Branch Keynote Talk and Biographers in Conversation Highlight BIO Conference

July 9th, 2015

Almost 200 established and aspiring biographers immersed themselves in their craft at the Sixth Annual Biographers International Organization Conference, held June 6 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Amidst the various panel sessions, attendees also saw Taylor Branch receive the 2015 BIO Award. Branch is best known for his trilogy about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, known collectively as America in the King Years.

BIO President Brian Jay Jones presents the 2015 BIO Award to Taylor Branch.

The Accidental Biographer
In his keynote address, Branch called himself an accidental and partial biographer, as he used the life of King and others to tell the story of the civil rights movement, which he called “the last great uprising of citizens’ idealism that really changed the direction of history.” Branch wanted to better understand the movement and address what he saw as problems with the existing books on it: They were “analytical and abstract” with an emphasis on interpretation. Branch wanted to “feel its power, which for me was personal and quite deep.”

But before and while immersing himself in what would become a 24-year endeavor to better understand and then write about the movement and its makers, Branch worked as journalist, ghost wrote the memoirs of Watergate figure John Dean and basketball star Bill Russell, and spent hours recording the thoughts of an old friend who just happened to become US president: Bill Clinton. Branch recounted some of the recording sessions that would form the basis of Branch’s The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President. Clinton wanted to document the history of his presidency as it unfolded, and his sessions with Branch remained secret through the president’s two terms. For Branch, the sessions gave him the chance “to get the fullest record that historians will one day have” of what daily life was like for Clinton in the White House.

Clinton and Branch had worked together in Texas during George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, and they often discussed political idealism. Branch thought he “had a better chance to influence [US politics] toward integrity as a writer than in politics.” With his King books, he explored the citizens’ idealism he saw in the civil rights movement, the reaction to it, and its lasting effects. He said, “The civil rights movement set things in motion that are still benefiting our country today, including same-sex marriage…. The civil rights movement forced people to break down their emotional barriers against dealing with what equal citizenship really means in everyday life.”

Branch chose to depict the movement in as personal a way as possible, to fight the urge in the United States to “reinterpret history wherever race relations are involved.” As an example, he cited the textbooks he read growing up in Atlanta, which taught that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. Many history books, Branch believes, deal with what a culture is comfortable talking about. Telling the personal stories of the people of the civil rights movement in a narrative history, Branch hoped, would preserve some of the uncomfortable facets of race relations in the United States, thus providing a more accurate history.

Thomas and Brinkley in Conversation
The conference events kicked off in the morning with a plenary breakfast session called “The Art and Craft of Biography: Evan Thomas and Douglas Brinkley in Conversation.” Between them, the two have authored biographies on a wide range of figures who helped shaped the twentieth century, from presidents to Walter Cronkite. They engaged in an easy dialogue as they explored some of the challenges they’ve faced during their careers.

For Brinkley, one challenge came when writing about Rosa Parks. When she made her historic refusal to leave her bus seat, about a dozen or so people rode with her. But when Brinkley did his research, he interviewed 55 people who claimed to be on the bus that day. “Everybody in Montgomery was on Rosa Parks’s bus,” he joked. “I had no idea who to trust.” Brinkley also had personal access to his subject and saw firsthand her willingness to help others, something that made writing the Parks book “probably the most moving personal biography” he’s done.

Following that observation, Evan Thomas said he had just finished a biography of Richard Nixon, and the president “was not a Rosa Parks.” But Thomas did come to appreciate how hard it was to be Richard Nixon, who was socially awkward and “a powerfully lonely guy.” Nixon’s experiences intersected with the life of another of Brinkley’s subjects, Walter Cronkite. CBS News played a big part in bringing Watergate to the public’s attention, and Nixon wanted to “get” Cronkite, who personally liked Nixon. Cronkite also interacted with another of Thomas’s subjects, Robert F. Kennedy. The newsman, Brinkley said, crossed the line of journalistic ethics when he urged Kennedy to run for president in 1968 because of the morass in Vietnam.

Another topic Brinkley and Thomas covered was how to get the biography subject’s family on board, which can be hard when relatives, especially children, want to preserve their loved one’s image, and their truthfulness might be suspect. Thomas also mentioned the difficulty at times of sorting out key details from extraneous facts—“I wish I had a magic formula to help you figure out what’s important and what isn’t.” Another concern for biographers today: plagiarism, or the accusation of it. One strategy, Thomas said, is to footnote extensively and acknowledge the work of experts in the foreword. Brinkley cited a slightly different problem, of anecdotes that get passed along as truth but without sources to back them up. He relies on double sources when possible to verify information.

After discussing some of the nuts and bolts of the craft, Brinkley ended the session on a loftier and inspiring note. He called biography “the most indispensable art form because in America, we live by individuals… that’s how we process history, through people.”

Enjoying the preconference reception, from left to right, are Kate Buford, Barbara Burkhardt, Robin Rausch, Abigail Santamaria, and Sarah Dorsey.

Preconference Events
While Saturday, June 6, saw most of the conference’s events and festivities, on Friday some attendees explored the Library of Congress on private tours. In the evening, BIO members gathered at the Georgetown home of board member Kitty Kelley, where Thomas Mann, formerly of the Library of Congress, received BIO’s Biblio Award. Established in 2012, the award recognizes a librarian or archivist who has made an exceptional contribution to the craft of biography. Mann retired from the Library in January 2015 after 33 years of service.

Also at the reception, board member Will Swift announced that Jonathan Segal will receive BIO’s Editorial Excellence Award this November. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Carl Bernstein will present the award and the evening’s events will also include a panel discussion. Look for more details on this event in upcoming issues of TBC.

David I. Kertzer on Biography and Writing

May 16th, 2015

By Joseph A. Esposito

The recent selection of his dual biography of Benito Mussolini and Pope Pius XI for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Biography caught David I. Kertzer of Brown University by surprise. According to a statement released by the university, Kertzer said, “I had no idea the Pulitzer Prizes were about to be announced nor any hint they were considering The Pope and Mussolini, so this is quite a shock.”

David Kertzer, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

But the award is an appropriate testament to the meticulous research that Kertzer had undertaken for nearly a decade. Crisply written, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe reports on a symbiotic relationship which unfolded in the 1920s and 1930s.

The book chronicles how the dictator played on the fears of modernism of the aging pope and the mindset of the Vatican, and crafted a partnership which helped him to maintain his power. The Catholic Church benefited from the support of the fascist regime by strengthening its position in Italy. Anti-Semitism figures prominently in the story.

Kertzer, who is an anthropologist and former provost at Brown, has written extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian history and politics, including the relationship between Jews and the Catholic Church. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, about a Jewish boy seized by papal officials and who later joined the priesthood, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997. Continue Reading…

BIO Conference Preview: A Conversation between Kitty Kelley and Barbara Burkhardt

May 16th, 2015

Bestselling biographer Kitty Kelley—a founding BIO member who serves on the board— will appear with biographers James McGrath Morris and Linda Lear at the conference in Washington, DC. Their panel, moderated by Abigail Santamaria, will address the question, Does gender matter in biography? Kitty talks to BIO Secretary and site co-chair Barbara Burkhardt about biography and gender—and her dedication to BIO.

Kitty Kelley

Barbara Burkhardt

Barbara Burkhardt: What generated the idea for the panel “Does Gender Matter”?
Kitty Kelley: Linda Lear was talking to me about how she decided not to do a biography of Harold Ickes, Sr. She said that, as a woman, she just didn’t feel she could empathize with this male subject. And, on the other hand, Jamie Morris said that he leaped to do his biography of Ethel Payne. It really is interesting that empathy is the deciding factor.

BB: What is your own take on how gender affects writing biography?
KK: A Harvard study showed that gender does make a difference. In relation to writing a life story, the study showed that women are better at getting to the hows and the whys of a life. Women are more concerned with relationships. They pay more attention to relationships.

I can’t say that women are better biographers than men. I don’t mean that at all. It’s just that male brains work differently than female brains. Men go from A to B, women go from A to R—and then back to F. As a result, women might be better at getting certain kinds of information. Men love data. Only 10 percent of the men who read, read fiction. They read history, politics, current affairs, business, and sports. Women read fiction.

And in biography, you have to give more than info and data and facts—you have to provide a human dimension: Why did they do it? How did they do it? You have to get people talking about their feelings and fears. The study showed that it is easier for women to handle ambiguity than it is for men. In essence, men want to solve the problem. Women want to understand the problem. They have been trained to take care. Men seem to take charge. Continue Reading…

2015 Election

May 11th, 2015

The following are the election statements and biographies submitted by candidates for the BIO Board of Directors, for seven seats with two year terms, running from 2015-2017. These statements are presented alphabetically, by candidate’s last name.

Oline Eaton

Oline Eaton is a first-time biographer in the final throes of writing a cultural study of the life of Jackie Onassis, a project she has been dreaming about since she was 12. She lives in London and cares entirely too much and thinks entirely too deeply about celebrities. As former chair of BIO’s Social Networking Committee and a social media maven herself (@ohlighn, www.findingjackie.com), Oline hopes to assist in increasing membership and visibility, particularly online, by promoting BIO and the work of its members. She is also interested in developing tangible benefits, so that wherever they are in their careers, all of BIOs members will feel they are gaining something of value from the organization that they cannot get anywhere else. Oline has been a BIO member since 2011, and is grateful for the opportunity to serve as a member of the board.

Anne Heller

My first biography, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, was named one of the best books of 2009 by The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The New Criterion, Library Journal, Time magazine, the Daily Beast, and others. My new book, Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times, will be published as part of James Atlas’s Icons series by Amazon.com and Harcourt Houghton Mifflin in August, 2015. I have also been a fiction editor and a general editor and writer for The Antioch Review, Esquire, Lear’s, Mademoiselle, and Vanity Fair, and was executive editor of the magazine development group at Condé Nast Publications. Currently, I am serving as an adjunct professor of literature at Bennington College.

An active member of BIO from the beginning. I served as a founding board member from 2010 until 2012, led a membership campaign in 2011, helped to initiate the Rowley Prize for the best proposal for a first-time biographer, and served on this year’s conference program committee. If elected, I’d like to work to expand BIO’s membership outreach and make our many collective resources more widely available and more useful to members.

Kitty Kelley

Following four years as press assistant to a U.S. Senator, and two years as the researcher for the editorial page of The Washington Post, I began full-time freelance writing. I’ve written several contemporary biographies, which I’ve been fortunate enough see as number one on the New York Times best seller list. My subjects have included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the House of Windsor, The Bush family, and Oprah Winfrey. In the last two years I wrote Capturing Camelot: Stanley Tretick’s Iconic Images of The Kennedys and Let Freedom Ring: Stanley Tretick’s Iconic Images of the March on Washington.

My articles have been published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, People, Ladies Home Journal, The New Republic, McCall’s, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and The American Scholar.
I believe BIO is crucial to biographers because it provides a network for those of us who must combine the disciplines of journalism, historical research, and narrative non-fiction to tell life stories in a competitive market place. By bringing together people with similar professional commitments, BIO provides a support system for work that requires a great deal of isolation. We’re all going to be better helping each other and so I’ll do whatever I can to help BIO thrive.

Josh Kendall

An award-winning freelance journalist, I have written for numerous national newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week. I am also the author of three biographies. My books on the wordsmiths, Peter Mark Roget, author of the legendary Thesaurus and Noah Webster, author of America’s first dictionary, were both New York Times Editor’s Choice selections. I am currently working on a group biography of U. S. Presidents entitled First Dads: Fatherhood, the Presidency and the Arc of American History, which will be released by Grand Central in 2016.

I have been a board member of BIO for two years, during which I have served on both the program committee and the Plutarch Committee.

Like the publishing industry in general, the field of biography currently faces a daunting set of challenges. But there are also opportunities. In a digital culture where the printed word is increasingly seen as a relic, BIO can play a vital role in helping biographers around the world redefine how to research and tell life stories. We are also uniquely situated to build bridges between storytellers working in all types of media, including film and TV.

Marc Leepson

My eighth book, What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life, was published in 2014. My next biography will focus on former Army Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, best known for “The Ballad of The Green Berets.” My other books include Lafayette: Idealist General, Saving Monticello and Flag: An American Biography.

After eleven years as a staff writer at Congressional Quarterly, I have been freelancing since 1986. My work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Smithsonian and Preservation magazines. I’ve contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Encyclopedia Americana, and Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, and have appeared on CBS This Morning Saturday, The Today Show, History Detectives, All Things Considered, and Morning Edition. I am an adjunct professor of U.S. History at Lord Fairfax Community College in Warrenton, Va.

I was elected to the BIO Board of Directors in 2013. Last year the board appointed me as Treasurer of the organization. Being on the board has been a rewarding experience, especially working with a terrific group of accomplished, dedicated board members. It would be an honor to be re-elected to the Board in 2015.

Justin Martin

Since I joined BIO in 2011, I have participated in conference panels on choosing your subject and on group biography. I am now serving on the program committee which is planning the June 2015 Washington DC conference where I will be coaching biographers. In addition, I’m a member of the Gotham Writer’s Group, a local offshoot of the national BIO organization.

As the author of four biographies, I’ve gone the eclectic route, picking subjects ranging from Alan Greenspan to Frederick Law Olmsted. My latest, Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians (Da Capo), is my first foray into group biography. It was chosen as the outstanding biography of 2014 by the Victorian Society of New York, and was also selected as one of the year’s best books by the Kansas City Star. I’m frequently called upon to give speeches, especially about Olmsted, a vitally important historical figure whose influence is still felt across the nation. A 1987 graduate of Rice University in Houston, Texas, I live with my wife and twin sons in Forest Hills Gardens, a landmark NYC neighborhood designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.

Joanny Moulin

As a biographer and a professor of anglophone literatures at Aix-Marseille University, I am striving to develop biographical studies as an academic discipline on an international level. It would be beneficial for biographers to benefit from a stronger academic transmission belt in which more master’s degrees and doctoral theses were devoted to their works, and where the art of biography was more resolutely taught as a branch of creative writing.

I’ve published biographies on Ted Hughes, Charles Darwin, Victoria, Elizabeth II, Elizabeth I, and am currently commissioned to write a multibiography of the Victorians for Payot-Rivages. I am working on the project of biography of George Clemenceau for the American reading public.

As a member of the BIO Board of Directors, I would work on biography in translation, using my contacts with French publishers to convince them to publish French versions of the best American biographies, and vice versa with American publishers. This kind of work would have to be backed up by seminars in the annual BIO Conference on the translatability of biographies, which greatly depends on the chosen subjects, as well as writing style. I hope to contribute to the international vocation of BIO, by serving as a linchpin between the French and American markets.

Kertzer Wins 2015 Pulitzer for Biography

April 26th, 2015

David I. Kertzer is the winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his book The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe.
We will have an interview with Kertzer, conducted by BIO member Joseph Esposito, in the May issue of The Biographer’s Craft.

A Conversation with Conference Panelist Heath Lee

March 9th, 2015

The Civil War remains a topic of unquenchable interest to readers. In this, the final year of the conflict’s sesquicentennial, the BIO conference will feature a panel “Civil War Women.” Many biographers are discovering that the female figures of this time are a source of vital yet sorely under-explored stories. Justin Martin’s latest book is Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians, the story of a group of notable Civil War-era artists including Adah Isaacs Menken and Ada Clare. Martin spoke to author Heath Lee, who will co-moderate the panel.

Justin Martin: Please explain the need for and value of a panel devoted specifically to Civil War women.
Heath Lee: The majority of the scholarship and press attention on the war has focused on traditional themes of the conflict’s military, political, and economic dimensions and the male figures who were Union and Confederate leaders. However, information regarding the lives and fates of women during this period is still scarce and their portraits are often incomplete. The women we will talk about in this panel were shaped tremendously by their experiences and memories of the war, whether they were Northern or Southern, black or white. Women were more than just incidental bystanders during this tragic period in American history.

JM: Who are some of the notable women who will be discussed? And what are some of the unique issues confronting a biographer whose subject is a Civil War woman?
HL: It would be hard to find a more fascinating list of characters. Among the figures we’re sure to discuss are Harriet Tubman, Rose O’Neale Greenhow, Kate Chase Sprague, Elizabeth Van Lew, Varina Davis, Winnie Davis, Julia Dent Grant, Angelina Grimke Weld, Emma Edmonds, and Belle Boyd.

One of the unique challenges for a biographer researching a woman from this period is the lack of primary source materials. In the nineteenth century, it was common for women’s letters and papers to be destroyed—often even by her own family. It was considered unseemly for information about women to appear in published form. For instance, it is likely that Varina Davis burned Winnie Davis’s private diaries and love letters to her ex-fiancé. Continue Reading…

Taylor Branch Wins 2015 BIO Award

February 9th, 2015

Branch’s most recent book The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement (2013) presents eighteen key episodes across the full span of the Civil Rights era.

Taylor Branch is the recipient of the 2015 BIO Award, given each year by BIO members to a colleague who has made a major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of the genre.

Branch is best known for his best-selling, magisterial trilogy about Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights movement and America in the 1950s and 1960s. In these three volumes, Branch showed, as he wrote in his introduction, that “King’s life is the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years.” His vivid portrait of King’s rise to greatness humanizes the man and allows the reader to understand his era by portraying what it was like to live through it. His three-volume work has been compared to Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln and Robert Caro’s multivolume life of Lyndon Johnson.

For his first volume, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (1988), Taylor Branch won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was also a finalist for the National Book Award. The volumes Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-1965(1998) and Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-1968 (2006)—winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist—completed his monumental fusion of biography and history. Branch is also the author of a novel, The Empire Blues (1981), and was the ghostwriter of John Dean’s memoir Blind Ambition (1976). He also is well known for his innovative eight-year oral history project with a sitting president—The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President (2009).

Branch will receive the honor during the 2015 Biographer International Organization Conference on June 6 at the National Press Club, where he will deliver the keynote address. The BIO Award was established in 2010 and its first five recipients were Jean Strouse, Robert Caro, Arnold Rampersad, Ron Chernow and Stacy Schiff.

Spring 2015 Biographies

February 6th, 2015

The following list of biographies appearing between March and August 2015 was assembled using Edelweiss, a web-based interactive publisher catalog system widely used in the book industry. If we missed a title, please let us know at editortbc@biographersinternational.org

March

Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life by Eve MacDonald (Yale)

John Prine: In Spite of Himself by Eddie Huffman (University of Texas Press)

Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music by Vincent Giroud (Oxford University Press)

Crane: Sex, Celebrity, and My Father’s Unsolved Murder by Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer (University Press of Kentucky)

The Life of William Apess, Pequot by Philip F. Gura (University of North Carolina Press)

Bonaparte: 1769-1802 by Patrice Gueniffey and Steven Rendall (Belknap Press)

John Bartlow Martin: A Voice for the Underdog by Ray E. Boomhower (Indiana University Press)

Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator by Jean Findlay (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Road to Power: How GM’s Mary Barra Shattered the Glass Ceiling by Laura Colby (Wiley)

General Maxime Weygand, 1867-1965: Fortune and Misfortune by Anthony Clayton (Indiana University Press)

Pretend You’re In A War: The Who & the Sixties by Mark Blake (Aurum Press Ltd)

Vera Brittain and the First World War: The Story of Testament of Youth by Mark Bostridge (Macmillan)

Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer (Random House/Nan Talese)

Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog by James Grissom (Knopf)

John le Carré by Adam Sisman (HarperCollins)

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom by Blaine Harden (Viking)

A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain by Marc Morris (Pegasus)

Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming in Jamaica by Matthew Parker (Pegasus)

Young Eliot: A Biography by Robert Crawford (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A Warrior’s Faith: Navy SEAL Ryan Job, a Life-Changing Firefight, and the Belief That Transformed His Life by Robert W. Vera (Thomas Nelson)

Mama Maggie: The Untold Story of One Woman’s Mission to Love the Forgotten Children of Egypt’s Garbage Slums by Marty Makary and Ellen Vaughn (Thomas Nelson)

Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel byAnnie Cohen-Solal (Yale University Press)

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Crown Business)

The Contender: Andrew Cuomo, a Biography by Michael Shnayerson (Twelve)

Young Eliot: A Biography by Robert Crawford (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth by John Szwed (Viking)

Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter by Cathy Curtis (Oxford University Press)

April

Michelle Obama: A Life by Peter Slevin (Knopf)

Tony Oliva: The Life and Times of a Minnesota Twins Legend by Thom Henninger and Patrick Reusse (University of Minnesota Press)

Matthew McConaughey: The Biography by Neil Daniels (John Blake)

The Second I Saw You: The True Love Story of Rupert Brooke and Phyllis Gardner  by Lorna C. Beckett (University of Chicago Press)

Einstein: His Space and Times by Steven Gimbel (Yale University Press)

The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII, 1485-1534 by Michael Everett (Yale University Press)

Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth by Terry Alford (Oxford University Press)

Mellencamp: American Troubadour by David Masciotra (University Press of Kentucky)

Lincoln’s Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton by William Marvel (University of North Carolina Press)

The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Belknap Press)

Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius by Bill Pennington (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

James Merrill: Life and Art by Langdon Hammer (Knopf)

Man in Profile: Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker by Thomas Kunkel (Random House)

Bob Dylan : NYC 1961-1964 by Ted Russell and Chris Murray and Donovan (Random House)

In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art by Sue Roe (Penguin)

Audrey and Bill: A Romantic Biography of Audrey Hepburn and William Holden by Edward Z. Epstein (Running Press)

May

The Lost Imperialist: Lord Dufferin, Memory and Mythmaking in an Age of Celebrity by Andrew Gailey (John Murray)

Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford The Biography by Laura Thompson (Head of Zeus)

The Shed That Fed a Million Children: The Extraordinary Story of Mary’s Meals by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow (HarperCollins)

Nobody Grew but the Business: On the Life and Work of William Gaddis by Joseph Tabbi (Northwestern University Press)

Donald Creighton: A Life in History by Donald Wright (University of Toronto Press)

Andrée’s War: How One Young Woman Outwitted the Nazis by Francelle Bradford White (Elliott & Thompson)

The Lives of Robert Ryan by J.R. Jones (Wesleyan)

Malevolent Muse: The Life of Alma Mahler by Oliver Hilmes and Donald Arthur (Northeastern)

Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator by Oleg V. Khlevniuk and Nora Seligman Favorov (Yale University Press)

John Knox by Jane Dawson (Yale University Press)

Léon Blum: Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist by Pierre Birnbaum (Yale University Press)

Machado de Assis: A Literary Life by K. David Jackson (Yale University Press)

JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents by Godfrey Hodgson (Yale University Press)

Béla Bartók by David Cooper (Yale University Press)

Virginia Woolf: A Portrait by Viviane Forrester and Jody Gladding (Columbia University Press)

Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor (Thomas Nelson)

Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine (Oxford University Press)

Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the South, and Civil Rights by Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett (University of North Carolina Press)

August Weismann: Development, Heredity, and Evolution by Frederick B. Churchill (Harvard University Press)

The Last Victorians: A Daring Reassessment of Four Twentieth Century Eccentrics by William Sydney Robinson (Biteback Publishing, Ltd.)

The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects by Deborah Lutz (W. W. Norton & Company)

Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the Music That Made Zimbabwe by Banning Eyre (Duke University Press)

The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger’s Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare’s First Folio by Andrea Mays (Simon & Schuster)

The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964 by Zachary Leader (Knopf)

Reagan: The Life by H.W. Brands (Doubleday)

Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen (Simon & Schuster)

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster)

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789 by Joseph J. Ellis (Knopf)

June

Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan (Harper)

Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment by Ronald S. Calinger (Princeton University Press)

Wellington: Waterloo and the Fortunes of Peace 1814-1852 by Rory Muir (Yale University Press)

Not a Game: The Incredible Rise and Unthinkable Fall of Allen Iverson by Kent Babb (Atria Books)

Model Woman: Eileen Ford and the Business of Beauty by Robert Lacey (Harper)

The Quiet Man: The Indispensable Presidency of George H.W. Bush by John H. Sununu (Broadside Books)

In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century’s Most Inquiring Mind by Hugh Aldersey-Williams (W.W. Norton & Company)

Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties by Kevin M. Schultz (W.W. Norton & Company)

Nabokov in America: On the Road to Lolita by Robert Roper (Bloomsbury)

One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York by Arthur Browne (Beacon Press)

The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West by Michelle Goldberg (Knopf)

Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West by Matthew Dennison (St. Martin’s Press)

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham by Emily Bingham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

July

M-Mother: Dambuster Flight Lieutenant John ‘Hoppy’ Hopgood by Jenny Elmes (History Press)

Admiral Collingwood: Nelson’s Own Hero by Max Adams (Head of Zeus)

Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America by Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes (Penguin)

Diane von Furstenberg: A Life Unwrapped by Gioia Diliberto (Dey Street Books)

Edward Thomas: from Adlestrop to Arras: A Biography by Jean Moorcroft Wilson (Bloomsbury)

Genius At Play: The Curious Mathematical Mind of John Horton Conway by Siobhan Roberts (Bloomsbury)

Being Berlusconi: The Rise and Fall from Cosa Nostra to Bunga Bunga by Michael Day (Macmillan)

August

The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger by Greg Steinmetz (Simon & Schuster)

Saban: The Making of a Coach by Monte Burke (Simon & Schuster)

Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane by Patrick McGilligan (Harper)

Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times by Anne C. Heller (New Harvest)

Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis by Abigail Santamaria (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim by Justin Gifford (Doubleday)

Alice in Chains: The Untold Story by David de Sola (Thomas Dunne Books)

The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion by Tracy Daugherty (St. Martin’s Press)

She Can Bring Us Home: Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer by Diane Kiesel (University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books)