New Books In Biography

One of the first and most famous of Christian martyrs was Perpetua, who died in Carthage in the early 3rd century CE. Though there is no record of her life beyond the details contained in a single text, in her book Perpetua: Athlete of God(Oxford University Press, 2018), Barbara K. Gold analyzes the account of her sacrifice and draws upon the dual contexts of the Christian and Roman worlds of that time to provide a framework for understanding her. Central to this effort is the "Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis," one of the earliest Christian texts and one which presents an incomplete and often confusing picture of Perpetua as a woman. As Gold explains, the gendering of her depiction reveals much about the complexities of her portrayal in the work, which posed a number of challenges for subsequent generations of male authors and Christian leaders in terms of the example she set with the martyrdom described within it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by be

Today I talked with historian Erika Dyck about Aldous Huxley, Humphry Osmond and their correspondence over a ten year period. Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018) is a collection of letters which were carefully curated by Erika and Cynthia Carson Bisbee, Paul Bisbee, and Patrick Farrell. During our discussion, Erika recounts the special relationship between two intellectual juggernauts, Huxley and Osmond, and their discussions about drugs, addiction, and death and dying. This important set of letters raises fascinating questions about medicines, the "psychedelic renaissance," the nature of the mind, and perceptions of reality. Dyck is the author of Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD From Clinic to Campus (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010) as well as Culture's Catalyst: Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church in Canada (Manitoba, 2017). Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsi

Linda M. Grasso's Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe & Twentieth-Century Feminism (University of New Mexico Press, 2017) provides an in-depth look at O'Keeffe's ambivalent relationship with feminism from her early beginnings as a New Woman of the 1910s, to the support she received from women to become a national icon for feminism. Along the way, she distanced herself in multiple ways from women and feminism seeking to establish herself as an artist rather than as a woman artist with art making serving as a personal form of activism. Her desire to control her career and image motivated her to seek gender-transcendence and embrace personal feminism of individualism, self-expression and professional achievement. O’Keeffe’s success, the modernism of her time, and feminism are deeply linked and demonstrate the complexities for women who excelled in their chosen fields and the enduring conflicts within the movement. How the meaning of feminism changed during the course of O’Keeffe’s lifetime and how she became a

"Dear Brother," Jane Manning James wrote to Joseph F. Smith in 1903, "I take this opportunity of writing to ask you if I can get my endowments and also finish the work I have begun for my dead .... Your sister in the Gospel, Jane E. James." A faithful Latter-day Saint since her conversion sixty years earlier, James had made this request several times before, to no avail, and this time she would be just as unsuccessful, even though most Latter-day Saints were allowed to participate in the endowment ritual in the temple as a matter of course. James, unlike most Mormons, was black. For that reason, she was barred from performing the temple rituals that Latter-day Saints believe are necessary to reach the highest degrees of glory after death. A free black woman from Connecticut, James positioned herself at the center of LDS history with uncanny precision. After her conversion, she traveled with her family and other converts from the region to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the LDS church was then based. There, she took

In his new book, The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader (Yale University Press, 2018), Stephen Fritz professor of history at East Tennessee State University reexamines Hitler as a military commander and strategist. That Hitler saw World War II as the only way to retrieve Germany’s fortunes and build an expansionist Thousand-Year Reich is uncontroversial. But while his generals did sometimes object to Hitler’s tactics and operational direction, they often made the same errors in judgment and were in agreement regarding larger strategic and political goals. A necessary volume for understanding the influence of World War I on Hitler’s thinking, this work is also an eye-opening reappraisal of major events like the invasion of Russia and the battle for Normandy. Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo. Learn more about your ad cho

John Owen is one of the most significant seventeenth-century Protestant theologians. He is often discussed by historians of politics and religion in terms of his contributions to the national church settlement of the British Republic (1649-60) or to the post-reformation scholastic theological tradition. But, as this new book argues, Owen regarded himself as a biblical interpreter more than as a dogmatician, and his commentary on the New Testament epistle of Hebrews – which stretches over 2 million words as a tour de force of early modern learning – is as one of the longest biblical commentaries ever published. In his new book, John W. Tweeddale, who is Academic Dean and Professor of Theology at Reformation Bible College, FL, surveys Owen’s achievement in this massive project of exegesis. John Owen and Hebrews: The Foundation of Biblical Interpretation (T&T Clark, 2019) is likely the most significant book ever published on Owen’s activity as a reader of Scripture. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at

In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Nico Slate, professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, about the intersections between diet, spirituality, health, and politics for one of the world’s most famous nonviolent political activists, Mahatma Gandhi. Dr. Slate, who researches anti-racist activism in the United States and India, researched Gandhi’s experiments with vegetarianism and veganism (and vegetarianism again), raw food, nut milks, fasting, and prohibitions against salt, chocolate, coffee, and flavorful foods like ginger and mangoes that might inflame the passions. In Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind (University of Washington Press, 2019), Slate explores the ways that Gandhi linked his diet to nonviolent political action through protesting salt taxes, fasting for peace, and abstaining from chocolate produced by slave-like labor. But more importantly, Slate examines the moments when Gandhi’s diet turned from purposeful action to unhealthy obsession, as

After the fall of the Qing empire, amid nationalist and socialist upheaval, Buddhist monks in the Mongolian frontiers of the Soviet Union and Republican China faced a chaotic and increasingly uncertain world. In this book, Matthew W. King tells the story of Zawa Damdin, one Mongolian monk’s efforts to defend Buddhist monasticism in revolutionary times, revealing an unexplored landscape of countermodern Buddhisms beyond old imperial formations and the newly invented national subject. Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire (Columbia University Press, 2019) takes up the perspective of the Mongolian polymath Zawa Damdin (1867–1937): a historian, mystic, logician, and pilgrim whose life and works straddled the Qing and its socialist aftermath, between the monastery and the party scientific academy. Through a rich reading of his works, King reveals that modernity in Asia was not always shaped by epochal contact with Europe and that new models of Buddhist life, neither imperi

Peter Josephson and Ward Holder collaborated on their second book on theologian and political theorist Reinhold Niebuhr in producing this new book, specifically focusing on the questions of “why Niebuhr?” and “why Niebuhr now?” Josephson and Holder note that their “focus is Niebuhr himself and what the encounter between his own theology and his practical political experience might reveal in our contemporary situation.” Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and Democracy in America in the Twenty-First Century (Lexington Books, 2018) traces not only Niebuhr’s religious and theological training and considerations, but also his political engagement and the import he put on the need to be actively involved in the political world in which we find ourselves. Josephson and Holder also note that there had been a fairly recent Niebuhr renaissance, with many American politicians and intellectuals paying particular attention to Niebuhr’s work and thinking and acknowledging how his work had informed t

Harold J. Cook talks about the travels and trials of the young Descartes, a man who spent as much time traveling and fighting as he did studying philosophy. Cook is John F. Nickoll Professor of History at Brown University. He is the author of The Young Descartes: Nobility, Rumor, and War out this year with University of Chicago Press (2018). Michael F. Robinson is professor of history at Hillyer College, University of Hartford. He's the author of The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and The Lost White Tribe: Scientists, Explorers, and the Theory that Changed a Continent (Oxford University Press, 2016). He's also the host of the podcast Time to Eat the Dogs, a weekly podcast about science, history, and exploration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

With and Without Galton: Vasilii Florinskii and the Fate of Eugenics in Russia (Open Book Publishers, 2018), Professor Nikolai Krementsov’s recent history of Russian eugenics, reflects on a broad problem: How to acknowledge what eugenics movements worldwide have had in common, while doing justice to local differences that, for example, make the late Victorian eugenics of Francis Galton comparatively quite different from Russian eugenicists of the same period. Krementsov takes this story from the 1860’s to the present day, and in so doing, provides a fascinating analysis of the vicissitudes of Russian attempts to improve the human species. This history is of the utmost relevance for the present day. Eugenics is neither gone nor forgotten, and Krementsov’s account does much to explain why that is the case. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests in

John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) is widely recognised as the greatest epic poem in the English language – and it is buried in the commentary of thousands of other texts. William Poole, who is John Galsworthy Fellow and Tutor in English at New College, Oxford, has written what will be recognised as one of the most important contributions to this formidable body of scholarship. Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost (Harvard University Press, 2017) offers a new account of the author and of his best-known work. Structured in two parts, and with short but determinedly focused chapters, Poole’s new book reconstructs the intellectual world within which Milton began to read towards his greatest project, and comments upon the poem to illustrate the variety and capacity of its author’s intellectual range. Pulling together biography and criticism, Poole’s new book is an outstanding and superbly resourceful achievement – and one that will help many new readers to discover this greatest of literary texts. Crawford Grib

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was one of the first to interpret Eastern wisdom for a Western audience. Joan Watts, Alan's eldest daughter, is the co-editor (along with her sister, Anne) of the new volume, The Collected letters of Alan Watts, out now in hardback and paperback from New World Library (2017). This is part one in a two-part series on the life of Alan Watts, featuring Joan and Anne Watts. Greg Soden is the host “Classical Ideas,” a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

One of the most important trends within evangelicalism over the last half-century has been a renewal of Reformed theology. In this important new book, Jeffrey S. McDonald, who is a Presbyterian pastor in Bellevue, Nebraska, and an affiliate professor of church history at Sioux Falls Seminary, Omaha, reconstructs the life of one of the individuals who did most to make that renewal possible. John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America (Pickwick, 2017) is the story of how one theologian moved ever closer to the margins of his mainstream denomination while simultaneously shaping the individuals and institutions that would do most to recover traditional theological claims within the broader movement of evangelicals. This impressive new work documents the failures as well as the successes of the individual who did more than almost any other to renew the reformation. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus

Anne Watts is one of the co-editors of the new book, The Collected letters of Alan Watts, released in January 2018 from New World Library. Anne Watts is a facilitator and educator who is committed to creating a world where everyone wins.  She honors each individual for the gift she or he is, and believes that love and nurturance are the most important aspects in human healing. She regularly leads workshops at the Esalen Institute and you can find her upcoming events online at www.annewatts.org. Greg Soden is the host “Classical Ideas,” a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

During a career spanning six decades, Lawrence Halprin (1916–2009) became one of the most prolific and outspoken landscape architects of his generation. He took on challenging new project types, developing a multidisciplinary practice while experimenting with adaptive reuse and ecological designs for new shopping malls, freeways, and urban parks. In his lifelong effort to improve the American landscape, Halprin celebrated the creative process as a form of social activism. Kenneth Helphand is a Fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects and professor emeritus of Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon. His fascinating insights and research reveal a design process that lead Landscape Architecture’s most iconic places. In this interview about his new book Lawrence Halprin (Library of American Landscape History, 2017), Kenny discusses the love that Halprin had for landscape and his role in shaping the way the public uses and enjoys its public spaces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

With questions over how ideas are translated across borders and between languages as acute as ever today, it is sometimes easy to forget that our efforts to understand each other are mediated through many accreted layers of previous translations. Pu Wang’s The Translatability of Revolution: Guo Moruo and Twentieth-Century Chinese Culture (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018) takes us deep into this world of past linguistic and cultural interpretations, shedding invaluable light on broad questions how ‘history’, 'the people', 'revolution' and many other ideas have emerged as products of exchange between East Asian and European contexts. But this book is much more than this, being the first study of the whole life of Guo Moruo, the ‘writer, poet, dramatist, Marxist historian, paleographer… revolutionist and cultural fighter’ (p. 5), as Deng Xiaoping eulogised him. Wang skilfully weaves together an analysis of Guo’s extraordinarily diverse written works – from translations of Goethe to autobiography and interpr

Though she died in 1847 at a young age, Marie Duplessis inspired one of the greatest operas ever composed. In The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis (Oxford University Press, 2015), René Weis recounts the life of the remarkable woman who overcame poverty and abuse to become the toast of Parisian society. Born Alphonsine Plessis, as a young girl she was sexually assaulted by her own father before she escaped to Paris. Initially finding work as a laundress, Duplessis’s beauty soon won her the attention of wealthy admirers, whose interests gave her access to the social elite. As Weis demonstrates, her success as a courtesan was not just because of her physical attractiveness, but also due to her intelligence, her charm, and her generous spirit, all of which won her a range of friends and lovers that included some of the greatest artistic talents of her time. Among them was the younger Alexandre Dumas, whose novel La Dame aux Camélias was based on Duplessis’s life and which, in turn, inspired the Italian

Harold Holzer has written a biography of one of America’s greatest public artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Daniel Chester French.  In Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019), Holzer chronicles the career of French, who became best known for his sculpture of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  French was born in 1850 and became one of the most sought after sculptors of portraits and thematic sculptures in America.  Holzer reveals French’s methods of creation and execution of his sculptural commissions, which included many notable works before the famous Lincoln Memorial.  Yet, the Lincoln Memorial and its place in the American imagination are a central feature of this book.  Holzer reveals how the statue had different political meanings to different audiences from the moment of it dedication. Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly intere

Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, is his story. For the first four years of his life, Prahlad didn’t speak. But his silence didn’t stop him from communicating—or communing—with the strange, numinous world he found around him. Ordinary household objects came to life; the spirits of long-dead slave children were his best friends. In his magical interior world, sensory experiences blurred, time disappeared, and memory was fluid. Ever so slowly, he emerged, learning to talk and evolving into an artist and educator. His journey takes readers across the United States during one of its most turbulent moments, and Prahlad experiences it all, from the heights of the Civil Rights Movement to West Coast hippie enclaves to a college town that continues to struggle with racism and its border state legacy. Rooted in black folklore and cultural ambience, and offering new perspectives on autism and more, The Sec