
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
The Kims, of North Korea, are perhaps the 21st century’s most successful family dictatorship–if only due to sheer longevity, having run North Korea for the almost eight decades since the country’s post-war founding. Kim Il-Sung led North Korea for over half that time, from its founding in 1948 to Kim’s death in 1994. B

Myra Mendible, "American War Stories: Veteran-Writers and the Politics of Memoir" (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021)
Even with the availability of new forms of storytelling, the memoir remains as one of the favored ways for combat veterans to tell their stories about war for a public eager to know. In American War Stories: Veteran-Writers and the Politics of Memoir (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021), Dr. Myra Mendible examines

Sabrin Hasbun, "Crossing: A Love Story Between Italy and Palestine" (Footnote Press, 2025)
A beautiful and compelling family memoir retracing the love story between Sabrin Hasbun’s Palestinian father and Italian mother, and the life of her half-Italian, half-Palestinian family from the 1960s to 2020. After the loss of her mother, Sabrin tries to renegotiate her mixed identity and understand her mother’s choi

Semmy Stalhammer, "Codename Barber: My Father’s Story" (Albert Bonniers Publishers, 2007)
The Nazi threat emerges from Germany 1933 and shatters the small town life in Krasnik south of Lublin in eastern Poland. The teenager Mischa Stahlhammer manages to escape from a German work camp and joins Polish partisans. He survives by becoming a specialist in arming and disarming mines, the most dangerous of all mis

Joseph Torigian, "The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Often I will find in a chronology or a biography, you know, official materials, evidence that because I have other evidence, it’s meaningful in a way that maybe the people who edited those collections might not have expected. That’s the idea of mosaic theory – you bring together many pieces of evidence, even small ones

James Graham Wilson, "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan" (Cornell UP, 2024)
In America's Cold Warrior, James Graham Wilson traces Paul Nitze's career path in national security after World War II, a time when many of his mentors and peers returned to civilian life. Serving in eight presidential administrations, Nitze commanded White House attention even when he was out of government, especially