This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography
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Oct 9, 2026 · 57:44
A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet (Academic Studies Press, 2025) makes the original and persuasive claim that Brodsky’s force as a…
Oct 6, 2026 · 31:52
The story of two women in the mid-twentieth-century South navigating financial independence, a changing rural landscape, and social norms. Flannery and Regina: The Andalusia…
Oct 5, 2026 · 43:42
In this episode, I speak with Dr Amy King of Bristol University about her book, The Afterlife of a Fascist Murder: Giacomo Matteotti in Myth and Memory, 1924–2024 , published by…
Oct 4, 2026 · 21:31
Although Spain was never a formal ally of the United States during the American Revolution, its entry into the war definitively tipped the balance against Britain. Led by…
Oct 4, 2026 · 1:09:19
Our Common Life: Folk Song from the Front Porch to the Concert Hall (U Illinois Press, 2026) by Stephen Wade is part memoir, part meditation on American culture, and part…
Oct 1, 2026 · 57:14
How did Anita O'Day-the legendary jazz singer who, along with Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, and Stan Getz, led the so-called "cool school" of modern jazz-define cool?…
Oct 1, 2026 · 1:06:58
I spoke with writer and The Hollywood Reporter editor Julian Sancton about his New York Times bestselling book, Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the…
Sep 29, 2026 · 45:41
There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial…
Sep 29, 2026 · 39:14
Joel Dinerstein's The Last of the Ellis Island Jews (SUNY Press, 2026) is a tragicomic memoir of a dysfunctional, working-class Brooklyn Jewish family that illuminates both the…
Sep 28, 2026 · 54:55
“Does Thomas Jefferson still matter?” ask two leading historians on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson has been reinvented more than…
Sep 25, 2026 · 43:56
Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Comics Form (Cambridge UP, 2026) by Dr. Emmy Waldman is the first book to place the autobiographical projects of canonical…
Sep 25, 2026 · 28:10
Kenneth R. Feinberg's What is Life Worth? New Edition with Reflections 25 Years After 9/11 (Rivertown Books, 2026) shares the story that inspired the acclaimed motion picture…
Sep 23, 2026 · 1:06:12
A gripping exposé of deception, cult power, and the long shadow of Carlos Castaneda, the man behind the biggest literary hoax of the twentieth century. Twenty years in the…
Sep 23, 2026 · 1:00:32
In A Matter of Complexion : The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt (St. Martin's Press, 2025), Tess Chakkalakal gives readers the first comprehensive biography of Charles…
Sep 22, 2026 · 1:07:19
In June 1968, a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan B. Sirhan assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, marking yet another killing in a decade haunted by…
Sep 22, 2026 · 42:12
Celebrated poet, essayist, playwright, and American artist Langston Hughes is one of the few American writers who consistently wrote about democracy from a joyous perspective,…
Sep 21, 2026 · 47:11
For more than two decades, Andrew Brandt has lived at the intersection of money, law, and sports—first as a player agent, then as vice president of the Green Bay Packers during…
Sep 18, 2026 · 38:33
Jerome Sauvage served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative in North Korea from 2009 to 2013. In this…
Sep 18, 2026 · 37:36
High in the Lebanese mountains above Beirut sits Beit Trad, an eighteenth-century family home that Sarah Trad transformed into a guesthouse devoted to Levantine hospitality. The…
Sep 10, 2026 · 1:04:37
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author and journalist Ian Brown about his memoir, 70: A Diary of My Seventy-First Year (Penguin Random House,…
Sep 10, 2026 · 48:21
In February 2022, British explorer Charlie Walker flew to Siberia's Sakha Republic to walk a thousand miles up frozen rivers to the Arctic Ocean, through Earth's coldest…
Sep 9, 2026 · 27:24
An account of the North American fentanyl crisis told through stories and photographs of its victims Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy ( Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026),…
Sep 7, 2026 · 1:12:23
In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door…
Sep 6, 2026 · 41:34
In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kirby about their joyful and powerful new book, Fairy (Palimpsest Press, 2026). In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their…
Sep 5, 2026 · 1:20:46
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Leah Kim about her powerful book, Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury,…
Sep 5, 2026 · 54:31
In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital…
Sep 2, 2026 · 1:00:27
Have you ever swapped stories on a porch with Amish snowbirds in Florida? Searched for reindeer with the Siberian Yupik in Alaska? Been a guest on a houseboat deep in the…
Sep 1, 2026 · 46:09
As a child, Lim Muy Lang grew up in a prosperous Sino-Khmer family in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the Khmer Rouge seized power in…
Sep 1, 2026 · 26:08
When world kettle-bell lifting champion David Keohan heard the old tales of stone-lifting, he was captivated, setting off on a quest to rediscover these famous stones and attempt…
Aug 26, 2026 · 42:21
Robyn Hitchcock' s second memoir, Stranded in the Future (Akashic Books, 2026), explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fueled his…
Aug 26, 2026 · 1:14:31
The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas. On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction film opened in a…
Aug 24, 2026 · 1:01:33
A groundbreaking reassessment of the relationship between Federico García Lorca and American poet Philip Cummings and its impact on the poems in Lorca's landmark collection, Poet…
Aug 22, 2026 · 1:10:40
In the early nineteenth century, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the first evolutionary theory of life and, with it, a new science: biology. Yet for…
Aug 22, 2026 · 1:01:51
Fulvia was born into wealth, privilege, and prestige around the year 80 BCE, yet there was nothing inherently special about her—she was not a saint, an empress, or a queen. But…
Aug 22, 2026 · 1:17:31
Three Tenses (Random House, 2026) by Ed Park is not quite a memoir, not quite fiction, not quite poetry and not quite prose—and yet it transcends the sum of all its not-quite…
Aug 21, 2026 · 1:38:28
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of articles on modern history and culture, and his books…
Aug 21, 2026 · 45:35
In New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centauries, Nathan Straus was famous as a co-owner of the Macy’s and Abraham and Straus department stores. He was also…
Aug 20, 2026 · 40:38
Chapal Rani was one of India’s most famous performers of jatra, Bengal’s popular theater. Traditionally, all the roles, including female roles, were played by men—and Chapal Rani…
Aug 20, 2026 · 41:48
As a big sister, Girl Scout, personal assistant, sitcom sidekick, and, finally, mother of three, Amy believed it was her destiny to be a people pleaser. She learned to put others…
Aug 17, 2026 · 45:31
Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America (Cornell UP, 2025) explores the remarkable life of Occramer Marycoo, an enslaved African who…
Aug 17, 2026 · 1:07:14
Scott Peeple's How Many Roads : A Life of Bob Dylan (Reaktion, 2026) chronicles Bob Dylan’s rise from apprenticeships in Minneapolis cafés and Greenwich Village folk clubs to…
Aug 16, 2026 · 41:15
How do you build bridges after living through one of history's greatest ruptures? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with historian Shimon Redlich to discuss his memoir…
Aug 16, 2026 · 38:10
Amy Chavez talks to Don Weiss, currently mid-way through the Shikoku Pilgrimage — Japan's 1,300 km Buddhist route that has been walked for almost as many years. Pilgrims share…
Aug 14, 2026 · 56:57
After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maineʼs inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his…
Aug 13, 2026 · 56:41
250 years ago when the United States declared independence, Edward Gibbon across the ocean published the first volume of his magisterial series, The Decline and Fall of the Roman…
Aug 13, 2026 · 50:53
The life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, often feels like a spectacle—in no small part due to the 1987 Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor . Yet the true story being Puyi, as…
Aug 12, 2026 · 30:28
John Ross chats with repeat guest Tim McGirk about Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BC), the Father of Chinese History. He earned this accolade for his monumental work, the Shiji (usually…
Aug 12, 2026 · 58:44
The young James Joyce (1882–1941) was forged in the smithy of Irish political controversies, and he took into his European exile a depth of political insight unrivalled among his…
Aug 7, 2026 · 41:22
Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) examines how autobiographical writing reflects the psychological and…
Aug 5, 2026 · 49:59
"In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a war in which his father had…
Aug 5, 2026 · 1:06:55
We know Abraham Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his character and…
Aug 4, 2026 · 1:08:12
Of the two Koreas, it is the South which appears much the more Christian today, with all major cities dotted with church spires and illuminated crosses. But a century ago it was…
Aug 1, 2026 · 32:44
Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Returns to Marrakesh , co-translated by Claudia Esposito and Laura Reeck and published by Syracuse University Press in 2026, chronicles Meddeb’s successive…
Jul 30, 2026 · 53:33
Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provocative, affectionate, and…
Jul 25, 2026 · 1:00:42
Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed German empress, she was named as…
Jul 22, 2026 · 46:22
What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with acclaimed cultural critic David Denby to…
Jul 15, 2026 · 51:12
The Forger of Paris (Doppelhouse Press, 2025) presents Adolfo Kaminsky’s biography in its only authorized edition, expanded with photographs from Kaminsky's 2019 exhibition at…
Jul 15, 2026 · 1:01:27
Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A pioneer in children’s music and an…
Jul 13, 2026 · 1:04:13
Martin Heidegger’s sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he…
Jul 11, 2026 · 46:06
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Rachel Phan about her powerful memoir, Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family & Belonging (Douglas & McIntyre, 2025). A warm…
Jul 9, 2026 · 56:15
With his shag haircut and white Stratocaster guitar, Jeff Beck was an icon known and loved by millions. Yet somehow, he maintained the ineffable low profile cool of a cult hero…
Jul 6, 2026 · 37:04
Winston Churchill was born in a palace and was given a funeral worthy of a king. His family had enjoyed an intimate association with the British monarchy stretching back…
Jul 2, 2026 · 43:10
Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly, little read. Her…
Jul 2, 2026 · 1:00:02
In Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory (UNC Press, 2026), historian John Garrison Marks tells the story of Americans’ long,…
Jul 1, 2026 · 56:56
Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (Princeton University Press, 2026) is the first major new edition of Paine’s works, bringing together all his writings in six breathtaking…
Jun 29, 2026 · 45:45
Publishing one hundred years after her birth, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe, I Wanna Be Loved By You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Takes (Grand Central Publishing,…
Jun 29, 2026 · 48:27
What does a 16th century ruler reveal about the nature of power, past and present? Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while…
Jun 28, 2026 · 1:18:43
This is the third time I have the great fortune of interviewing Tom Mullaney. I can hardly think of a more worthy ambassador for the history discipline, and the work we are…
Jun 28, 2026 · 37:43
Fred S. Naiden, professor emeritus of history of at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is an authority on the ancient world. In the 1980s in New York City, however,…
Jun 26, 2026 · 40:09
Philip Norman's latest biography, Mr. Moonlight (DaCapo Press, 2026) is the definitive, comprehensive biography of Brian Epstein--the man who built the Beatles. There will never…
Jun 25, 2026 · 31:59
In 2012, China debuted its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a refurbished Soviet-era ship from Ukraine. The debut of the Liaoning was largely thanks to a longtime pressure…
Jun 23, 2026 · 46:49
A cemetery as open-air museum? Historian and award-winning author of Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal , Eric K.…
Jun 17, 2026 · 45:54
I had the privilege of speaking with writer Samantha Ellis about her deeply moving new book, Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture (Pegasus Books, 2026).…
Jun 16, 2026 · 1:11:18
Félix Nadar took the first aerial photograph in 1858, so the story goes. The evidence, Emily Doucet notes, is mixed. In Inventing Nadar: A History of Photographic Firsts (Duke…
Jun 15, 2026 · 48:55
Colin Flahive is an American entrepreneur and writer who has spent more than two decades living and running social enterprises in southwestern China. He is best known as one of…
Jun 14, 2026 · 1:09:30
A memoir of a child’s forced relocation to Siberia under Stalin’s Gulag system reveals the potential for true human kindness in the face of extraordinary hardship. In April of…
Jun 13, 2026 · 1:01:42
Chaim Grade was born in 1910 in Vilna, Poland. In his youth, Grade was a student of the Novaredok Musar Yeshiva and of Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz. He was also a founding member of…
Jun 11, 2026 · 49:43
John Quincy Adams was the great visionary of America’s post-founding era, a writer and orator of consummate skill who reframed the origins and principles of the republic for a…
Jun 10, 2026 · 46:52
John Dewey is among history’s most celebrated thinkers on democracy and education, yet he has often been underappreciated and misunderstood as a philosopher. This book paints a…
Jun 9, 2026 · 34:09
Themistocles is one of the great personages of ancient Athens, known for his heroics in warfare as well as for his overweening and ultimately tragic ambitions. In Themistocles:…
Jun 8, 2026 · 26:09
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Andrea Gunraj about her collection of essays, Go-Between Girl: My Indentured Roots as Reclaimed Present (McClelland &…
Jun 4, 2026 · 47:53
In Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902 (U South Carolina Press, 2026), Dr. Mollie Barnes studies the ways women…
Jun 3, 2026 · 1:03:45
Here in Episode 9 of Season 5, I interview Mr. Rob Long . A longtime Hollywood professional, he was a writer and producer for the classic sitcom Cheers as well as for over a…
Jun 2, 2026 · 37:10
In 1656, a young Amsterdam merchant was excommunicated by his Portuguese-Jewish community in the harshest terms it had ever used. Baruch Spinoza was accused of unspecified…
Jun 2, 2026 · 47:32
The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It’s a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not only contemplated, it’s one that…
May 31, 2026 · 1:02:46
In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey—having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains, forests, and…
May 30, 2026 · 1:06:29
From The New York Times–bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson’s writings on race that…
May 29, 2026 · 35:58
A compelling and inventive memoir exploring how pain and pleasure are passed down through generations of women For years, Lauren W. Westerfield looked back at her childhood as an…
May 22, 2026 · 32:48
For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this visionary filmmaker directed more than fifty…
May 19, 2026 · 1:00:12
I was born in Harbin, Manchuria, (later China), in 1938. At the outbreak of the Second World War my mother, sister and I, along with other non-combatants of the Allied countries,…
May 10, 2026 · 33:54
From the author of The First Lady of WWII comes Y ou Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her (Sourcebooks, 2026), the…
May 7, 2026 · 55:41
As detailed in The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden (Birlinn, 2026) by Lucy Stewart, at the turn of the twentieth century, Scottish adventurer Ella Christie returned…
May 7, 2026 · 49:20
In What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To (U Minnesota Press, 2025) an iconic rock DJ of the Twin Cities tells her harrowing story of being stalked while…
May 5, 2026 · 47:22
We know who Martin Luther King Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism? Before Martin Luther King, Jr. was a…
May 4, 2026 · 49:53
In this episode, Nicholas Thompson , CEO of The Atlantic , and University of Puerto Rico professors Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Maritza Stanchich , discuss something deceptively…
May 4, 2026 · 43:20
There was no more trenchant and substantive critic of the Left from the Left in the 1960s and 1970s than Bayard Rustin. Some liberals and leftists today valorize Rustin on the…
May 3, 2026 · 56:35
Nicholas Tochka analyzes the role of rock music in the life of Charles Manson, the Family, and the August 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings, which also gives larger insight into…
May 3, 2026 · 1:00:11
Erich Fromm, the prominent twentieth-century public intellectual and psychoanalyst, was recognized for his courageous stand against fascism, racism, and human destructiveness.…
May 2, 2026 · 58:30
Paola de Santo joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy (U Delaware Press, 2026). Drawing on…
May 2, 2026 · 1:07:44
Imad Yusuf Nuwayhid was born in 1944 in the Lebanese village of Ras al-Matn. He came of age in the 1960s, splitting time between Beirut and Europe. And he died in 1975, the start…
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