New Books in Biography & Memoir

If group biography is one of the exciting new trends in life-writing (and some say it is), Karen Abbott– the historian, not to be confused with the novelist-proves one of its deftest practitioners- first, in her debut Sin in the Second City, then in the follow-up American Rose (which we discussed back in 2012) and now in her new book: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War (Harper, 2014). Tracking four women- two Confederates and two Unionists- across battle lines, continents and even, at times, genders, with great verve Abbott weaves together a series of stories, connected by the conflict in which they are occurring and yet also uniquely each women’s own. The story of the American Civil War has been told umpteen times, but it is an unexpected element within the familiar which Abbott is concerned with exploring here. Tales of our heroines- Belle Boyd, Emma Edmonds,Rose O’Neale Greenhow and Elizabeth Van Lew, all women most readers will be encountering for the first time- yield an untraditional perspective on women’s participation in the war whilst Abbott also gives fresh life to well-known figures: Stonewall Jackson, painted here in broad vivid colors, emerges from the familiar tapestry in his full, eccentric glory almost as a character born anew. Reviewing her first book, USA Today labeled Abbott a “pioneer of sizzle history.” It’s a label that’s stuck and one which is apt for a mode of story-telling driven by such a propulsive kinetic energy, as Abbott’s is. But it’s important to note that the stories she’s telling are sturdy, thoroughly researched and culturally necessary. The word “sizzle” can imply a frothy effervescence, a flash in the pan, and these stories- the stories of these four women in Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy and in her other books- are anything but. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

"Why write the biography of a nobody?" That is the question with which Melanie C. Hawthorne begins Finding the Woman Who Didn't Exist: The Curious Life of Gisele d'Estoc (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) but in justifying the writing of such a life and then, in turn, excavating its contours, Hawthorne winds up exploring a number of issues fundamental to the genre of biography. In particular, the biographer's inability fill all gaps, the frequent encounters with dead ends and his/her reliance, at times almost wholly, upon sheer luck. Also, the legacies of the biographers who have gone before us. In d'Estoc's case, as Hawthorne writes, "It is almost as though these experts avoided finding proof of d'Estoc's existence and one has to ask why."One of the significant contributions of Finding the Woman Who Didn't Exist is its transparency- Hawthorne's willingness to include in her text the details of research, alongside serious critical engagement with the notion of what it means to be a researcher in the humanities and why humanities research matters. This flows seamlessly throughout her exploration of d'Estoc's life as she explores the fluidity of life stories, the need to continually rearrange and reevaluate them, "to keep creating unexpected bends on the old narrative paths in order to wake us up to seeing them in a new light." To illustrate this, she uses the story of a 19th century French writer/artist/anarchist, a woman who once pretended to be someone else and whose false identity ultimately historically hijacked the original. It's a story steeped in its times and yet one which also appears surprisingly modern here, and one which- as it is written- highlights fundamental truths about the genre.One of my favorites is this: "Stories teach us not to take things for granted, and the final lesson of biography is that despite the fact that specific stories always begin and end somewhere, in real life there are no such definitive markers." The story Hawthorne presents of d'Estoc is deliberately left messy, which is- in the end- perhaps its greatest strength. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

For those who are savvy about all things psychoanalytic, be they analysts, analysands, or fellow travelers, the existence, presence, work, writing, and imprimatur of Adam Phillips is given long, as opposed to short, shrift. It is safe to say that his voice is singular in its mellifluousness and its range. I first encountered his writing at one of my dearest friend’s, and any second now new NBiP host and psychoanalyst Anne Wennerstrand’s wedding. Her husband, (doyen of the world of choreography), Doug Elkins, insisted I read a snippet from Phillip’s book, On Monogamy, before they slipped on their rings. This request placed the thinking of Phillips squarely into my casually bridesmaided lap. That Elkins, a dancer with what we then called “downtown” street credibility knew from Adam Phillips perhaps 15 years ago says something; and it says something about Phillips and his reach. In Phillips’ most recent book, Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (Yale UP, 2014), we encounter the biography of a man who thought the entire genre of biography was nothing but bunk. And yet, in this biography of Freud we also encounter a writer who seeks to show respect for Freud’s dis-ease if not utter disrespect for the attempt to write the story of his life. As such, the book illustrates Phillips’ clinical acumen as much as his mind, his writing mien, and the life of his subject. Demonstrating great caution, going up to the lip of certain facts without speculating unduly, like a savvy but sensitive psychoanalyst, Phillips offers the world a book that, like a true tree of life, grows in many directions at once. As no doubt it will be read by people unfamiliar with “the talking cure” it carries a heavy burden in a day and age that prefers writing/texting/emailing to talking a deux, forget entering into an analysis! Embedded within the text we find a vast exploration of the difference between “telling one’s story” (on Oprah or in a blog as is de rigeur in the culture of confession du moment) and speaking in the analytic dyad. Ultimately, as compared with what real truths might be uttered in a psychoanalysis, indeed the facts of biography look paltry. And furthermore, as this is a book that plays hardball with commonplace conceptions of knowledge, data, and truth, as compared with the exploration of unruly desire and its vicissitudes, we find ourselves returned to Freud who told us that the truths we create for the public work well to hide the real thing, the kinds of archaic truths spoken solely within the confines of a psychoanalytic setting. Phillips brings back the primacy of the sexual to Freud, and hence to psychoanalysis. Bring on the alleluia chorus and enjoy the interview!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Jay Carter‘s new book follows the life of one man as a way of opening a window into the lived history of twentieth-century China. Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth-Century Monk (Oxford University Press, 2011; paperback edition 2014) is less a traditional biography than a life of an emergent modern nation as told through the experiences of a single individual whose relationships embodied the history of that nation in flesh, bones, and blood. Born in 1875 as Wang Shouchun, the man who would become Tanxu worked various jobs as laborer, minor government official, fortune-teller, and pharmacist before finding his calling, leaving his family, and setting off on a journey to become a Buddhist monk. His travels spanned the physical and spiritual worlds – one of his earliest voyages took him beyond death to the underworld and back. After leaving home, Wang experienced treaty-ports in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer uprising, and Russo-Japanese tension over Manchuria. His life unfolded in a series of Chinese cities that were administered by foreigners, and the transformative power of Sino-foreign relations in this period becomes a recurring trope throughout his story. Ranging north and south, he eventually studied to become a Buddhist monk and, as Tanxu, helped to found temples across China. Carter’s own travels took him from the Bronx (to meet with a Dharma heir disciple of the monk) through more than a dozen Chinese cities, taking Tanxu’s own memoir and itinerary as guidebook and route-map. The resulting book is a beautifully written, historiographically self-reflexive, and humane account of the lived history of modern China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Originally, particularly in American writings, one of the explicit purpose of biography was to teach readers how to live. As Scott E. Caspar writes in Constructing American Lives (1999), in nineteenth-century America “biography remained the essential genre for creating American pantheons: collections of lives that represented the nation’s history, aimed to promote values or virtues or both.” This function, however, often flies under the radar. People read biography to learn about real lives; they may not be consciously paying all that much attention to the lessons they transmit. In What Jackie Taught Us: Lessons from the Remarkable Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Perigree paperback reprint, 2014), author Tina Santi Flaherty (philanthropist, businesswoman and former radio broadcaster) drops all pretense and explicitly mines the life of Jackie O- a life with which, 20 years after her death, many Americans still feel intimately familiar- to see what we can learn from it. The result isn’t a self help book so much as a book that shows how we instinctively use the stories of lives and integrate them into our own. It’s a provocative exercise. Re-released here to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Onassis’s death, this version of What Jackie Taught Us includes a series of new essays that represent an important contribution to, not only Flaherty’s book, but also “Jackie studies” in general. It’s a treat to have the legacy of someone who’s so seldom considered seriously (so often she’s reduced to dresses and hats) reevaluated by the likes of Edna O’Brien, Allen Packwood, and Malacky McCourt. And Liz Smith’s preface is a downright gem. Twenty years after her death, we’re still curious about Jackie. From Flaherty’s book, we get some clues as to why. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

It’s hard to overestimate the role of Raphael Lemkin in calling the world’s attention to the crime of genocide.  But for decades his name languished, as scholars and the broader public devoted their time and attention to other people and other things. In the past few years, this has changed.  We now have a greater understanding of Lemkin’s role in pushing the UN to write and pass the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.  Moreover, researchers have a newfound appreciation for the depth and insights of his research.  Genocide scholars talk about their field experiencing a ‘return to Lemkin’ It seems an appropriate time, then, to reexamine Lemkin’s ideas and career. We’re doing so in a special, two-part series of interviews with scholars who have edited and published Lemkin’s writings.  Earlier this month, I posted an interview with Steve Jacobs, who carefully edited and annotated an edition of Lemkin’s writings about the history and nature of genocide, simply titled Lemkin on Genocide. This time, I talked with Donna-Lee Frieze, who has meticulously edited Lemkin’s unpublished autobiography Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin (Yale University Press, 2013).  The book gives us a new appreciation for Lemkin’s work.  It offers us a deeper insight into who he was and how he fit into his times.  And it shows how his experiences shaped his lifelong crusade to create an framework within international law that would protect persecuted ethnic and religious groups. One brief note about the sound.  We taped this interview in what was late winter in Wichita.  Bizarrely enough, New York that day was evidently much warmer than Wichita.  Donna accordingly taped this interview sitting next to an open window.  Occasionally, you can hear the passing traffic in the background.  If you’re not in New York, consider this local color.  If you are, feel free to brag that spring comes early in your town.  You don’t get that chance often. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Winner of the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize, Lucy Hughes-Hallett‘s biography of Gabriele d’Annunzio is a book with a big mission: to write inventively about the life of someone with whom most everyone outside of Italy is entirely unfamiliar whilst also promoting the literary legacy of a man celebrated within his own country and little translated (much less read) everywhere else. In the end, Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War (Knopf, 2013) succeeds on both fronts, which is precisely why it remains one of the most lauded biographies of the last year. It’s not a straightforward day-by-day narrative. Rather, the story zooms in and out, taking flight and exuberantly soaring through whole weeks, months, years only to, at other moments, slow down to sensuously revel in the details of a weekend on the beach or an afternoon spent in bed. There’s something about this technique that beautifully mimics the ways in which we often reflect upon our own lives, with whole boring years blotted from memory whilst every single detail of a particularly haunting evening is eternally seared upon the brain. This is, I imagine, in large part why the book is such joy to read- because (at the risk of making sound simple something which very much isn’t) we’re reading the life of a flamboyant character written in much the same way we tend to think upon our own. d’Annunzio thought words, written well, could inflame nations and excite history and change the world. For him, writes Hughes-Hallett, “writing was a martial art.” Artistically, he was a poet, novelist, playwright and lover (the classification isn’t accidental- for d’Annunzio experienced love affairs as real relationships and literary creations), but also a soldier, flier, and politician. Those are the raw ingredients of his story. Superficially fascinating, to be sure, but it’s Hughes-Hallet’s mixing of them that so animates the biography of this short, bald man with narrow sloping shoulders and terrible teeth. And it’s the tensions that emerge through the telling that ensure that, even if you’ve never read a word of d’Annunzio’s poetry, his story sticks with you, which is a sign of an both a good book and an interesting life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes are the co-authors of authors of HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton (Crown Publishers 2014). Allen is White House bureau chief at Bloomberg; Parnes is White House correspondent for The Hill. This is a big, buzzy book that has gotten a lot of media attention. Much of the book is about how important trust is to Hillary Clinton. Allen and Parnes refer to the “concentric circles of trust” that dominate the political decisions made by the Clintons. They also write that Hillary Clinton has a “bias for action” that compels her to focus on doing rather than debating. One of the most interesting parts of the book is about how Secretary Clinton embraced technology and relied on staff to integrate technology into diplomacy innovative ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In America, biographies of Presidents and First Ladies are a staple of the genre, but the relationship that exists between the two receives surprisingly less exploration, as though the biographies needed to be kept as separate as the offices in the East and West Wings. (The relationship of the Clintons being the notable exception.) Hopefully Will Swift‘s Pat and Dick: The Nixons, an Intimate Portrait of a Marriage (Threshold Editions, 2014)) augurs a new biographical trend towards serious examination of presidential relationships. It’s a daunting task- to not only humanize but probe the relationship that existed between a pair still, fifty years on, more easily reduced to the stereotypes of ‘Tricky Dick’ and ‘Plastic Pat’- but Swift gives a welcome corrective, portraying a surprisingly vulnerable Nixon whilst, perhaps even more importantly, providing a historically significant re-evaluation of his wife. For, of all the recent First Ladies, it’s Pat Nixon’s accomplishments that have been most overlooked, obscured as they were by a frosty public image and the downfall of her husband. In the public imagination, First Ladies are easily associated with social issues (Lady Bird Johnson and the environment, Michelle Obama and healthy eating, etc.), and yet Pat Nixon’s issue of  ‘volunteerism’- both important and, perhaps, overly broad and, therefore, more difficult to quantify- seems to have fallen from historical view. As Swift demonstrates, however, her volunteerism platform was a springboard in improving American international relations. When, after the Peruvian earthquake of May 1970, Pat Nixon made a harrowing journey into the heart of Peru, to an area then called ‘The Valley of Death’, where she assisted and comforted survivors. ‘To have President Nixon send his wife here means more to me than if he had sent the whole American Air Force,’ said Peruvian President Velasco Alvarado. It’s a story that reveals the impact a First Lady can have, an impact that all to often goes unacknowledged, and an impact in whose preservation biography plays a key role. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

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 development and workings of capitalism around. You can still read his work and profit. He was the intellectual godfather of several notable British Marxist historians of the “New Left” of the 1960s and 1970s: Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, E.P. Thompson, among others. And, perhaps most importantly, his life gives us a window into a forgotten time, one in which a economists took communism seriously and fellows at Cambridge could earnestly believe in a bright communist future. This, I think, is a time we must not forget. Thanks to Timothy Shenk‘s well-researched, readable biography Maurice Dobb: Political Economist (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013), we won’t have to. Shenk tells Dobb’s tale in all its tortured complexity. A member of the establishment and an anti-establishmentarian. A dyed-in-the-wool Marxist and a deadly serious empirically-oriented economist. A supporter of the Soviet Union and a critic of Soviet power. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography