For The Love of Documentary: The Making of The Black Eagle of Harlem

July 6th, 2017

By Billy Tooma
The Black Eagle of Harlem is a study in biography and forgotten history. Col. Hubert Fauntleroy Julian—aviator, soldier of fortune, and arms dealer—led a life of high adventure, finding himself at the center and periphery of major world events. Julian drew headlines wherever he went, generated a fair share of controversy, but most importantly he fought against racial attitudes and shattered countless stereotypes. He flew before Charles Lindbergh, traveled to Ethiopia before most Americans had seen their own Grand Canyon, and pushed for the advancement of his race even while many of his own people vilified him with accusations of being a flamboyant charlatan. Julian’s Zelig-like ability to adapt and take on multiple personas helped him persevere in the face of adversity. The challenge of telling the most honest version of Julian’s story is what drove this project. The documentary spawned from this study utilizes a combination of interviews, archival materials, voiceovers, and original artwork to recreate the amazing—sometimes unbelievable—life of the Black Eagle, one of the twentieth century’s most intriguing icons. . . .

Primary sources were vital if I was going to craft the documentary’s screenplay. A cold search, in early January 2015, produced Newspapers.com. A free preview showed that there were potentially hundreds of articles featuring Hubert Julian. I was able to access The New York Age and The Brooklyn Daily Eagle for a small fee. This information was readily available to anyone who wished to seek it out. None of this was new material, lost to history, and now suddenly being rediscovered in someone’s basement. David McCullough points out that “though I’ve never written a book where I didn’t find something new . . . it’s more likely you see something that’s been around a long time that others haven’t seen.” It was plain to see that there was just too much information out there for any one person to sift through, but it was up to me to make sense of what I was finding. The New York Times was next, but resulted in less than the ones that preceded it. Then I discovered The Chicago Defender’s and The Pittsburgh Courier’s archives. . . . [By] June 2015, the core of my research was accomplished. Hubert Julian’s life, between 1922 and 1983, was accounted for on a near month-to-month basis. The trick now was how to put it all together.

There had to be a narrator controlling the story. There had to be direct quotations from the Black Eagle himself. And, there had to be direct quotations from the newspaper articles. All of this was quite clear. An interesting story, seeped in facts, was needed. I had to take the [existing] biographies, cross reference them with the newspaper articles, and determine the most honest version of Julian’s life. That took weeks to accomplish and when I started to write the actual screenplay, after eight months of research and outlining, the process was still ongoing as I had to ensure I was maintaining objectivity. But to delay the writing any longer would have hurt me more than helped. McCullough calls research seductive, that the love of it can create the “tendency. . . to wander off on tangents,” and Brian Jay Jones says something similar, pointing out that he knows he is ready to write once “I can sit down and make even just a chronological outline of my subject’s life.” I had the bulk of research completed. I had Julian’s life written out in front of me. It was time to write. . . .

I had to be mindful of the story I wanted to tell. Always wanting to start at the end of Julian’s adventures, I wrote a prologue, placing him in a United Nations prison in the early 1960s. . . . I extended the drama to allow an audience to really understand that they are about to watch the life story of a man who talked his way out of every jam he ever got into, but not at that moment up on the screen. It is this desire of mine to make sure that viewers are aware that no one, not even the focal point of the documentary, is safe. I am not trying to create dread. I am trying to create a moment of suspense. . . .

I planned out, well in advance, the type of visual mixture necessary to tell the story. To bring in a commissioned artist to render images for me only served to benefit the storytelling process. It was a much better alternative than finding miscellaneous photographs that would not make any sense up on the screen. . . . Viewers need to see Hubert Julian, the titular Black Eagle, parachute down into Harlem, New York, wearing a crimson jumpsuit while playing a saxophone. There is not a single photograph that captures the moment. So my style, grown from a sequence of perceiving what works and what does not work, characterizes how I believe the story should be represented and presented to an audience.

The archival materials: photographs, newspaper clippings, and newsreel footage were easy enough to acquire once I knew where to look. . . . The only newsreel footage that actually features Julian speaking, that I could find in a useable state, comes from the British Pathé archive. It is a wonderful 30-second clip with Julian, complete with his fake English accent, speaking on the plight of the Ethiopian people. While I was able to obtain a relatively modest collection of archival materials, my initial gut feeling of needing an artist was definitely validated. I could not have made this documentary without [them].

Because I have always been fascinated by the way [Ken] Burns makes a documentary, I knew I wanted to include voices other than that of the narrator’s and interviewees. . . . I found several individuals who I thought had interesting-sounding voices and who could help me tell Julian’s story. . . . Quite by accident, via another Google search, I found Mark Julian, the Black Eagle’s son through his third marriage. Mark and I communicated for the first time right before Christmas 2014, and we have been on this journey together ever since. The words and phrases he used during his interview touched my heart, and I know that audiences will immediately connect with him. . . .

The editing of the documentary began in June. I set up different phases in order to be successful in this endeavor and not go insane in the process. The first thing to do was piece together the third-person narration, followed by the first-person voiceovers. . . . The visuals were next. If anyone ever tries to tell you it is easy to lay visuals into a film’s editing timeline please let them know they are full of it. This is, by far, the hardest part. But, truth be told, it can be the most fun as well because it is at this phase when all of your hard work during the filmmaking process starts to really feel like it is paying off. It is hard in that you begin marrying yourself to specific visuals for specific moments. Then you need to figure out just how long you want to stay on a particular image before moving on to the next. Once this is all accomplished you have to bring movement into the mix. I believe in utilizing the pan and scan function, manipulating the imagery to move up and down, zoom in and out, whatever is necessary, in order to create a dynamic look to the film. This, together with the voice work, generates a flow that can quicken or slow the pace of a film depending upon how the filmmaker wishes it. I chose to have constantly moving imagery, at varying speeds, because I see my documentary as a living, breathing entity that needs room to spread out and expand its reach towards an audience. . . .

There is a sense of relief when the filmmaking process comes to its conclusion. Feelings of euphoria mixed with dread are present, as well. I do not know what people will think of this documentary. Those who I have screened it for tell me they think it is wonderful, but I often question their critiques, mostly out of anxiety. But the moment when the end credits flash and the words “A Film by Billy Tooma” can been seen is when I can take in a long breath and feel vindicated. It is my film.

To see the complete preface to Tooma’s dissertation, from which this is excerpted, go here.

Billy Tooma holds a BA and MA in English from the William Paterson University of New Jersey. In 2017, he successfully defended his dissertation, earning a Doctor of Letters in Literary Studies from Drew University. Tooma is currently the Deputy Executive Director of the Community College Humanities Association and a trustee on the board of the New Jersey College English Association. He is an English instructor at Essex County College.

Current and Upcoming Biographies on Film Tackle a Wide Range Of Subjects

July 6th, 2017

Whether doing their own research, using the perspective of those close to their subjects, relying on existing print biographies, or combining elements of all three, biographical filmmakers can take a variety of tacks as they craft cinematic portraits of a person’s life. Their biggest decision, of course, is whether to go the documentary route or create a biopic, with the potential interest in the subject—and available funding—influencing the choice. While the Hollywood treatment of a subject’s life can mean huge box office sales and perhaps a trip down the red carpet at the Academy Awards—think last year’s Hidden Figures—the increasing number of streaming video outlets and their demand for content has opened up new outlets for biographical films.

TBC’s annual—but far from exhaustive—look at biography on film shows that both cable networks and the streaming giants have recently or will offer soon a number of documentaries. In addition, documentaries will appear on the big screen, along with the more high-profile biopics. Here are some of the biographical offerings of the past few months, ones slated for release soon, and films that are still being shot or are in the planning stages.

Recently Released
This spring, James Bond fans got a glimpse into the life of the superspy’s least-famous portrayer, George Lazenby, in Hulu’s Becoming Bond. Lazenby was an auto mechanic and male model who had never acted before becoming Sean Connery’s successor as Agent 007. Variety called the subject featured in the film as “more Austin Powers than James Bond.” Released around the same time was a more serious look at Hollywood subjects. Netflix’s Five Came Back examines the wartime service of five famous directors: John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens. The three-hour documentary series was written by Mark Harris, who wrote a 2016 book of the same name on the directors and their wartime films.

Cable network Spike TV had two notable biographical releases early in 2017. The six-part mini-series TIME: The Kalief Browder Story, looked at the brief life and death of Browder, who spent several years in solitary confinement at Rikers Island for a minor crime he maintained he did not commit. Browder’s story first received wide attention in a 2014 New Yorker article by Jennifer Gonnerman. In May, Spike TV released a different kind of documentary: I Am Heath Ledger relied heavily on “home movie” footage the late actor shot himself during his career. Also in May, PBS offered lighter fare than the two Spike projects, as American Masters took a look at four distinguished chefs in a series called Chefs Flight. New documentaries on James Beard and Jacques Pepin were paired with repeat presentations of films about Julia Child and Alice Waters.

Lifetime Network’s latest biographical entry was a biopic treatment of the last years of Michael Jackson. Titled Michael Jackson: Searching for Neverland, it was based on the book Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days, written by two of his former bodyguards. Navi, a well-known Jackson impersonator, portrayed the King of Pop in the biopic. Lifetime is just one of the networks under the A&E umbrella, which presents the Biography website and broadcasts the long-running series of the same name. The documentary series Biography recently returned after a hiatus, with Jackson as the subject of an episode that ran about the same time as Searching for Neverland.

Moving to the big screen, a biopic of hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur came out in June. Titled All Eyez on Me, it features actor Demetrius Shipp Jr. as the late Shakur. In the documentary category, two recent notable biographical films are Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary and Good Fortune. The latter looks at the life of John Paul DeJoria, who made a fortune as co-founder of the Paul Mitchell brand of hair products and later became an environmental activist. Documentary fans had several biographical films to choose from at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival. The subjects featured included Winnie Mandela, Latina activist Dolores Huerta, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Reviews from the Globe and Mail of many of the films screened at the festival are available here.

A film featuring a slice of author Stefan Zweig’s life is currently playing across North America. Titled Farewell to Europe, it looks at Zweig’s time in exile before and during World War II. The film, completed in 2016, was Austria’s entry for the Oscars’ Best Foreign Film category. Finally, while not a biographical film, biographers might find the film Obit of interest. This April 2017 release looks at the obituary-writing team at the New York Times, as they try to piece together the details of the recently deceased’s lives. (Thanks to Cathy Curtis for passing along information on the film.)

Coming Soon
Along with the biopic version of Tupac Shakur’s life, Biography will present a six-part documentary on the hip-hop artist this fall. Focusing on his murder, the documentary is called Who Killed Tupac? Shakur’s musical rival, the Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls, aka Christopher Wallace), will be featured in another Biography offering, Biggie: The Life of Notorious B.I.G.

A slightly older slice of American cultural history will come to the big screen in September. Battle of the Sexes looks at the famous tennis match between Bobby Riggs (played by Steve Carell) and Billie Jean King (played by Emma Stone). Also in September, Tom Cruise will star in American Made as Barry Seal, the former commercial pilot who turned to drug running and then became an informant for the DEA. Due out this fall, but with no release date set, is The Silent Man, with Liam Neeson playing Mark Felt, Watergate’s Deep Throat. Also coming this fall, is Rebel in the Rye, with Nicholas Hoult playing J. D. Salinger, covering his pre-Catcher in the Rye years until the early 1960s. Another literary biopic coming this year, though with less-famous subjects, is The Professor and the Madman. Based on the book of the same title by Simon Winchester, it features Mel Gibson and Sean Penn as the two men behind the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Finally, for the 2017 big-screen holiday season, look for The Greatest Showman, a musical with Hugh Jackman playing P. T. Barnum. It has songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who won an Oscar for their songs in last year’s La La Land.

Turning to feature documentaries, a film about Prince called Prince: R U Listening? is due out before the end of the year. Directed by Michael Kirk, an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has often appeared on PBS’s Frontline, the movie will feature interviews with other prominent musicians including Mick Jagger and Bono. A second film about the music star, Prince: Pop Life, is also in the works. Fashion designer Alexander McQueen will be the subject of two upcoming movies: a documentary slated for release this year and a biopic due out next year. Jack O’Connell will play the title role in the biopic, which is based on Andrew Wilson’s 2015 biography, Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath The Skin.

Announced Or In Development
Keeping in mind that movie deals are often delayed or fall through completely, here are some of the biographical films recently announced or just getting off the ground. Filming is underway for a biopic about Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, with Al Pacino in the lead role. The movie, for HBO, was first announced in 2012 but production stopped in 2014. Joe Posnanski’s biography, Paterno, served as a source for the original script. A long-discussed biopic of Queen singer Freddie Mercury seems to be coming together, with Rami Malek, star of TV’s Mr. Robot, slated to play Mercury. Jared Leto will play Andy Warhol in an upcoming film. Work is already underway on White Crow, a movie about Rudolph Nureyev, with Ralph Fiennes as director and starring in the film as the dancer’s teacher.

In addition, The Catcher Was a Spy, based on Nicholas Dawidoff’s 1994 biography of the same name, was shot this year in the Czech Republic. In this film, Paul Rudd stars as Moe Berg, the Major League catcher who worked for the OSS during World War II. Famed socialite, novelist, and wife of F. Scott, Zelda Fitzgerald, is the subject of two upcoming biopics, with Scarlet Johansson and Jennifer Lawrence each taking a turn at playing her. An October 2018 release date has been set for First Man, a film about Neil Armstrong based on the biography of the same name by James R. Hansen. The movie once again teams up Ryan Gosling (in the title role) with director Damien Chazelle; the two worked together on La La Land.

Films with release dates that are farther in the future include an adaptation of Shane White’s biography, Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street’s First Black Millionaire. Don Cheadle, who has acquired the rights to the book, previously starred in and directed a biopic of Miles Davis. Another biography will serve as source material for an upcoming move: Sonia Purnell’s forthcoming book, A Woman of No Importance, about Virginia Hall, a World War II spy. Daisy Ridley of Star Wars: The Last Jedi will play Hall. Meanwhile, Bruce Lee’s family is closely involved in a planned biopic on the famed martial artist and actor’s life, and Octavia Spencer wants to produce and star in a mini-series based on A’Lelia Bundles’ On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. The filmmaker/actor Tyler Perry will play African American director Oscar Micheaux in a biopic being made for HBO. The film is based on Patrick McGilligan’s biography Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of America’s First Black Filmmaker. Lastly, the events that shaped J. R. R. Tolkien before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are the subject of Middle Earth, a film project from the producers of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

The Plutarch Award Finalists for 2017

June 30th, 2017

Here are the finalists for the 2017 Plutarch Award, honoring the best biography published in 2016, listed in alphabetical order by title. The winner will be announced on May 20 at the Eighth Annual BIO Conference at Emerson College in Boston.

BIO PLUTARCH AWARD COMMITTEE MEMBERS, 2017:

Cathy Curtis
Deirdre David
John Farrell (Chair)
Anne C. Heller
Linda Leavell
John Matteson
Hans Renders
David O. Stewart
Will Swift
Amanda Vaill

Pulitzer Stirs Controversy by Awarding the Biography/ Autobiography Prize to Memoirs

June 14th, 2017

By James McGrath Morris

This year the Pulitzer Prize for “a distinguished and appropriately documented biography or autobiography by an American author” was awarded to an author who wrote neither a biography nor an autobiography. In fact, neither did the two finalists in this category. The prizewinner and the finalists all wrote memoirs.

The prize was awarded to The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar. The two finalists were In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi and When Breath Becomes Air by the late Paul Kalanithi.

Further muddying the water was that in 2016 the prize for Biography/Autobiography went to William Finnegan’s memoir, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, and one of the two finalists was also a memoir. The other finalist, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, by T. J. Stiles, was moved by the board to the History category and given that prize.

The Pulitzer Prize board’s selection of memoirs two years running for the Biography/Autobiography category has sparked a debate among biographers. Most believe that memoir is a fundamentally different form of writing about a life in that it does not require any form of documentation, especially the kind of research that often distinguishes biographies.

BIO’s board is requesting to meet with the Pulitzer Prize administrator to discuss the continued commingling of biography, autobiography, and memoir. Currently, the Pulitzer Prize organization is seeking a new administrator, since Mike Pride announced his retirement.

To help sort out this this issue, TBC turned to David Nasaw, the distinguished historian, accomplished biographer, and chairman of the advisory board of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at City University of New York. Nasaw is the author of three biographies: The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst; Andrew Carnegie; and The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy. The latter two were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in the Biography/Autobiography category.

James McGrath Morris: You were invited to chair the Biography/Autobiography Committee in 2015 for the prize awarded in April 2016, isn’t that right?
David Nasaw: I was sort of surprised that they gave it to me, if only because I had been a finalist twice but never a winner. Of my three biographies, The Chief was never submitted to the Pulitzer committee, which was a bit of a scandal with Houghton Mifflin. The New York Times wrote about it. Houghton Mifflin just forgot to give them the book. My next two books were finalists. So, everything I say about the Pulitzers should be taken with a grain of salt, because I have a particular history with the prizes.
JMM: Nonetheless, you were chosen as the chairperson for the 2015 awards and you began work by studying the guidelines.
DN: We, the three of us who were on the committee, read the guidelines that we were given very, very, very carefully. And, we interpreted the guidelines as ruling out of competition any memoirs that were not documented. The guidelines that we were given said that for the nonfiction awards it was very important that the materials in these books be appropriately documented. And, they said that there should be some references, footnotes, endnotes, or in the text itself, which gave the reader the confidence that what was being said, or what was being reported, had actually taken place. The Pulitzer guidelines made that abundantly clear.
JMM: Did you have other things by which to guide your deliberations?
DN: In addition to those guidelines, I did a little bit of research, and we all did, on what was an autobiography. How is this defined? And, it was the opinion of the three of us that an autobiography was distinct from a memoir. An autobiography is the writing of a life by the person who lived that life. It does not necessarily have to be cradle-to-grave, but it is written to show how influences of place and time, childhood, adolescence, parenthood, affect the coming-to-age, and the activities, character, personality, and achievements of the adult. It is, in other words, a biography written by the person who is the subject of that biography.

It was our understanding that a memoir is a piece of a life, a moment of a life, a part of a life, and it is not documented. There is no corroborating material, there are no additional interviews, there are no newspaper articles, and there is no context provided. A memoir is a work—as the title makes clear—of memory. Autobiography and biographies are not works of memory.
JMM: What did you do then?
DN: So, we made our determinations clear to the administrator, who was in contact with us. And, we let it be known that after studying and applying the guidelines, we were not considering 30 percent or 40 percent of the books (I don’t know the exact number) that had been submitted under this category. When we finished our deliberations, we were asked to write a report. In it, we explained how we had made our decisions.

Twice afterwards I wrote to the administrator of the prize and I said, “We consider this very important, that the Pulitzer board has to make a decision as to what it’s going to do.”
JMM: What can it do?
DN: We recommended a number of changes to the Pulitzer board to remedy the situation we had encountered. It could establish memoir as a separate category; it could add memoir to the Biography/Autobiography category, so it’s Autobiography/Memoir/Biography; or, it could let publishers know that memoirs should be submitted in the general Nonfiction category. Whatever it decided to do, we argued against it continuing to accept “memoir” nominations in the Autobiography/Biography category because we thought that other jurors would do as we had done, would read the guidelines as we had read them, and not consider the memoir submissions for the prize.
JMM: Then the subsequent selections in 2016 and 2017 must have been a shock?
DN: You can imagine my surprise when, the following year, a book that we would not even have considered for the award, given our reading of Finnegan’s book, was given the prize. And the Stiles book, which was a biography, was moved out of the category, into History. And the second runner-up was a memoir. The following year, this year, there were no autobiographies or biographies. The prize was given to another memoir, and again the runners-up were memoirs.

So, I, having been a judge, I’m not saying the jurors were wrong to do this, I would never say that. But I will say that the guidelines are so written that one committee could read them in a way that appears to be almost diametrically opposed to the way the other committees read them. There’s got to be something wrong there.
JMM: If you were made emperor of the Pulitzer Prize, what would you do to fix this?
DN: I’d simply make a category for memoir. When these categories were first designed, there were very few memoirs. The committee has adjusted all the other awards, certainly all the journalism awards.
JMM: Very often they have.
DN: On a regular basis. Why can’t it pay the same attention to the arts and letters awards?
JMM: And you would be okay with keeping autobiography and biography together as one?
DN: Sure. Sure. And, if the Pulitzer board doesn’t want to do that, then it should add memoir to that list. The fact that Amazon puts memoir into the same category as autobiography and biography doesn’t mean that we should do the same. There has historically been a difference between autobiography and memoir. And a memoir, as we know, is not in the same genre, I don’t think, as biography.
JMM: I was a judge recently on the Western Writers of American prize for best biography. I took out a memoir from the pile of books I was to judge because I didn’t see how you could compare it to biography.
DN: That’s exactly what we did for the 2015 awards. And, I assume from looking at the judging, that’s what had happened earlier.
JMM: When you think of presidential autobiographies, they have a staff who uses all these memoirs and calendars to get the dates right. Their autobiographies may be self-serving, but still, they are biographies of their lives.
DN: Yeah. So, I don’t know what’s going on. I think it is an extraordinary disservice to memoir and to biography. Because these are separate literary genres. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. And again, memoirs are important enough as a genre in the twenty-first century, that they should have their own award.

Candice Millard Keynote Address, May 20, 2017

June 1st, 2017

Click here.

Conference Preview: James Atlas in Conversation with Patricia Bosworth

April 9th, 2017

By James Atlas

and Patricia Bosworth will discuss breaking the rules of biography and making it work anyway.

In a panel called “Biography and Style,” James Atlas . . .

Patricia Bosworth (“Patti,” as she is known to her wide circle of friends) has been a vivid presence on the New York literary scene for as long as I can remember—which is beginning to be a very long time. Her parties, held in a book- and art-filled apartment in Hell’s Kitchen that looks as if it had time-traveled from the West Village of the 1920s, are the kind where you walk in and want to talk to everyone in the room at once. Some of them are high-profile—I have spotted Dick Cavett and Judy Collins, among other “notables,” as we call them in Chicago; others were mere “writers,” but some of the most interesting ones in town. They are the kind of parties where the host has to flick the lights on and off in order to remind guests to leave.

What’s the draw? I once moderated a panel on biography in some gilded Pittsburgh auditorium with Patti, who had written a fine biography of Brando for the Penguin Lives series, and two other Penguin alums, Wayne Koestenbaum (Warhol) and Bobbie Ann Mason (Elvis). The auditorium was packed (if you want to get an audience, leave New York), and though it was some years ago now, I remember her making the culture-hungry crowd laugh and laugh at her descriptions of Brando’s outlandish behavior.

She is as fun to be with one-on-one as in front of 600 people, at once brassy and vulnerable, warm and entertainingly direct. So it is with her books: the biographies of Jane Fonda and Montgomery Clift radiate insight and empathy; the memoirs are tragic but also manage to capture the vanity of the Actors Studio where she apprenticed for a stage career in the 1950s.

Patti’s most admirable trait is her candor. At the party for her latest book, The Men in My Life, she stood up at the podium and spoke of the suicides of her brother and father with a matter-of-factness that took her well-wishers by surprise: You can’t just talk about these things in public. But she did, and I’m sure she will—about that and much, much more—when I interview her at the BIO conference in Boston this spring. Don’t miss it.   

Finalists Announced for Hazel Rowley Prize

April 9th, 2017

Spring 2017 Biographies

March 5th, 2017

From slices of famous lives to cradle-to-grave studies and explorations of linked lives, the spring and summer biographies already generating interest in the publishing world run the gamut. As is often the case, political and literary figures dominate these books and contemporary musicians are also well represented. We’re highlighting here just some of the books likely to appeal to critics and readers, because of their subject, their author, or both, with the titles taken from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and Amazon. BIO members with upcoming releases are noted in bold type.  And, keep in mind that publishing dates change, so some books may come out earlier or later than indicated here.

March

Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale (Metropolitan)

Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order) by Bridget Quinn (Chronicle)

John Hay, Friend of Giants: The Man and Life Connecting Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Theodore Roosevelt by Philip McFarland (Rowman & Littlefield)

Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character by Marty Appel (Doubleday)

Isabella of Castile: Europe’s First Great Queen by Giles Tremlett (Bloomsbury)

Margaret Thatcher: A Life and Legacy by David Cannadine (Oxford University Press)

Being Elvis: A Lonely Life by Ray Connolly (Liveright)

Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976–1980 by Craig Shirley (Broadside Books) Charlton Heston: Hollywood’s Last Icon by Marc Eliot (Dey Street Books)

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures, 1935–1961 by Nicholas Reynolds (William Morrow)

Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud by Barry W. Holtz (Yale University Press)

Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg W. Prince (Sports Publishing)

Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman by Itamar Rabinovich (Yale University Press)

Someone to Watch Over Me: A Portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt and the Tortured Father Who Shaped Her Life by Eric Burns (Pegasus)

Super Freak: The Life of Rick James by Peter Benjaminson (Chicago Review Press)

Pina Bausch: The Biography by Marion Meyer, translated by Penny Black (Oberon Books)

Finding Fibonacci: The Quest to Rediscover the Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who Changed the World by Keith Devlin (Princeton University Press)

The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War by James McGrath Morris (Da Capo)

The Last Pagan Emperor: Julian the Apostate and the War against Christianity by H. C. Teitler (Oxford University Press)

You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn by Wendy Lesser (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower’s Secret Campaign Against Joseph McCarthy by David A. Nichols (Simon & Schuster)

Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell (Doubleday)

Agent 110: An American Spymaster and the German Resistance in WWII by Scott Miller (Simon & Schuster)

Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s by Jason Turbow (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Barney: Grove Press and Barney Rosset, America’s Maverick Publisher and the Battle Against Censorship by Michael Rosenthal (Arcade)

Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy by Elizabeth Winder (Flatiron Books)

Captain Fantastic: Elton John’s Stellar Trip Through the ‘70s by Tom Doyle (Ballantine)

Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper (Simon & Schuster)

April

Obama: The Call of History by Peter Baker (Abrams)

When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn’s Cold War Triumph, and Its Aftermath by Stuart Isacoff (Knopf )

Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe by John Julius Norwich (Atlantic Monthly)

30 Days a Black Man: The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South by Bill Steigerwald (Lyons Press)

Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War by Daniel J. Sharfstein (W. W. Norton)

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn (Simon & Schuster)

Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg (Oxford University Press)

Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night by Jason Zinoman (HarperCollins)

Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling by Michael Cannell (Minotaur)

James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years by Wayne Franklin (Yale University Press)

Sam Shepard: A Life by John J. Winters (Counterpoint)

Money Murder, and Dominick Dunne: A Life in Several Acts by Robert Hofler (University of Wisconsin Press)

Jane Welsh Carlyle and Her Victorian World: A Story of Love, Work, Marriage, and Friendship by Kathy Chamberlain (Overlook)

Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life by Sally Bedell Smith (Random House)

The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History by Stephan Talty (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry by Marcus Thompson (Touchstone)

Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII’s True Wife by Amy Licence (Amberley)

The Destruction of Hillary Clinton by Susan Bordo (Melville House)

Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker by Stephen Galloway (Crown Archetype)

Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty by John B. Boles (Basic Books)

Alexander Hamilton’s Revolution: His Vital Role as Washington’s Chief of Staff by Phillip Thomas Tucker (Skyhorse Publishing)

My Fellow Soldiers: General John Pershing and the Americans Who Helped Win the Great War by Andrew Carroll (Penguin)

H. H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil by Adam Selzer (Skyhorse Publishing)

The Man Who Designed the Future: Norman Bel Geddes and the Invention of Twentieth-Century America by B. Alexandra Szerlip (Melville House)

Arnie: The Life of Arnold Palmer by Tom Callahan (Harper)

The Lowells of Massachusetts: An American Family by Nina Sankovitch (St. Martin’s Press)

Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story of a Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible Year by Peter Brooks (Basic Books)

Monsters of the Ivy League by Steve Radlauer and Ellis Weiner (Little, Brown and Company)

The Dooleys of Richmond: An Irish Immigrant Family in the Old and New South by Mary Lynn Bayliss (University of Virginia Press)

May

Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks (Penguin)

He Calls Me by Lightning: The Life of Caliph Washington and the Forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penalty by S. Jonathan Bass (Liveright)

The Late Lord: The Life of John Pitt – 2nd Earl of Chatham by Jacqueline Reiter (Pen and Sword)

Wrestling With His Angel: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. II, 1849–1856 by Sidney Blumenthal (Simon & Schuster)

Goethe: Life as a Work of Art by Rüdiger Safranski, translated by David Dollenmayer (Liveright)

Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama by David Garrow (William Morrow)

Ernest Hemingway: A Biography by Mary V. Dearborn (Knopf)

He’s Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly by Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson (University Press of Kentucky)

A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr. by Alvin Felzenberg (Yale University Press)

Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father by Thomas S. Kidd (Yale University Press)

The Loyal Son: The War in Ben Franklin’s House by Daniel Mark Epstein (Ballantine Books)

Founder of Modern Economics: Paul A. Samuelson: Volume 1: Becoming Samuelson, 1915–1948 by Roger E. Backhouse (Oxford University Press)

George Washington: A Life in Books by Kevin J. Hayes (Oxford University Press)

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore (Sourcebooks)

Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly (Knopf)

The Flight: Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 Transatlantic Crossing by Dan Hampton (William Morrow)

Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt (Little, Brown)

Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald by David S. Brown (Belknap Press)

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World by Erica Benner (W. W. Norton)

Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler from the Vietnam War and Pop Stardom to Murder and an Unsolved, Violent Death by Marc Leepson (Stackpole Books)

Nat Turner’s Rebellion by John V. Quarstein (Westholme Books)

Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966–1971 by Leigh Montville (Doubleday)

Agent M: The Lives and Spies of MI5’s Maxwell Knight by Henry Hemming (PublicAffairs)

Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life by Jonathan Gould (Crown Archetype)

Last Man Standing: Mort Sahl and the Birth of Modern Comedy by James Curtis (University Press of Mississippi)

Augustus at War: The Struggle for the Pax Augusta by Lindsay Powell (Pen and Sword)

June

The King Who Had To Go: Edward Vlll, Mrs Simpson and the Hidden Politics of the Abdication Crisis by Adrian Phillips (Biteback Publishing)

The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism by Henry Olsen (Broadside Books)

Kennedy and King: The President, the Pastor, and the Battle over Civil Rights by Steven Levingston (Hachette Books)

Max Eastman: A Life by Christoph Irmscher (Yale University Press)

Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life by Scott M. Marshall (BP Books)

The Revolution of Robert Kennedy: From Power to Protest After JFK  by John R. Bohrer (Bloomsbury Press)

The General’s Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France by Paige Bowers (Chicago Review Press)

Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation by J. M. Opal (Oxford University Press)

Be Free or Die: The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls’ Escape from Slavery to Union Hero by Cate Lineberry (St. Martin’s Press)

The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution by Virginia DeJohn Anderson (Oxford University Press)

Through a Glass, Darkly: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Quest to Solve the Greatest Mystery of All by Stefan Bechtel and Laurence Roy Stains (St. Martin’s Press)

Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge by Erica Wagner (Bloomsbury USA)

Young Radicals: In the War for American Ideals by Jeremy McCarter (Random House)

July

Go Slow: The Life of Julie London by Michael Owen (Chicago Review Press) 

Marshal Malinovskii: Hero of the Soviet Union by Boris Sokolov, translated by Richard W. Harrison (Helion and Company)

Jane Austen at Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley (St. Martin’s Press)

Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls (University of Chicago Press)

Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval by Heinz Schilling and Rona Johnston Gordon (Oxford University Press)

Putin: His Downfall and Russia’s Coming Crash by Richard Lourie (Thomas Dunne Books)

Hannibal by Patrick N. Hunt (Simon & Schuster)

Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum by James Delbourgo (Belknap Press)

The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas by Grant Rumley and Amir Tibon (Prometheus Books)

Coming of Age: The Sexual Awakening of Margaret Mead by Deborah Beatriz Blum (Thomas Dunne Books)

Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by Sarah Scoles (Pegasus Books)

The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein (Henry Holt)

Edward VII: The Prince of Wales and the Women He Loved by Catharine Arnold (St. Martin’s Press)

Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan by Elaine M. Hayes (Ecco)

Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba by Andrew Feldman (Melville House)

August

Freud: The Making of an Illusion by Frederick Crews (Metropolitan Books)

Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe (Sarah Crichton Books)

Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty by Jon Kukla (Simon & Schuster)

One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858 by Rosemary Ashton (Yale University Press)

Sargent’s Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas by Donna M. Lucey (W. W. Norton)

Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green by Jimmy McDonough (Da Capo Press)

PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire by John Wigger (Oxford University Press)

The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel (Pantheon)

Warner Bros.: The Making of an American Movie Studio by David Thomson (Yale University Press)