-era Japan and a nuanced portrait of the relentless personality at its center. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

My guest today is Cathryn J. Prince the author of For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman (U Illinois Press, 2026). From her start as one of the youngest activists in US history, Pauline Newman helped shape the International Ladies' Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) into a dominant force in industrial America. Cathryn J. Prince follows Newman’s life from a youth split between Lithuania and New York City sweatshops to her work as an advisor to New Deal–era labor secretary Frances Perkins. Newman’s long hours at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory informed her entrée into labor activism. In the following years, she tirelessly advocated for workers, ran for New York Secretary of State as a socialist, and became the first woman to serve as the ILGWU general organizer. Her interest in the health of workers led to service on the Joint Board of Sanitary Control and a decades-long term as education director of the ILGWU health center. Membership in Eleanor Roosevelt’s circle opened doors to government positions and advisory roles that continued into the postwar era. Prince also weaves in the details of Newman’s fifty-year relationship with a woman, her struggles with her sexual identity, and her final years. Cathryn J. Prince is an adjunct professor of journalism at Fordham University. Her books include Queen of the Mountaineers: The Trailblazing Life of Fanny Bullock Workman and American Daredevil: The Extraordinary Life of Richard Halliburton, the World’s First Celebrity Travel Writer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a pantheon of extraordinary characters, his literature provided readers with a window into the world of Eastern European Jews as they confronted the forces of modernity that tore through Russia at the end of the 19th century. But just as compelling as the fictional lives of his characters, was Sholem Aleichem's own life story. Born Sholem Rabinovitch in Ukraine in 1859, he endured an impoverished childhood, married into wealth, and then lost it all through bad luck and worse business sense. Turning to his pen to support himself, he switched from writing in Russian and Hebrew to Yiddish in order to create a living body of literature for the Jewish masses. Jonathan Brent, Executive Director at YIVO, Jeremy Dauber, author of the recently published book, The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye, and Adam Kirsch joined each other on stage for a lively discussion about the fascinating life and work of the "Jewish Mark Twain.” This discussion originally took place on October 17, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods An engaging biography of one of the most influential Western philosophers and a thought-provoking exploration of how to live with Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism.Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) almost wasn’t one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century. Born in the Free City of Danzig to a family of shipping merchants, he was destined for a life of imports and exports until his father died in a suspected suicide. After much deliberation, the young Schopenhauer invested his inheritance in himself and his philosophical vocation. But the long road to recognition was a difficult one, with Schopenhauer spending all but the last decade of his life in total obscurity. Yet his ideas and style went on to influence great thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Sigmund Freud, as well as artists such as the composer Richard Wagner and writers Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett, and many more.A singular and remarkably influential thinker, Schopenhauer is usually described as an extreme pessimist. He questioned the purpose of existence in a world where pain and suffering are inescapable and happiness is all too brief. In this engaging philosophical biography, David Bather Woods reevaluates Schopenhauer’s pessimism in the context of his life experiences, revealing the philosopher’s relentless fascination with the world and making a case for his contemporary relevance. Bather Woods weaves together Schopenhauer’s ideas with the story of how he came to be, including such topics as love, loneliness, morality, politics, gender, sexuality, death, suicide, fame, and madness. In doing so, this book answers some of life’s most challenging questions about how to deal with pain and loss, and how to live with ourselves and each other.Despite his pessimistic outlook on human existence, Schopenhauer didn’t give up on life. Rather, he recognized that the question of how to live becomes even more pressing, and he worked to provide an answer. Bather Woods shows how Schopenhauer’s life informed his ideas and how they still resonate today. David Bather Woods is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is coeditor with Timothy Stoll of The Schopenhauerian Mind. He has contributed chapters to The Proustian Mind, Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy, and The Palgrave Schopenhauer Handbook. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Around 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive vocal training. Castrati were long mired in secrecy, obfuscations, and lies about their origin and conditions, not least the last of them, Alessandro Moreschi. In Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome (Zone Books, 2026), musicologist Professor Martha Feldman declines to accept these deep-seated mysteries and concealments. After a decade and more of digging through archives and family histories comes her exciting transdisciplinary and quasi-cinematic account of Moreschi, whose recordings preserve the only sonic trace of a solo castrato.Yet Moreschi’s story extends far beyond him. It opens up intrigues, politics, and histories of the Vatican, everyday histories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Rome, the world of Roman opera, the city’s unique mélange of sacred and vernacular tropes, and representations of Rome by iconic film director Federico Fellini. Moreschi and Fellini turn out to have been related by marriage, but also to share synergies grounded in Rome’s persistent inclination to vernacularize the sacred. Far from telling of one anomalous figure, Professor Feldman’s gripping history convinces readers that Moreschi, like Fellini, can be read as an improbable index of Roman consciousness, both during his own life and well beyond. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, Eliyahu Stern offers a new and provocative narrative for understanding contemporary Jewish life, which begins in the East, with the leading East European mystic and rabbinic scholar of the 18th century, Elijah ben Solomon, or the “Vilna Gaon.” Eliyahu Stern joined in conversation with Jeremy Dauber for a discussion about the Vilna Gaon, his influence on modern Judaism, and why his legacy has been claimed by traditionalists, enlighteners, Zionists and the Orthodox. Winner of the 2012 Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication Finalist for the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature Eliyahu Stern was the Tell fellow at the YIVO Institute in 2004. This book talk originally took place on November 7, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography