News

Fall Books – 2013

August 6th, 2013

 If your forthcoming book is not listed below, drop us a line.

 

August

The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki by Donald Keene (Columbia University Press)

Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation by Robert Wilson (Bloomsbury)

These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie by Christopher Andersen (Gallery Books)

Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music by Neil Powell (Henry Holt and Co.)

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia: Personality, Faith and Times by Alexei Vassiliev (Saqi Books)

Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star by Stephen Michael Shearer and Jeanine Basinger (Thomas Dunne Books)

Crazy Rich: Power, Scandal, and Tragedy Inside the Johnson & Johnson Dynasty by

Jerry Oppenheimer (St. Martin’s Press)

 

September

Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize by Sean B. Carroll (Crown)

Wilson by A. Scott Berg (Putnam)

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman, and Paul Clark Newell, Jr. (Ballantine)

Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones (Ballantine)

American Dictators: Frank Hague, Nucky Johnson, and the Perfection of the Urban Political Machine by Steven Hart (Rutgers University Press)

Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher by Robin Harris (Thomas Dunne)

The Many Lives of Miss K: Toto Koopman – Model, Muse, Spy by Jean-Noel Liaut,  trans. Denise Jacobs (Rizzoli Ex Libris)

Eugene Braunwald and the Rise of Modern Medicine by Thomas H. Lee

(Harvard University Press)

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch

(HarperCollins)

An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer’s Life by Shirley Streshinsky and Patricia Klaus (Turner Publishing Company)

Sydney and Violet: Their Life with T.S. Eliot, Proust, Joyce and the Excruciatingly Irascible Wyndham Lewis by Stephen Klaidman (Nan A. Talese)

The Tudor Rose: Princess Mary, Henry VIII’s Sister by Jennifer Kewley Draskau (The History Press)

A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler by Tom Williams

(Chicago Review Press)

Junipero Serra: California’s Founding Father by Steven W. Hackel (Hill and Wang)

A Strong Song Tows Us: The Life of Basil Bunting by Richard Burton (Prospecta Press)

No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet by Molly Knight Raskin (Da Capo Press)

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 by Victoria Wilson (Simon & Schuster)

Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno (Simon & Schuster)

Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life by David Stouck (Douglas & McIntyre)

 

 

October

A Man and his Mountain: The Everyman who Created Kendall-Jackson and Became America’s Greatest Wine Entrepreneur by Edward Humes (PublicAffairs)

Self-help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America by Steven Watts (Other Press)

Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power by

Kevin Peraino (Crown)

Norman Mailer: A Double Life by J. Michael Lennon (Simon & Schuster)

Nicholson: A Biography by Marc Eliot (Crown Archetype)

Paul Robeson: A Watched Man by Jordan Goodman (Verso)

Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade by Rachel Cohen (Yale University Press

Kurt Cobain: The Nirvana Years by Carrie Borzillo (Carlton Books)

Once Upon a Time: The Lives of Bob Dylan by Ian Bell (Pegasus)

The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye by Jeremy Dauber (Schocken)

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper (New York Review Books)

Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn (Little, Brown and Company)

Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington by Terry Teachout (Gotham)

Torment Saint: The Life of Elliott Smith by William Todd Schultz (Bloomsbury)

Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind by Gavin Edwards (It Books)

The Angel of Charleston: Grace Higgens, Housekeeper to the Bloomsbury Set by Stewart MacKay (British Library)

Ian Fleming by Andrew Lycett (St. Martin’s Press)

The New Royal Family: Prince George, William and Kate, the Next Generation by

Rob Jobson and Arthur Edwards (John Blake)

Kate: A Biography by Marcia Moody (Michael O’Mara)

George Washington: Gentleman Warrior by Stephen Brumwell (Quercus Publishing)

JFK in the Senate: Pathway to the Presidency by John T. Shaw (Palgrave Macmillan)

Mob Boss: The Life of Little Al D’Arco, the Man Who Brought Down the Mafia

Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins (Thomas Dunne Books)

Jack London: An American Life by Earle Labor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore by Linda Leavell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

JFK, Conservative by Ira Stoll (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero Michael Korda (Harper)

Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion by Anne Somerset (Knopf)

Breakfast with Lucian : The Astounding Life and Outrageous Times of Britain’s Great Modern Painter by Geordie Greig (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait by Kendra Bean (Running Press)

Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked by Chris Matthews (Simon & Schuster)

Kate: The Future Queen by Katie Nicholl (Weinstein Books)

Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith by Trevor W. Coleman and Mitch Albom

(Wayne State University Press)

The Rise of Abraham Cahan by Seth Lipsky (Schocken)

Chef Tell: The Biography of America’s Pioneer TV Showman Chef by Ronald Joseph Kule, Regis Philbin,  and Walter Staib (Skyhorse Publishing)

Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality by Jonathan Aitken (Bloomsbury USA)

Greta Garbo: Divine Star by David Bret (Biteback Publishing, Ltd.)

 

 

November

The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency by James Tobin

(Simon & Shuster)

Pinkerton’s Great Detective: The Amazing Life and Times of James McParland by

Beau Riffenburgh (Viking)

Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life by Berel Lang and Ariella Lang (Yale University Press)

Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power by Philip Dwyer (Yale University Press)

Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press)

Wellington: The Path to Victory 1769-1814 by Rory Muir (Yale University Press)

Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life by Dorothy Gallagher (Yale University Press)

A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning by Robert Zaretsky (Belknap Press)

De Gaulle: The Man Who Defied Six US Presidents by Douglas Boyd (The History Press)

Henry VIII: The Life and Rule of England’s Nero by John Matusiak (The History Press)

Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution by Yehudah Mirsky (Yale University Press)

Phil Jackson: Lord of the Rings by Peter Richmond (Blue Rider Press)

American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Solomon (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by David Henry and Joe Henry (Algonquin Books)

End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson (William Morrow)

 

December

Musorgsky and His Circle: A Russian Musical Adventure by Stephen Walsh (Knopf)

Glorious War: The Civil War Adventures of George Armstrong Custer by Thom Hatch (St. Martin’s)

Ryan Gosling: Hollywood’s Finest by Nick Johnstone (John Blake)

Harry: A Biography by Marcia Moody (Michael O’Mara)

Beethoven: The Man Revealed by John Suchet (Atlantic Monthly Press)

The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince by Jane Ridley (Random House)

William and Dorothy Wordsworth: ‘All in each other’ by Lucy Newlyn (Oxford University Press)

Robert Plant: A Life by Paul Rees (It Books)

The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee (Little, Brown and Company)

Cadwallader Colden: A Biography by Seymour I. Schwartz (Humanity Books)

Tennyson: To Strive, To Seek, To Find by John Batchelor (Pegasus)

I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March up Freedom’s Highway by Greg Kot (Scribner)

Call Me Burroughs: A Life by Barry Miles (Twelve)

Emperor Huizong by Patricia Buckley Ebrey (Harvard University Press)

Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Belknap Press)

Space Has No Frontier: The Terrestrial Life and Times of Bernard Lovell by John Bromley-Davenport (Bene Factum Publishing)

Hitler’s Valkyrie: The Uncensored Biography of Unity Mitford by David R. L. Litchfield (The History Press)

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: A Biography Through Images by Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi and David Gilmour (Alma Books)

Pat and Dick: The Nixons, An Intimate Portrait of a Marriage by Will Swift (Threshold Editions)

Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon by David Landau (Knopf)

Wooden: A Coach’s Life by Seth Davis (Times Books)

Dashiell Hammett: Man of Mystery by Sally Cline (Arcade Publishing)

George Orwell: English Rebel by Robert Colls (Oxford University Press)

Lincoln’s Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln’s Image by Joshua Zeitz (Viking)

The Double Life of Paul De Man by Evelyn Barish (Liveright)

 

February

Faisal I of Iraq by Ali A. Allawi (Yale University Press)

E. E. Cummings: A Life by Susan Cheever (Pantheon)

James and Dolley Madison: America’s First Power Couple by Bruce Chadwick (Prometheus Books)

Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero by Douglas Perry (Viking)

Brooks: The Biography of Brooks Robinson by Doug Wilson (St. Martin’s)

 

 

Published under: News

Bolivar Biographer Explores the Challenges of Choosing Foreign Subjects

July 14th, 2013

With the publishing of her Bolivar: An American Liberator, BIO member Marie Arana has won glowing reviews and been featured in many media outlets. Born in Peru, Arana is the former editor-in chief of the Washington Post’s Book World and is currently a writer-at-large for that paper, as well as a biographer and novelist. TBC asked Arana about her new book and some of the challenges a biographer might face when dealing with a subject who is not from the English-speaking world. 

Marie Arana

Arana is a John W. Kluge Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress.

How do you make a foreign subject relevant for an American audience?
That, of course, is the question for all time. Throughout my writing career, I have tried to explain Latin America to an English-speaking audience. The effort is not without its challenges. James Reston, past editor of the New York Times, famously said that America was willing to do anything for Latin America except read about it. I’ve been trying to turn that prediction on its ear. With time, I learned it wasn’t I who would make the subject of the southern hemisphere relevant to readers, but the subject itself. South America is traveling north, and that hemispheric force that has been pressing north for more than two centuries stands to redefine North America in surprising ways. I haven’t had to make the subject relevant for an American audience; the subject is doing that for itself.

How do you handle sources in another language? Did you do translations yourself?
I did all the translations myself. Perhaps it was because of the lack of accuracy in the translations I had read. Bolivar’s Spanish and that of his contemporaries was far more vivid than any English equivalent I could find. I decided that the only way for a reader to understand the Bolivar I knew was to see him as I did. Every source—be it Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese—I translated myself. I realize I’m lucky in this, being a multilingual writer, but I also realized that my agility across languages was something I could offer that perhaps other biographers could not.

Do you think there is less of a market for foreign subjects (excluding English-speaking ones) with U.S. publishers? Or are there foreign subjects you think might have more appeal for U.S. publishers?
For decades, U.S. publishers have been reticent to bring foreign authors and foreign literature across the divide and into the bosom of an American readership. The market is too lean, the readers too focused on homegrown subjects. At certain moments, nevertheless, the outside world has broken through: This happened, famously, in the 1960s and 1970s with the Latin American “boom.” The works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, and a few others were received with great enthusiasm. In recent years, there has been a burst of interest in Scandinavian fiction. But much of the public response is faddish and lacks a clear-cut pattern that U.S. publishers can reasonably follow. Speaking for myself, I would say that it all depends on the quality of the translation. But in truth, the language divide is a major leap for most Americans. We are far better at exporting our creative output than at listening, and importing the works of others.

Were there any particular challenges you faced when writing about Bolivar?
The record on Bolivar is deeply tendentious. There is either too much hagiography or too much animus about the man. I quickly found that I had to put many of the secondary sources aside. Bolivar, a liberator who had accomplished much but left much undone, had inspired great love and great hatred among historians and biographers. Sticking to the primary sources—to the words that Bolivar himself wrote, or to the words of his contemporaries—I found I was on safer ground. The fascinating thing for me was to learn that Bolivar continues to inspire great passions. I will not soon forget a women’s book club gathering on the beach in Peru, where every person present had fervid opinions about the Liberator—not always rational. Getting past those passions to the real man was my greatest challenge.

Any general advice for someone interested in pitching a foreign subject to publishers, or in doing research on them? 
What I found useful was the fact that I was writing the biography of “an American founder,” and therefore producing a work that was viable in an existing American market. I also found that the bits I had written about the United States’ role in Bolivar’s career were important anchors for American reviewers. In other words, the Latin American story might be compelling, but it was especially so in its relation to the United States. So I would urge any writer on foreign subjects to make those subjects relevant to an American public. Readers want to know how a seemingly alien subject might relate to their lives.

For more information about Arana and her book, visit her website.

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Biography on Film

July 14th, 2013

Royal Family Denounces Film of Princess Grace
Grace of Monaco, with Nicole Kidman playing the title role, is expected to receive Oscar considerations when it’s released this December. But as the Sydney Morning Herald reported in May, it’s already been panned by Monaco’s royal family. Grace’s three children said the film “does not constitute a biographical work but portrays only a part of her life and has been pointlessly glamorized and contains important historical inaccuracies, as well as scenes of pure fiction.” In his defense, filmmaker Olivier Dahan said, “I am not a journalist or historian. I am an artist. I have not made a biopic.” Tim Roth joins Kidman in the cast, playing Prince Rainier.

Spielberg Plans Napoleon Biopic—With Help from Kubrick
Steven Spielberg announced earlier this year that he plans to present the life of Napoleon Bonaparte as a TV miniseries, working from a script written by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who died in 1999. Kubrick could not receive funding for the film he envisioned, about which he said, “It’s impossible to tell you what I’m going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.”

Fresh off his work on the science-fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick planned a cradle-to-grave treatment of the French leader that would feature 40,000 extras in battle scenes and high-speed cameras that would allow filming interior scenes lit only by candlelight (something Kubrick achieved in his 1975 movie, Barry Lyndon). Struggling with his script, Kubrick called on novelist Anthony Burgess to help. The script Burgess produced—actually a novel—was too non-linear for the director’s purposes, and the project fizzled. A BBC radio dramatization of Burgess’s play, under the name Napoleon Rising, aired earlier this year.

Salinger Documentary Finally Hits the Screen
Screenwriter Shane Salerno spent nine years and $2 million of his own money making a documentary about the reclusive J. D. Salinger, and by some reports the film will offer new information about the writer. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Salerno even called the film a “mystery thriller.” The New York Times reported, however, that Salinger’s son Michael discounted the idea that Salerno has uncovered any profound new information, saying he and his father were not involved with the film, nor were any of the small group of people who knew Salinger well over the past several decades. Salerno is also releasing a biography of Salinger, an oral history, which he co-wrote with David Shields; its publication will coincide with the documentary’s release in September. A trailer for the film is available here.

Film Biographers of Williams Sisters Face Lawsuit
Filmmakers Maiken Baird and Michelle Major won some good reviews with the release earlier this year of their Venus and Serena, a look a tennis’s Williams sisters, who have dominated their sport for more than ten years. The film focuses on the sisters’ career during one year, 2011, when they faced challenges on and off the court. In June, however, the United States Tennis Association sued the filmmakers, saying Baird and Major did not have permission to use footage they included from the 2011 U.S. Open. In legal papers, the association said some of the clips were not in the best interests of tennis—presumably an allusion to comments Serena made to the umpire during a match. Baird and Major saw the lawsuit as an attempt at censorship and said they did have permission from the USTA to shoot at the U.S. Open.

Mandela Life Story Slated for Fall Release
The recent health struggles of South African leader Nelson Mandela are sure to increase interest in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, scheduled for release this November. The film is based on the anti-apartheid leader’s autobiography and features Idris Elba, best known for his work in The Wire, in the title role. The film looks at Mandela’s life from childhood through his time as president of South Africa.

Long-Delayed James Brown Film Finally Taking Shape
The biopic of “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” will proceed, now that producer Brian Glazer has secured the rights to the music of James Brown. As of June, no one had been cast in the lead role, though Tate Taylor has been chosen to direct. Taylor previously directed The Help, and was Glazer’s choice after the producer ended negotiations with Spike Lee. The film project has musical star power behind the camera as well as its subject matter: Mick Jagger is involved as an executive producer. A well-regarded biography of Brown, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown by R.J. Smith, was published in 2012.

Documentary of Levon Helm Captures the Past Through the Present
Levon Helm, drummer and one of the lead singers of the heralded 1960s-70s group The Band, said he did not want a standard film depiction of his life in Jacob Hatley’s Ain’t in It For My Health. And as the Daily Beast reported this spring, the film documents Helm’s life in real time, as Hatley captures the triumphs and challenges Helm faced during their time together. But insights into the past also emerge, as Helm recounts his time with The Band—and some of his lingering anger over how the group dissolved.

Filmmakers Seek Donations to Release Randi’s Story
Filmmakers Justin Weinstein and Taylor Measom completed An Honest Liar, a documentary about James Randi—often called “the Amazing Randi”—but ran into funding problems and began seeking donations. Weinstein and Measom recently completed a successful campaign on Kickstarter but are still accepting money at their website to ensure the film’s release. Randi trained as a magician before taking on the role of public debunker of psychics, mystics, and others who claimed supernatural talents. The documentary looks at Randi’s life, including the unwanted attention he received when his longtime partner, Deyvi Pena, was arrested for identity theft. Pena went under the name José Alvarez for more than 20 years but was caught in 2011. He was sentenced to house arrest and probation after many people, including the magicians Penn and Teller, submitted statements in support of Pena.An Honest LiarComputer Pioneer’s Life Coming to the Big Screen
After showing his talents playing such diverse roles as Sherlock Holmes and a Star Trek villain, Benedict Cumberbatch will play mathematician/codebreaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. The highly regarded script by Graham Moore draws heavily from the 1983 Alan Hodges biography of Turing, The Enigma. Also starring is Keira Knightley.

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Robert Caro Snags Plutarch Award

June 19th, 2013

In a year in which he was passed over by the Pulitzer Prize Committee, Robert Caro won the Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2102 for The Passage of Power, published by Knopf.

Named after the ancient Greek biographer, the prize was launched this year with major support from the Chappell Great Lives Program at the University of Mary Washington. It is intended to be our genre’s equivalent of the Oscar in that the winner was (and will be) determined by secret ballot by BIO members from a list of nominees selected by a committee of distinguished members of the craft.

The winner, along with the three finalists, was revealed at the end of the Compleat Biographer cConference. Nigel Hamilton, a biographer of presidents Kennedy and Clinton, and Debby Applegate, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Henry Ward Beecher, opened envelopes containing the names of the winners before a crowd of writers in the Roosevelt Hotel.

The finalists for the 2012 Plutarch Award were:

  •  Alice Kessler-Harris, A Difficult Woman:, The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (Bloomsbury Press)
  •  John Matteson, The Lives of Margaret Fuller (W. W. Norton & Company)
  • Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (Crown)

Competition for the prize was impressive. Two of the finalists were also Pulitzer Prize-winning authors. A complete list of the nominees can be found here.

The members of the Plutarch Nomination Committee were :

  • Chip Bishop
  • Josh Kendall
  • Vanda Krefft
  • Andrew Lownie
  • Hans Renders
  • Linda Simon
  • Barbara Lehman Smith
  • Steve Weinberg
  • Brian Jay Jones, ex officio
  • William Crawley, ex officio

Caro was in Texas doing research for the next volume of his LBJ biography. Accepting the award from BIO president Morris and past president Nigel Hamilton on his behalf was Katherine Hourigan, managing editor of Knopf. You can see a video of her speech here.

 

 

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Chernow Keynote Speech Highlight of Fourth BIO Conference

June 19th, 2013

With the non-stop buzz of midtown Manhattan as a backdrop, more than 200 biographers from eight countries attended the fourth annual Compleat Biographer Conference on May 18 at the Roosevelt Hotel. The day featured 19 panels, and attendees were treated to a keynote speech by Ron Chernow, winner of the 2013 BIO Award.

Chernow received his award after the conference luncheon from Will Swift, author of the forthcoming Pat and Dick: The Nixons, An Intimate Portrait of a Marriage and a member of the BIO Award committee. Chernow’s most recent book, Washington: A Life, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. His previous books include a look at J.P. Morgan and the financial empire he established and biographies of John D. Rockefeller and Alexander Hamilton.

In his speech, Chernow reviewed his immersion into the lives of several of these major figures in American history, explaining his interest in subjects who, he found, tried to keep their inner lives hidden. He called them sphinxes and “strangers to introspection,” and his role was to strip away disguises and probe beneath their secrecy. Rockefeller, Chernow said, often wrote letters in what seemed like a code, leaving out explicit details that might have shed light on his financial dealings. Hamilton avoided sharing information about his illegitimacy and years as a youth in the Caribbean—years Chernow called a “dark undertow” that pulled on the brilliant man throughout his life. (Chernow saw that brilliance in Hamilton’s writings, and five years of pouring over his subject’s prolific work sometimes left the biographer feeling like “a dithering idiot.”) Chernow’s suggestion to others: Follow the silences of a subject’s life, the people and events they won’t discuss or choose to discount, to find keys to their personality. On the other hand, a subject’s own writings can obscure who he or she really is: “Personality can disappear behind a fancy cloud of words.”

With Washington, Chernow was dealing with a subject whose life had been explored in depth many times before. What he wanted to do with his biography of the president was to find what his predecessors had missed: Washington’s suppressed emotions, his carefully cultivated image of himself as man always under control. Through the writings of Washington’s contemporaries, Chernow found the anger the leader usually tried to hide. Biographers, Chernow said, need to look behind stereotypes and “received wisdom” about their subjects to truly understand them.

The voluminous archives of Washington’s documents helped Chernow achieve that understanding. As with Hamilton and his other subjects, he spent several years doing research. Chernow said that searching long and hard enough can reveal the essence of a biographer’s subject.

For a link to an AP article covering Chernow’s speech, go here.

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The Rush to the End

June 6th, 2013

closetoend

A site familiar to many authors, here is James McGrath Morris’s manuscript of his next book as it nears its end.

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Winning the Pulitzer Gets Author Free Dental Care

May 11th, 2013

by James McGrath Morris

On the weekend of April 13-14, biographer Tom Reiss was suffering from a terrible toothache. To his good fortune his dentist had an opening in the afternoon of Monday, April 15. As he took his seat in the dentist chair around 3 PM, the only thing Reiss anticipated was relief from the pain.

But his phone began to ring. At first, he told the dentist to ignore it, but the insistent ringing finally prompted Reiss to check his messages. What he heard were the screaming voices of his agent and publisher congratulating him but without leaving him any clue as to why. The dental hygienist turned to the computer displaying Reiss’s X-rays and Googled his name. His book, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, had just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

“The first autograph I signed as a Pulitzer Prize winner was for my dentist,” said Reiss. “He later sent me an email saying that that day’s work was on the house.”

Reiss, who makes his home in New York City with his wife and daughters, is the author of The Orientalist, the biography of a Jewish man who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany. Reiss’s new book, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer, is also an unusual tale, but with a long gestation.

Read the complete story here.

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BIO Members Add Seven New Faces to the Board and Reelect One Incumbent

May 11th, 2013

When BIO’s board of directors meets in New York City on Sunday May 19, following the Compleat Biographer conference, it will include lots of new members as a result of the 2013 elections that concluded on May 1. Elected for a two-year term on the board are: Marc Leepson, Carol Berkin, William Souder, Cathy Curtis, Lois Banner, Joshua Kendall, and Amanda Foreman. Kitty Kelley, an incumbent was reelected to another two-year term.

Nearly 50 percent of Active BIO members participated in the 2013 election.

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