Several BIO members have new books out this month:

• Diane Helentjaris, I Ain’t Afraid: The World of Lulu Bell Parr, Wild West Cowgirl (Alkira Publishing)
• Ken Krimstein, Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up With The Universe (Bloomsbury Publishing)
• Heath Hardage Lee, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady (St. Martin’s Press)
• Carl Rollyson, Sylvia Plath, Day by Day, Volume 2: 1955–1963 (University Press of Mississippi)
• Kathleen Spaltro, Lionel Barrymore: Character and Endurance in Hollywood’s Golden Age (University Press of Kentucky)
• Pamela D. Toler, The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany (biography of Sigrid Schultz, Beacon Press)

Three BIO members had paperback editions released in August:

• Leah Redmond Chang, Young Queens: The Intertwined Lives of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots (Picador)
• Marsha Gordon, Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott (University of California Press)
• Edward O’Shea, Seamus Heaney’s American Odyssey (Routledge)

Additionally, the paperback edition of BIO member Rachel Swarns’s The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church (Random House Trade Paperbacks) was released in July.

Five BIO members have new book deals:

• Julie Dobrow sold Crossing Indian Country: From the Wounded Knee Massacre to the Unlikely Marriage of Elaine Goodale and Ohíye’ Sa (about Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman) to NYU Press.
• Charlotte Gordon sold I Speak of Wrongs (about Frances Harper, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone) to Crown. Brettne Bloom at The Book Group was the agent.
• Rebecca Boggs Roberts sold Renegade Rose (about Rose Elizabeth Cleveland) to Viking. Anna Sproul-Latimer at Neon Literary was the agent.
• Ray Anthony Shepard sold We Are Minutemen: Patriots of Color on Day One of The American Revolution to Calkins Creek. Caryn Wiseman at Andrea Brown Literary Agency was the agent.
• Gina Waggott sold Scatman: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Unlikeliest Popstar (about John Larkin) to Rowman & Littlefield. Rita Rosenkranz at Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency was the agent.

Additionally:

John A. Farrell discussed the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation on C-SPAN. You can view the program here.

Arthur Hoyle reviewed Mary Hollingsworth’s Catherine de’ Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen (Pegasus Books, July 2024) for New York Journal of Books. Read the review here.

Eileen Martin and Greer Rising discovered an unpublished poem by Ernest Hemingway at the Princeton University Library. They presented the poem at the May 2024 American Literature Association meeting in Chicago, and the poem and its origin story were featured in The Hemingway Society’s July newsletter. View the article here.

In an essay for LitHub, Steve Paul marked the 100th birthday of writer Evan S. Connell, the subject of his biography Literary Alchemist (University of Missouri Press, 2021). Steve also recently published an essay on the 100th birthday of writer Vincent O. Carter. Read it here. Lastly, at The Hemingway Society’s biennial international conference in July in Spain, he delivered a paper on Ernest Hemingway’s short story “After the Storm.” The article is scheduled for publication next spring in The Hemingway Review.

Raquel Ramsey wishes to share this update with BIO members: “As I continue to recover from anemia after the loss of my stepson last year, I am writing my book—Reflections—a collection of my short stories, poems, verses, and letters to my husband, Col. Edwin P. Ramsey, 26th Cavalry [Regiment] Philippine Scouts, through the years. I am working with Tim Deal, who wrote Defenders of the Rock, which featured Ed in one chapter, and for which I wrote the foreword.

For Smithsonian.com, David O. Stewart wrote about the swimming showdown between Johnny Weissmuller and Duke Kahanamoku at the 1924 Paris Olympics. You can read it here.

A profile of Eric K. Washington, titled “It Takes a Village,” was a culture feature in the August 2024 issue of The Village View. You can read it here.

Barbara Weisberg was interviewed about her book, Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York, on WNYC’s “All of It,” hosted by Alison Stewart, as part of the series “Women Behaving Badly.” You can listen to the interview here.

Matthew Zipf published an essay on Renata Adler in the journal Liberties. Zipf said, “I tell the story of her braid, placing it in context of Marcel Schwob’s theory of biography: namely, that our physical quirks reveal us better than anything else.” You can read the article here.