
New Books in Biography
Interviews with Biographers about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography
Show episodes

Jason Cannon, "A Time for Reflection: The Parallel Legacies of Baseball Icons Willie McCovery and Billy Williams" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
Professional baseball has featured a bevy of superstars over the past century and a half, but only a few of them have impacted their sport and cities as deeply as Willie McCovey and Billy Williams. Born just a handful of miles apart in 1938, they grew up in and around one of the sport’s true cradles, Mobile, Alabama, o

Letizia Osti, "History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writing the Past in Medieval Arabic Literature" (I. B. Tauris, 2024)
Abu Bakr al-Suli was an Abbasid polymath and table companion, as well as a legendary chess player. He was perhaps best known for his work on poetry and chancery, which would have a long-lasting influence on Arabic literature. His decades of service at the court of at least three caliphs give him a unique perspective as

Mikhail Goldis, "Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
What was it like to work as a Jewish district attorney in provincial Soviet Ukraine in the post-Stalinist eras? What role did antisemitism and Holocaust memories play in solving and investigating the criminal cases? How does a detective’s mind work? The answers to these and many other fascinating questions are found in

Lincoln A. Mitchell, "Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco" (U Nevada Press, 2025)
Those who recognize Mayor George Moscone's name may think of him as the career politician who was assassinated along with Harvey Milk, but there was much more to this influential and fascinating man's story. He was a trailblazing progressive and powerful state legislator who was instrumental in passing legislation on i

Donna Besel, "The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family" (U Regina Press, 2021)
In this NBN episode host Hollay Ghadery talks to bestselling author Donna Besel about her staggering memoir, The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family (University of Regina Press, 2021) which has been hailed as “a shattering story and an essential one, told with consummate honesty and courage.” —Joan Thom

Simon Morrison, "Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer" (Yale UP, 2024)
Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of the fascinating reality. It is all too easy to forget that he composed an empire's worth of music, and navigated the imperial Russian court t