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)

The Plutarch Award Nominees for 2017

January 13th, 2017

Here are the nominees for the 2017 Plutarch Award, honoring the best biography published in 2016, listed in alphabetical order by title:

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

BIO Conference Set for May in Boston, Offers a Wide Variety of Programming and Networking Opportunities

January 11th, 2017

On May 19–21, the annual BIO Conference returns to Boston, where the organization held its first gathering in 2010. The conference will offer research workshops, a full day of panels, numerous networking opportunities, a conversation between two highly respected biographers, and a keynote address by the 2017 BIO Award winner, whose name will be revealed in February.

“This year’s program is bound to please the membership,” said James McGrath Morris, co-chair of the Program Planning Committee. “The wide variety of topics, terrific panelists, and workshop leaders is both a testimony to the hard work of the program committee and to the excitement generated by our annual conference. If you are a biographer, or aspire to be one, you’ll want to be in Boston.”

Registration for the conference is scheduled to begin on February 1. Current BIO members will receive an email with a link to the registration site to take advantage of the early-bird discount, which runs through February 20. For more information on the agenda and panelists, go here.

Biography Beyond Borders Panelists Shine Light on Different Aspects of Biography and History

December 7th, 2016

More than two dozen distinguished biographers from the United States and Europe met to talk about their work on  November 4-5 at a conference co-sponsored by BIO and the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. The weekend-long conference, called Biography Beyond Borders, a colloquium on American and European biography, took place in Oxford and London and included a pre-conference lecture by Carla Kaplan and a keynote address by Hermione Lee. Her Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life won BIO’s Plutarch Award for best biography of 2014.

Last month, TBC featured photos from the weekend sent by consulting editor, past president, and BIO co-founder James McGrath Morris. He called the colloquium “a remarkable moment in our organization’s history. Biographers from around Europe broke intellectual and literary bread with their American colleagues in the storied setting of Oxford.” Morris added, “Almost all the credit for putting together this remarkable gathering goes to BIO’s vice president, Deirdre David.” Plans are now underway for another such meeting in 2018.

To read recaps of the panel discussions and some comments from some of the BIO members who toured two historic homes before the colloquium, go here.

BIO Announces Panelists for Biography Beyond Borders

October 12th, 2016

Biography Beyond Borders, a colloquium on American and European biography,
will feature 29 distinguished biographers from across the United States and
Europe. In alphabetical order, they are: James Atlas, Betty Boyd-Caroli, Anne de
Courcy, Natalie Dykstra, Robert Douglas-Farihurst, Gayle Feldman, Rebecca
Fraser, Anne C. Heller, Carla Kaplan, Dennis Kersten, Robert Lacey, Zachary
Leader, Andrew Lownie, Jana Wohlmuth Markupova, Iwan Morgan, James
McGrath Morris, Joanny Moulin, Catherine Reef, Harriet Reisen, Jane Ridley,
Anne Boyd Rioux, Carl Rollyson, Max Saunders, Anne Sebba, Will Swift,
Maryam Thirriard, Amanda Vaill, Qunicy Whitney, and Sonja D. Williams. You
can read their biographies here.

Presented by BIO in collaboration with the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at
Oxford, Biography Beyond Borders will take place on Saturday, November 5. The
lunchtime keynote speaker will be the 2014 BIO Plutarch Award Best Biography
winner and director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, Hermione Lee.
The $100 fee for the colloquium also includes a Friday afternoon lecture and
reception at the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King’s College, London,
featuring Carla Kaplan as the speaker. Her lecture is titled, “‘Something to Offend Everyone’: The Muckraking Life of Jessica Mitford.” In addition, anyone who wants to go on the BIO November 3 group tour of the Jacobean home of Rudyard Kipling and romantic Scotney Castle with royal guide Harold Brown and Will Swift should email Swift. Learn more about the tours and the entire weekend and register here.

Nan A. Talese Wins Editorial Excellence Award

October 12th, 2016

BIO president Will Swift looks on after presenting Nan A. Talese with the Editorial Excellence Award.

Biographers International Organization gave Nan A. Talese its Editorial Excellence Award at the New York Society Library on October 5. Almost 100 people turned out to honor Talese, including several of the authors she has worked with over the years, such as Judy Collins, Anne Heller, and A. E. Hotchner. Other guests from the publishing world included Sonny Mehta, Louis Begley, Robert MacNeill, and Robert Caro, who called the event one of the great literary evenings in New York. Talese joins Robert Gottlieb and Jonathan Segal as winners of the Editorial Excellence Award.

BIO Honors Nan A. Talese

September 9th, 2016

Biographers International Organization will present its third annual Editorial Excellence Award to the legendary editor Nan A. Talese, senior vice president of Doubleday and publisher and editorial director of her own imprint, Nan A. Talese Books at Doubleday, at an evening reception on October 5 in New York City.

In the course of fifty years, Nan Talese has edited and published some of the most distinguished biographiess and nonfiction works of our time, including A. Alvarez’s enduring classic, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide; Thomas Kenneally’s Schindler’s List; Phyllis Rose’s Josephine Baker in Her Time; François Gilot’s Matisse and Picasso; Benita Eisler’s O’Keeffe and Stieglitz; Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette; many books by Peter Ackroyd, including The Life of Thomas More, Shakespeare, Chaucer, J. M. W. Turner, Newton, Poe, Chaplin, and London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets; and Deirdre Bair’s Saul Steinberg and the forthcoming Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend, among many others. We spoke with Nan briefly about the experience of editing biography and what she looks for when considering the acquisition of a book.

TBC: Can you provide us with a telling example of how working actively with an author improved one of the biographies you published?
Talese: The best example may be the first biography I edited, A. E. Hotchner’s Papa Hemingway (1966). The author and I sat together with the manuscript. I pointed out scenes that seemed less interesting than other scenes or that did not contribute to the reader’s understanding of the character of Hemingway. I asked him questions: “What is going on there? What do you want to convey?” and he answered and I would say, “Put that in!” We ended by cutting one fifth of the manuscript and adding another one fifth in.
TBC: What do you look for in a proposal or a manuscript?
Talese: The first thing I consider is whether the subject is well known and well respected, and what the crucial scenes were in his or her life. What caused a subject to change his mind or direction? Then I look for whether the author has a gift for storytelling and whether the writer’s voice transfers his or her passion to the reader and the page. I look for the ability to tell a powerful story while being very careful to stay within the facts.
TBC: What are editors looking for today?
Talese: Fortunately or unfortunately, there is a great deal of interest in pop stars and in celebrities of all kinds. This is cyclical, and—if fifty years of editing is any guide—this interest will go and come again.

If you will be in or near New York on October 5, do consider joining Nan and a number of the biographers she has published for an evening of lively conversation. The event takes place at the New York Society Library, 53 East 79th Street, at 6:30 p.m. and is open to the public.

Buy tickets here.

Fall Season Offers Many Notable New Biographies

September 9th, 2016

As is often the case, biographies of literary figures and political leaders fill the list of titles most likely to receive media attention in the coming months, and several BIO members have books coming out that critics have already reviewed positively or are awaiting with anticipation.

We’re highlighting here some of the biographies already generating a buzz—because of their subject, their author, or both—as featured in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and Amazon. You can see a longer list of upcoming biographies here.

TBC does its best to learn about new books, and our monthly In Stores feature will include even more fall and winter titles. Should we have missed any members’ upcoming releases, please let us know so we can add them to the list on the website. And keep in mind that publishing dates change, so some books may come out earlier or later than indicated here.

The list of eagerly waited literary biographies is bookended with works from two members: Ruth Franklin’s Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life in September and Megan Marshall’s Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, out in February. During the rest of the fall season, other notable literary biographies include Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited by Philip Eade, an October release; Alex Beam’s The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship, due out in December; and two January titles, In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary and Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel by John Stubbs. Also out in February will be Kay Redfield Jamison’s Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character.

Turning to subjects known for other artistic endeavors, BIO member Brian Jay Jones tops the list with his George Lucas: A Life, which will be released in December. The other biographies of musicians, filmmakers, and artists drawing attention include Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story—How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War by Nigel Cliff, and Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap by Ben Westhoff, both out this month; Peter Ackroyd’s Alfred Hitchcock and Franny Moyle’s Turner: The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of J.M.W. Turner, both October releases; Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White by Michael Tisserand in December; and Molly Haskell’s Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films, which is slated for January.

Political and military figures featured in upcoming biographies include several U.S. presidents, British leaders, and at least one spy. The Roosevelts once again seem to dominate the political listings, with these titles among the many coming out over the next few months: His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt by Joseph Lelyveld and Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady, both out in September; Blanche Wiesen Cook’s third volume of her biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, The War Years and After, 1939–1962, out in October; and The Wars of the Roosevelts: The Ruthless Rise of America’s Greatest Political Family by William J. Mann, scheduled for January.

Addressing British politics and government, Julia Baird has Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire out in November, while the next month Penguin’s Monarch series will release William I: England’s Conqueror by Marc Morris.

Other notable biographies in the politics and military category include Indelible Ink: The Trials of John Peter Zenger and the Birth of America’s Free Press by Richard Kluger and the first volume of a new biography of Adolf Hitler by Volker Ullrich, both out in September. Also coming this month is Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton by Joe Conason, and former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Charles Gates Dawes gets his first major biography, courtesy of member Annette B. Dunlap. In October, the struggles of a president and a general fill H.W. Brands’s new book, The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War. That month, two members have releases with military or espionage themes: Andrew Lownie with the U.S. publication of Stalin’s Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring; and William C. Davis with Inventing Loreta Velasquez, the story of a woman who claimed to have fought as a male Confederate soldier but was actually a con artist.

Biographical subjects from the worlds of business and academia appear in several of the season’s books. The September titles include A Truck Full of Money: One Man’s Quest to Recover from Great Success by Tracy Kidder, and BIO member Robert Kanigel’s Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacob. Lisa Napoli, another member, will publish Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away in November.

Finally, turning away from the tumult of politics, war, and business, several subjects with a more spiritual bent will also be part of the coming season. In February comes Albert Schweitzer: A Biography by Nils Ole Oermann, and Yale University Press adds to its Jewish Lives series in November with Moses: A Human Life by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg.