This week we interview Bernice Lerner, a senior scholar at Boston University’s Center for Character and Social Responsibility. Her latest book is a dual biography of a high-ranking British military doctor during World War II, and Lerner’s mother, Rachel Genuth, a poor Jewish teenager from the Hungarian provinces and Holocaust survivor. The book, All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, was published by Johns Hopkins University… Read More »

This week we interview Li Shan Chan, a Singaporean writer, mental health advocate, and doctoral student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who was awarded the Biography Prize by Honolulu’s Center for Biographical Research. Her latest book, Searching for Lee Wen: A Life in 135 Parts, about a unique Singaporean Chinese artist, was published by Epigram Books in May 2022. Her previous books include Yellow Man and her memoir, A Philosopher’s Madness.… Read More »

This week we interview Marko Perko, a veteran writer and the co-author (with psychiatrist Stephen M. Stahl) of Tesla: His Tremendous and Troubled Life. This biography of Nikola Tesla—the Serbian American engineer who helped to create our modern world with his wide-ranging inventions, discoveries, and patents, including alternating current (AC)—was published by Prometheus Books in May 2022. Perko has written for and edited numerous publications, and he has worked as a columnist, speechwriter, composer,… Read More »

This week we interview Etta Madden, author of Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and International Networks. Published by the State University of New York Press in April 2022, this book focuses on three little known Americans—Caroline Crane Marsh, Anne Hampton Brewster, and Emily Bliss Gould—whose lives intersected in an evolving Italy during the mid-19th century. Madden is the author of three additional books that explore American writers, utopian literature, and intentional communities. A… Read More »

This week we interview Justin Tinsley, a senior sports and culture reporter for ESPN’s “The Undefeated.” He has written commentaries and feature stories about people as varied as Marvin Gaye, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Serena Williams, Cardi B, and Kendrick Lamar. Tinsley is also a regular presence on ESPN’s daily sports talk show, “Around the Horn.” And, he is the host of the “30 for 30” podcast, “The King of Crenshaw,” which explores the legacy… Read More »

This week we interview Betsy Smoot, an intelligence historian interested in early twentieth-century cryptology and communications. She retired from the Center for Cryptologic History of the National Security Agency in 2017, and she has published articles in Cryptologia and Intelligence and National Security.  Her book, Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Crytology, was published by the University Press of Kentucky in March 2022. Betsy Smoot was interviewed by fellow BIO member Jennifer… Read More »

This week we interview Gwendolyn Mink and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, co-authors of Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress, published by New York University Press in May 2022. This book explores the life and accomplishments of Patsy Mink, the first Asian American woman elected to U.S. House of Representatives, and a dedicated advocate for Title IX legislation and opposition to the Vietnam War. Gwendolyn Mink, Patsy Mink daughter’s,… Read More »

This week we interview Toluse Olorunnipa and Robert Samuels, Peabody Award and Polk Award-winning journalists and co-authors of His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, published by Viking Press in May 2022. Toluse Olorunnipa is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the Post in 2019 and previously covered the White House. Before that, Olorunnipa spent five years at Bloomberg, where… Read More »

This week we interview Philip Short, a British journalist who has written several definitive biographies, including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Short has had a long career as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, D.C., working for the BBC, the Economist, and the Times of London. Short’s latest biography is, Putin, published by Henry Holt & Company in July 2022. It examines the life of… Read More »

This week we interview award winning writer Mark Lee Gardner. His latest biography, The Earth is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation, was published by Mariner Books in June 2022.Gardner’s previous books, Rough Riders, To Hell on a Fast Horse and Shot All to Hell, received multiple honors, including a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. An authority on the American… Read More »