Three BIO members have new books out this month:

• Virginia McGee Butler, Becoming Ezra Jack Keats (University Press of Mississippi)
• Mary V. Dearborn, Carson McCullers: A Life (Knopf)
• Barbara Weisberg, Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York (W. W. Norton & Company)

The February episodes of the BIO Podcast are as follows:

• February 2, Tanisha C. Ford, author of Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon, and the Glamour, Money and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement (Amistad, October 2023), interviewed by A’Lelia Bundles.
• February 9, David Waldstreicher, author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: a Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 2023), interviewed by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina.
• February 16, Rachel Jamison Webster, author of Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family (Henry Holt & Company, March 2023), interviewed by Tamara Payne.
• February 23, Doug Melville, author of Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy and a Quest to Honor America’s First Black Generals (Atria/Black Privilege Press, November 2023), interviewed by Kevin McGruder.

Additionally:

Vladimir Alexandrov reports that his biography of Frederick Bruce Thomas, The Black Russian (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013), has been optioned for a TV series “again.” “This is the third time, so perhaps it will be the charm,” said Alexandrov. Also, his biography To Break Russia’s Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks (Pegasus Books, 2021) is being translated into Japanese.

Lois Banner wishes to share the following note regarding her latest biography Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo (Rutgers University Press, 2023): “I spent 10 years researching and writing this book, receiving a Senior Visiting Fulbright Professorship at Uppsala University in Sweden and a Berlin Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. I learned Swedish and German to comb archives in Sweden, Germany, and England, and I found many sources never before used. I had access to the interviews of friends and associates of Garbo, [which were] done by her biographer Karen Swenson. Taking new directions, I discovered the importance of her medical history in her life: she suffered from recurring gonorrhea, anorexia nervosa, and bronchitis, although she exercised and ate healthy foods and lived to be 84 years of age. I discovered the extent of her bisexuality, relationships, and the importance of spirituality throughout her life. She rejected the Lutheran Church of her childhood, tried Buddhism and Hinduism, and came close to converting to Catholicism just before she died. Previous biographers contended that she wrote no memoirs, but I found them in sources in Sweden. I also discovered the curiously negative reactions to her throughout her career.”

Jonathan Eig, author most recently of King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), was interviewed by CBS News Chicago for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day segment. You can watch or read the interview here.

Beverly Gage, author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (Viking, 2022), was named by New York Times managing editor Carolyn Ryan as her favorite book of 2023. Learn more here.

Arthur Hoyle reviewed Errand into the Maze: The Life and Works of Martha Graham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, January 2024) by Deborah Jowitt for the New York Journal of Books. You can read the review here.

Andrew Meier’s Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty (Random House, 2022) was named by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman as her favorite book of 2023. Read more here.

Diana P. Parsell wishes to share this update with BIO members: “A year after the launch of my book Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees (Oxford, March 2023), I have a dozen author talks scheduled [for] this spring. Host organizations include: the Library of Congress “Made at the Library” series; AAUW; Wheaton (MD) and Arlington (VA) public libraries; Asian-American Forum; Capital Speakers Club of Washington, D.C.; and the Woman’s National Democratic Club. My interview last year on the Today show is available at this link.”

Sydney Ladensohn Stern will give the Annual Dorothy O. Helly Lecture for the Women Writing Women’s Lives Biography Seminar on Monday, March 18, at 4:00 p.m., in the Skylight Room of The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. This will be an in-person event. Stern is at work on a biography of Irene Mayer Selznick, the legendary Hollywood-figure-turned-Broadway producer. Information is available here.