New Books in Biography & Memoir

Nick Wilding's new book is brilliant, thoughtful, and an absolute pleasure to read. Galileo's Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and The Politics of Knowledge (University of Chicago Press, 2014) takes an unusual approach to understanding Galileo and his context by focusing its narrative on his closest friend, student, and patron, the Venetian Gianfrancesco Sagredo. Though most readers might be familiar with Sagredo largely as one of the protagonists of Galileo's 1632 Dialogue upon the Two Main Systems of the World, here he takes center stage. In order to bring Sagredo to life and help us understand his significance both for Galileo and for early modern science in context more broadly conceived, Wilding has worked with an impressive range of materials that include poems, paintings, ornamental woodcuts, epistolary hoaxes, intercepted letters, murder case files, and more. After a chapter that reads like a detective story as Wilding tracks down and expertly reads missing portraits of Sagredo, subsequent chapters explore the Venetian's role in major disputes involving the Jesuits, his family's mining interests, his time as treasurer for a fortress and a consul to Syria, and his performance as a "rich, old, slightly batty widow" in the context of a rather hilarious epistolary hoax. We also come to understand Galileo anew, as Wilding pays careful attention to his use of scribal publication to control and disseminate his writing and the relationship between instrument and text in his work. (In one wonderful chapter, Wilding reads woodcuts associated with the Sidereus nuncius in order to reframe how we understand the history of production and publication of this text in the context of transalpine book smuggling.) Along the way, the chapters make significant interventions in the historiography of science, suggesting ways that Sagredo helps us think anew about the use of visual sources, the agency of "intermediaries and go-betweens" in creating their own networks, the importance of understanding the sense of humor of our historical actors, the social nature of early modern authorship, and the need to reassess the historiography of the global scientific network of the Jesuits.There are also some really, horribly, wonderfully bad puns. (Consider yourselves forewarned.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Nick Wilding‘s new book is brilliant, thoughtful, and an absolute pleasure to read. Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and The Politics of Knowledge (University of Chicago Press, 2014) takes an unusual approach to understanding Galileo and his context by focusing its narrative on his closest friend, student, and patron, the Venetian Gianfrancesco Sagredo. Though most readers might be familiar with Sagredo largely as one of the protagonists of Galileo’s 1632 Dialogue upon the Two Main Systems of the World, here he takes center stage. In order to bring Sagredo to life and help us understand his significance both for Galileo and for early modern science in context more broadly conceived, Wilding has worked with an impressive range of materials that include poems, paintings, ornamental woodcuts, epistolary hoaxes, intercepted letters, murder case files, and more. After a chapter that reads like a detective story as Wilding tracks down and expertly reads missing portraits of Sagredo, subsequent chapters explore the Venetian’s role in major disputes involving the Jesuits, his family’s mining interests, his time as treasurer for a fortress and a consul to Syria, and his performance as a “rich, old, slightly batty widow” in the context of a rather hilarious epistolary hoax. We also come to understand Galileo anew, as Wilding pays careful attention to his use of scribal publication to control and disseminate his writing and the relationship between instrument and text in his work. (In one wonderful chapter, Wilding reads woodcuts associated with the Sidereus nuncius in order to reframe how we understand the history of production and publication of this text in the context of transalpine book smuggling.) Along the way, the chapters make significant interventions in the historiography of science, suggesting ways that Sagredo helps us think anew about the use of visual sources, the agency of “intermediaries and go-betweens” in creating their own networks, the importance of understanding the sense of humor of our historical actors, the social nature of early modern authorship, and the need to reassess the historiography of the global scientific network of the Jesuits. There are also some really, horribly, wonderfully bad puns. (Consider yourselves forewarned.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Biography is, both etymologically and in its conventional forms, the writing of a life. But what is the role of place within that? And how do the stories of lives- some of them well known, others less so- realign when we see them through the lens of a particular place? That’s Justin Martin‘s way in to the stories of Walt Whitman, Artemus Ward, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Adah Menken and Edwin Booth, among others: their convergence, many an evening, at Pfaff’s basement saloon in mid-19th century Manhattan. Don’t let the name-check in the title fool you. Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians (Da Capo Press, 2014) is just as much about the other bohemians as it is about Whitman, and the Whitman we find here may not be the Whitman we thought we knew. He’s younger- his fate yet to be determined- and he’s paling around with a cast of characters equally compelling. When he went to Paris in 1849, Henry Clapp Jr. was so impressed with the local artsy-types that he decided to export their way of life to America, to consciously found a group of bohemians back in New York. And it’s the saloon where they congregated that first drew Martin to his story. Though his characters fan out across the country over the course of the narrative, they came from Pfaff’s and they seem to carry it with them wherever they go.Place plays a fundamental role in life and should, by extension, feature within the subsequent tellings of a life as well, but it’s a factor that is, all too often, unexamined at this level- the level of where one eats and drinks and hangs out. Places are ever-changing, Manhattan real estate most especially. But, as Rebel Souls proves, biography can play a provocative role in preserving their mystique and also their impact– recapturing the barroom beneath the city streets, the chatter swirling around the budding poet, the raucous laughter of his companions, the ice cubes clinking in the glass. The knowledge that this is where they came from, that this is where they were off-stage or on break, not only offers fresh insight into the things they were able to create, but it also reveals tantalizing dimensions of who they might have been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

One of the fundamental functions of biography is the preservation of stories. But it also acts to resurrect the stories that may have fallen from view, reinvigorating the tales of people who, with the passage of time, have become merely names on plaques. In La Belle Creole:The Cuban Countess Who Captivated Havana, Madrid, and Paris (Chicago Review Press, 2014), Alina Garcia-Lapuerta aims to do just that: vividly drawing the story of Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, a woman who was tremendously famous during her lifetime but who has since fallen into relative obscurity, especially in America. Many Cubans and Cuban Americans will be familiar with her name, but many others will never have heard of her, a misfortune thatGarcia-Lapuerta’s work will hopefully correct. Just on the surface, there’s a compelling plot: a Cuban girl leaves home and meets with social triumph in Europe, where she is hostess of one of the most famous salons of her day. But its the theme of ex-patriotism, whichGarcia-Lapuerta (an ex-pat herself) elegantly weaves throughout, that is most striking. The longing to return to Cuba and, ultimately, to write about it. Anyone who’s ever lived abroad will recognize the tensions described when Mercedes visits her homeland only to leave it again, but this is a theme that doesn’t always make it into biographies- at least not biographies of people who didn’t live in Paris in the 1920s. It’s even less visible in books about the lives of 19th century figures and, therefore, all the more welcome and provocative here. Garcia-Lapuerta has done a tricky thing. She’s written a book about someone a lot of people will not have heard of, from a place to which a lot of Americans, at least, will not have been. And yet she makes both the Cuba of old and her heroine feel hauntingly familiar, breathtakingly real. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Patrice Lumumba was a leader of the independence struggle, as well as the country’s first democratically elected prime minister, in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After a meteoric rise in the colonial civil service and the African political elite, he became a major figure in the decolonization movement of the 1950s. Lumumba’s short tenure as prime minister was marked by an uncompromising defense of Congolese national interests against pressure from international mining companies and the Western governments that orchestrated his eventual demise. Cold war geopolitical maneuvering and efforts by Lumumba’s domestic adversaries culminated in his assassination, with the support or at least tacit complicity of the U.S. and Belgian governments, the CIA, and the UN Secretariat. Georges Nzongola‘s concise book Patrice Lumumba (Ohio University Press, 2014) provides a contemporary analysis of Lumumba’s life and work, examining his strengths and weaknesses as a political leader. It also surveys the national, continental, and international contexts of Lumumba’s political ascent and his elimination by the interests threatened by his ideas and reforms. Lumumba’s death, his integrity and dedication to ideals of self-determination, self-reliance, and pan-African solidarity assure him a prominent place among the heroes of the 20th century African independence movement and the African Diaspora. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In his biography of Jozef Tiso, Catholic priest and president of independent Slovakia (1939-1944), James Ward provides a deeper understanding of a man who has been both honored and vilified since his execution as a Nazi collaborator in 1947. Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia (Cornell University Press, 2013) is also a fascinating look at Catholicism, nationalism and human rights as moral standards in 20th century East Central Europe. The book explores both the political and social contexts that shaped Tiso and the choices he made in attempts to shape the country in which he lived – whether Habsburg Hungary, interwar Czechoslovakia or a Slovak republic.  Ward reveals, as well, how the fight over Tiso’s legacy in post-communist Slovakia mirrored the polarization of Slovak politics at the end of the 20th century. Priest, Politician, Collaborator was the 2014 Honorable Mention for the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

S. Duncan Reid has written a meticulously researched and detailed account of the performances and recording career of Bay Area-raised and small group Latin-jazz innovator and vibraphonist Cal Tjader. Tjader’s high-energy yet lyrical and melodic playing introduced new demographics of jazz listeners to the soulful sound of Latin jazz for four decades beginning in the 1940s and ending with Tjader’s untimely death at the age of 56 in 1982. In Cal Tjader: The Life and Recordings of the Man Who Revolutionized Latin Jazz (McFarland, 2013), Reid details Tjader’s uncanny ability to soak up ever-evolving stylistic and percussive nuances – and discusses his collaborations with and influences on other Latin jazz innovators such as Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Poncho Sanchez, Vince Guaraldi, Michael Wolff and many, many more. Reid recounts how Mario Bauza, Machito, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stan Kenton, among others, had influenced the Latin jazz scene in the 1940s with their exciting big band/orchestral sound – and that the majority of influential jazz critics were “East of the Mississippi.” One of the delights in Reid’s book is to see how Tjader, with his San Francisco Bay Area roots and a European family background, nonetheless was attracted to and became an innovator in the small-group Latin jazz scene. Cal Tjader was literally born to rhythm. His father, of Swedish descent, was a talented vaudevillian. His Idaho-born mother played classical piano. Tjader’s parents opened a popular dance studio in San Mateo, California in the late 1920s. Tjader was already tap dancing in front of audiences by the age of 4 and as a child even danced with tap dance legend Bill “Bojangles” Robinson on a Hollywood set in the early 1930s. Forsaking tap dancing in high school, Tjader picked up drums and within three years won a Gene Krupa drum contest playing “Drum Boogie.” News of his success, however, was “overshadowed” by another news event –the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. After serving in the South Pacific in WWII, Tjader returned to the San Francisco Bay area, attended San Francisco State College and soon began collaborating with other West Coast jazz musicians – most notably Dave Brubeck (Tjader started out as a drummer for Brubeck in the late 1940s and subsequently the vibes), and sax player Paul Desmond. It wasn’t long, however, before Tjader became enamored of the infectious and complex percussive permutations in Afro-Cuban rhythms after meeting Cuban percussionist Armando Peraza in San Francisco early in 1950. Reid also writes that Tjader’s collaborations/recordings with classically trained jazz pianist George Shearing were central to Tjader’s own evolution in the small-group Latin sound. Shearing called Tjader a “percussive genius.” Tjader always had a lyrical quality to his playing – he left space and was always looking for new compositional challenges, and it wasn’t long before Tjader became a fixture in the small-group Latin jazz scene in San Francisco, playing gigs at the most famous San Francisco clubs of the day – notably The Blackhawk, The Great American Music Hall, and the El Matador. Tjader is probably most associated with his catchy cover of the Gillespie/Pozo hit Guarachi Guaro on his Grammy-nominated album Soul Sauce in 1964. Tjader later won a Grammy for his album La Onda Va Bien, recorded in 1979. Reid is upfront about Tjader’s problems with alcohol and challenging family dynamics but doesn’t psychologize – he lets his interviewees do the talking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

There was once a notion that black people had no meaningful history. It’s a notion Dorothy Porter Wesley spent her entire career debunking. Through her 43 years at Howard University, where she helped create the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, her own publishing endeavors and collecting, and her unfettered support of the researchers she encountered, Wesley devoted her entire life to the preservation of black history. Her career was once summed up as that of a “historical detective”, and the characterization is apt. As Dr. Janet Sims-Wood writes in her excellent study, Dorothy Porter Wesley at Howard University: Building a Legacy of Black History (The History Press, 2014) she was unrelenting in her mission: “To supplement her meager acquisitions budget, Porter appealed to faculty to donate manuscripts of their published works as well as any letters from noted individuals. […] she appealed to publishers, authors and friends who were collectors to donate their materials. She also rummaged through the attics and basements of recently deceased persons to acquire materials.” The portrait that emerges is that of an indefatigable, iconic archivist, a researcher’s dream. But, beyond the life, there is the legacy. A mighty legacy, as Sims-Wood establishes. Sims-Wood is an oral historian and she assembles here an interesting chorus of voices: those who knew Dorothy Porter Wesley, who worked with her, who watched her, whose lives and careers were impacted by her. Timed to coincide with the centenary of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Sims-Wood’s book is an important reminder of how much the preservation of history relies upon individuals. And, also, what a significant impact one person can have. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Thomas Sankara, often called the African Che Guevara, was president of Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in Africa, until his assassination during a military coup that brought down his government. Although his time in office was relatively short, Sankara left an indelible mark on his country’s history and development. But as Ernest Harsch explains in his engaging biography, Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary (Ohio University Press, 2014), Sankara’s influence extends beyond Burkina Faso. Sankara was a moral force and an ardent spokesman for African dignity and struggle against neocolonial forces and Western economic domination. Harsch traces Sankara’s life from his student days to his recruitment into the military, his early political awakening, and his increasing dismay with his country’s extreme poverty and political corruption. Sankara and his colleagues initiated economic and social policies that shifted Burkina Faso away from dependence on foreign aid and toward a greater use of the country’s own resources to build schools, health clinics, and public works. Although Sankara’s sweeping vision and practical reforms won him admirers both within and without Burkina Faso, a combination of domestic opposition and factions within his own government and the army led to his assassination in 1987. Harsch has written the first English-language book that relates the story of Sankara’s life and achievements. Based on extensive firsthand research in Burkina Faso as well as interviews with Sankara himself, this brief biography will give this neglected hero of the African revolution the attention he deserves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In the early 1830s, the French school teacher Eugénie Luce migrated to Algeria. A decade later, she was a major force in the debates around educational practices there, insisting that not only were women entitled to quality education, but that women’s education served a fundamental role in the French mission in the colonies. “Woman is the most powerful of all influences in Africa as in Europe,” she wrote in 1846, the year after she founded a school for the instruction of indigenous Muslim girls. In A Frenchwoman’s Imperial Story: Madame Luce in Nineteenth-Century Algeria, Rebecca Rogers (Stanford University Press, 2013), a Professor at the Université Paris Descartes and an expert in the history of the French educational system, lucidly explores Luce’s work in the field, bringing  a wealth of precise details– everything from what the lessons in the school room were like to prize-giving ceremonies and hygiene inspections. But Rogers also lets the reader in on the questions that remain about Luce’s own life. Rogers notes that while “Eugénie Allix’s efforts to establish and finance her school have left ample traces in the colonial archives,” there are many details of her life that are not present and which can only be lightly sketched. For example, “[C]ivil registers offer tenuous insight into Eugénie’s social network during her first decade of life in Algeria”… The circumstances of her second marriage “have left no trace in the archival record”… It’s an interesting meditation on the limitations of archives– how the story that is told of the life after is dependent upon the letters and signatures and red tape that the people of history have left behind them, as well as the moves the biographer must make to fill those gaps. So often the stories of women in history become the stories of all the men they knew and yet, in this case, the archive itself prevents that. As Rogers writes, the men in her life “[b]oth shaped her life in ways the biographer can only imagine” and yet the biographer is left to imagine precisely because the proof is not there. “She appears in the colonial archives as very much an independent woman,” which represents a rather refreshing reversal, almost as unique today as it would’ve been in the 19th century: a woman whose story stands solely on her work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography