Colin Asher on Nelson Algren, with Dan Simon and Russell Banks, May 8, 2019 Leon Levy Center for Biography 2019-07-18 | Colin Asher on Never a Lovely So Real: the Life and Work of Nelson Algren, in conversation with Dan Simon and Russell Banks, May 8, 2019, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Graduate Center, CUNY
Nicholas Shakespeare on Ian Fleming, with Kai Bird, Tuesday, May 28, 6:30 pm, the Graduate Center Leon Levy Center for Biography 2024-06-17 | Nicholas Shakespeare on Ian Flemingin conversation with Kai BirdTuesday, May 28, 6:30 pmThe Kelly Skylight Room, the Graduate Center365 5th Ave. New York, NY 10016 Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, the British national psyche and global politics has shifted over time, as has the interpretation of the life of his author. But Fleming himself was more mysterious and subtle than anything he wrote.Ian's childhood with his gifted brother Peter and his extraordinary mother set the pattern for his ambition to be “the complete man,” and he would strive for the means to achieve this “completeness” all his life. Only a thriller writer for his last twelve years, his dramatic personal life and impressive career in Naval Intelligence put him at the heart of critical moments in world history, while also providing rich inspiration for his fiction. Exceptionally well connected, and widely travelled, from the United States and Soviet Russia to his beloved Jamaica, Ian had access to the most powerful political figures at a time of profound change.Nicholas Shakespeare is one of the most gifted biographers working today. His talent for uncovering material that casts new light on his subjects is fully evident in this masterful, definitive biography. His unprecedented access to the Fleming archive and his nose for a story make this a fresh and eye-opening picture of the man and his famous creation. Nicholas Shakespeare was born in Worcester in 1957 and brought up in the Far East and South America. One of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 1993, his books have been translated into twenty-two languages. They include The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and The Dancer Upstairs, which was made into a film of the same name by John Malkovich and chosen by the American Libraries Association as the Best Novel of 1995. His nonfiction includes the critically acclaimed authorized biography of Bruce Chatwin, In Tasmania, and Priscilla: the hidden life of an Englishwoman in Occupied France. He has been longlisted for the Booker Prize twice, was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005), which was made into a major motion picture by Christopher Nolan and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy—and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). His book The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames appeared in 2014. His biography of Jimmy Carter, Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in 2021 by Crown Books.
Natalie Dykstra on Isabella Stewart Gardner, with Rachel Cohen, April 18, 2024, the Graduate Center Leon Levy Center for Biography 2024-05-06 | Natalie Dykstra on Isabella Stewart Gardnerin conversation with Rachel CohenThursday, April 18, 6:30 pmElebash Recital Hall, the Graduate Center365 5th Ave. New York, NY 10016Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston’s insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old. But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace—all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent—whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal—came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer. Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture. An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella’s wishes in the exact placements she initially curated.Natalie Dykstra is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life. Her work on Isabella Stewart Gardner has won a Public Scholars grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Biographers International Organization (BIO) Inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship. Dykstra, emerita professor of English at Hope College in Michigan, lives with her husband in Waltham, Massachusetts. Rachel Cohen is the author of three books of nonfiction: Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels, Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade, and A Chance Meeting, which is being reissued for its 20th anniversary by New York Review of Books Classics. Cohen's essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Believer and The New York Times, among other publications, and her work has been included in Best American Essays and Pushcart Prize anthologies. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago. Co-sponsored by Public Programs
Benjamin Taylor on Willa Cather, with Molly Haskell, March 26, 2024, the Graduate Center CUNY Leon Levy Center for Biography 2024-03-30 | Benjamin Taylor on Willa Catherin conversation with Molly HaskellTuesday, March 26, 6:30 pmThe Skylight Room, the Graduate Center365 5th Ave. New York, NY 10016The story of Willa Cather is defined by a lifetime of determination, struggle, and gradual emergence. Some show their full powers early, yet Cather was the opposite—she took her time and transformed herself by stages. The writer who leapt to the forefront of American letters with O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918) was already well into middle age. Through years of provincial journalism in Nebraska, brief spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines, she persevered in pursuit of the ultimate goal—literary immortality. Unlike Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, her idealism was unironic, and she stood alone among the great modern authors—at odds with the fashionable attitudes of her time. Combining intricate analysis with an empathetic, lyrical voice, Benjamin Taylor uncovers the reality of Cather’s artistic development, from modest beginnings to the triumphs of her mature years. His book is simultaneously an homage to her character, a warm consideration of her work, and a call to read Cather with renewed vigor. Benjamin Taylor's memoir, The Hue and Cry at Our House, won the 2017 Los Angeles Times/Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography and was named a New York Times Editors' Choice; his Proust: The Search was named a Best Book of 2015 by Thomas Mallon in The New York Times Book Review and by Robert McCrum in The Observer (London); and his Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay was named a Best Book of 2012 by Judith Thurman in The New Yorker. He is also the author of two novels, Tales Out of School, winner of the 1996 Harold Ribalow Prize, and The Book of Getting Even, winner of a 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award, as well as a book-length essay, Into the Open. Taylor is a founding faculty member in the New School’s Graduate School of Writing and also teaches in the Columbia University School of the Arts. He is a past fellow and current trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and serves as president of the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Molly Haskell lives in New York City and is the author of six books, including From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movie; the memoir Love and Other Infectious Diseases; Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, and, most recently, Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films. She has taught at Columbia, Barnard, and Sarah Lawrence, served as film critic for The Village Voice and New York magazine and written for many publications, including the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and The Guardian UK. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010 and an Athena Award in 2013, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Film Critics Circle in 2018, and co-hosted Turner Classic Movies’ "The Essentials" with Robert Osborne.
Will Hermes on Lou Reed, with Amanda Petrusich March 13, 2024, the Graduate Center, CUNY Leon Levy Center for Biography 2024-03-29 | Will Hermes on Lou Reedin conversation with Amanda PetrusichWednesday, March 13, 6:30 pm Elebash Recital Hall, the Graduate Center365 5th Ave. New York, NY 10016 Since his death ten years ago, Lou Reed’s living presence has only grown. The great rock-poet presided over the marriage of Brill Building pop and the European avant-garde, and left American culture transfigured. In Lou Reed: The King of New York, Will Hermes offers the definitive narrative of Reed’s life and legacy, dramatizing his long, brilliant, and contentious dialogue with fans, critics, fellow artists, and assorted habitués of the demimonde. We witness Reed’s complex partnerships with David Bowie, Andy Warhol, John Cale, and Laurie Anderson; track the deadpan wit, street-smart edge, and poetic flights that defined his craft as a singer and songwriter with the Velvet Underground and beyond; and explore the artistic ambition and gift for self-sabotage he took from his mentor Delmore Schwartz.Will Hermes (he/him) is a culture journalist, author and teacher. His books include Love Goes To Buildings On Fire (2011) and Lou Reed: The King of New York (2023), and he co-edited (with Sia Michel) SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music (2005). Hermes is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, a longtime contributor to The New York Times and NPR, and an occasional contributor to Pitchfork and other publications. He’s taught at Sarah Lawrence College, SUNY-New Paltz, and the University of Minnesota, and is on the adjunct faculty of the Clive Davis Institute at Tisch/NYU. Amanda Petrusich is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of three books. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and has been nominated for a Grammy Award. Her criticism and features have appeared in the New York Times, the Oxford American, Spin, Pitchfork, GQ, Esquire, and The Atlantic. Her most recent book, Do Not Sell at Any Price, explores the obsessive world of 78-r.p.m.-record collectors. She is the writer-in-residence at New York University’s Gallatin School, and lives in the Hudson Valley.Co-sponsored by Public Programs
Adam Shatz on Frantz Fanon, with Vinson Cunningham, Feb 22, 2024, Leon Levy Center for Biography, GC Leon Levy Center for Biography 2024-02-24 | Adam Shatz on Frantz Fanonin conversation with Vinson CunninghamThursday, February 22, 6:30 pmThe Skylight Room, the Graduate Center365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10036In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon’s shadow looms larger than ever. Fanon was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon’s stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller. Fanon left his modest home in Martinique to fight in the French Army during World War II; when the war was over, he fell under the influence of Existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon and trying to make sense of his experiences as a Black man in a white city. Fanon went on to practice a novel psychiatry of “dis-alienation” in rural France and Algeria, and then join the Algerian independence struggle, where he became a spokesman, diplomat, and clandestine strategist. He died in 1961, while under the care of the CIA in a Maryland hospital. Today, Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth have become canonical texts of the Black and global radical imagination, comparable to James Baldwin’s essays in their influence. And yet they are little understood. In The Rebel’s Clinic, Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon’s extraordinary life―and a guide to the books that underlie today’s most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism. Former Leon Levy Fellow Adam Shatz is the US editor of The London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. He is the author of Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination and the host of the podcast “Myself with Others.” Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer and a theatre critic at The New Yorker. His essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, FADER, Vulture, The Awl, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Commonweal. In 2020, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for his profile of the comedian Tracy Morgan. A former White House staffer, he now teaches in the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City. His debut novel, Great Expectations, will be released on March 26th, 2024, by Hogarth Books.
Jonathan Eig on Martin Luther King, with Randall Kennedy, Dec 4, 2023, the Graduate Center, CUNY Leon Levy Center for Biography 2024-01-05 | Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. Jonathan Eig is the bestselling author of Ali: A Life, winner of a 2018 PEN America Literary Award and a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize. He also served as a senior consulting producer for the PBS series Muhammad Ali. His first book, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, won the Casey Award. Eig’s books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have been listed among the best of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children. Randall Kennedy attended St. Albans School, Princeton University, Balliol College, Oxford, and Yale Law School. He served as a law clerk to judge J. Skelly Wright and to Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia, the bar of the United States Supreme Court, the American Law Institute, the American Philosophical Association, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His latest book is Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History and Culture. Presented with Public Programs
Frank Costigliola on George Kennan with Kai Bird Thursday, Nov. 9, 6:30 pm the Graduate Center, CUNY Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-12-19 | Frank Costigliola on George Kennanin conversation with Kai BirdThursday, Nov. 9, 6:30 pmThe Skylight Room, the Graduate Center, CUNY The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904–2005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy―and one of its most complex. Drawing on many previously untapped sources, Frank Costigliola’s authoritative biography offers a new picture of a man of extraordinary ability and ambition, whose idea of containing the Soviet Union helped ignite the Cold War but who spent the next half century trying to extinguish it. Always prescient, Kennan in the 1990s warned that the eastward expansion of NATO would spur a new cold war with Russia.An absorbing portrait of an eloquent, insightful, and sometimes blinkered iconoclast whose ideas are still powerfully relevant, Kennan invites us to imagine a world that Kennan fought for but was unable to bring about―one not of confrontations and crises but of dialogue and diplomacy. Frank Costigliola is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut and a former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. The author or editor of seven books, Costigliola has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute. His most recent book is Kennan: A Life between Worlds. Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005), which served as the basis for Oppenheimer, the blockbuster motion picture directed by Christopher Nolan. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy—and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). His most recent book is The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (Crown, 2014). His biography of President Jimmy Carter, The Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in 2021 by Crown Books.
Rachel Swarns on the 272, with Nicholas Lemann Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-10-26 | Rachel Swarns on the 272: the Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold To Build the American Catholic Church in conversation with Nicholas Lemann Oct 17, 2023 on Zoom
Oppenheimer from biography to blockbuster: Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas, with Kai Bird Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-10-25 | Oppenheimer from biography to blockbuster: Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas, with Kai Bird, October 11, 6:30 pm, Proshansky Auditorium, the Graduate Center, CUNY
Walter Isaacson delivers Annual Leon Levy Lecture on Biography, Sept. 28, 2023 CUNY Graduate Center Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-10-06 | The biographer of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and now Elon Musk, discusses his experience writing about innovators in "Lessons About Living with Geniuses"
Rachel Shteir on Betty Friedan, with Katha Pollitt, Sept 14, 6:30 pm CUNY Graduate Center Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-10-06 | The feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan (1921–2006) was powerful and polarizing. Born Bettye Naomi Goldstein, Friedan chafed at society’s restrictions from a young age. As a journalist she covered racism, sexism, labor, class inequality, and anti-Semitism. Her malaise as a housewife and her research into the feelings of other women resulted in the revolutionary The Feminine Mystique (1963), which made her a celebrity. In this biography, the first in more than twenty years, Rachel Shteir draws on Friedan’s papers and on interviews with family, colleagues, and friends to present a new Friedan for a new era. Rachel Shteir is an award-winning essayist, writer, and critic whose work has been published in many newspapers and magazines including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In addition to Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter, she is the author of Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show, Gypsy: The Art of the Tease and The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting. She is founder and head of the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Program at the Theatre School at DePaul University. Katha Pollitt is a poet, essayist and columnist for The Nation. She has written for many magazines and published numerous books, most recently Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights and The Mind-Body Problem (poems).
Chad L. Williams on W.E.B. Du Bois, in conversation with David Levering Lewis, May 17, 2023 on Zoom Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-06-07 | When W. E. B. Du Bois, believing in the possibility of full citizenship and democratic change, encouraged African Americans to “close ranks” and support the Allied cause in World War I, he made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Seeking both intellectual clarity and personal atonement, for more than two decades Du Bois attempted to write the definitive history of Black participation in World War I. His book, however, remained unfinished. In The Wounded World, Chad Williams offers the dramatic account of Du Bois’s failed efforts to complete what would have been one of his most significant works. Drawing on a broad range of sources, most notably Du Bois’s unpublished manuscript and research materials, Williams tells a sweeping story of hope, betrayal, disillusionment, and transformation, setting into motion a fresh understanding of the life and mind of arguably the most significant scholar-activist in African American history. In uncovering what happened to Du Bois’s largely forgotten book, Williams offers a captivating reminder of the importance of World War I, why it mattered to Du Bois, and why it continues to matter today. Chad L. Williams is the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. He earned a BA in History and African American Studies from UCLA, and both his MA and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. He is author of the award-winning book Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (2010, University of North Carolina Press) and The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War (2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux). David Levering Lewis is the author of nine books, including W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (1993) and W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 (2000). Each Du Bois volume received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1994 and 2001) and the first Du Bois volume was also awarded the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize. Lewis's recent book, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215, was published by Norton ( 2008). That book has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian, Korean, and Indonesian. His most recent book, The Improbable Wendell Willkie: The Businessman Who Saved the Republican Party and His Country, and Conceived a New World Order, was published by Liveright/Norton in 2018. A Family History as the American Story, 1785-1960 is forthcoming from Penguin/Random House in 2024.
Peter Stansky on George Orwell, with Joseph Kanon, May 9, 2023, on Zoom Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-06-06 | Peter Stansky on George Orwellin conversation with Joseph KanonMay 9 at 7 pm on Zoom WebinarFew English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at once responded to and sought to influence the tumultuous times in which he lived—decades during which Europe and eventually the entire world would be torn apart by war, while ideologies like fascism, socialism, and communism changed the stakes of global politics. Stanford historian and lifelong Orwell scholar Peter Stansky incisively demonstrates how Orwell's body of work was defined by the four major conflicts that punctuated his life: World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. The Socialist Patriot is ultimately an attempt to reconcile the apparent contradictions between Orwell's commitment to socialist ideals and his sharp critique of totalitarianism by demonstrating the centrality of his wartime experiences, giving twenty-first century readers greater insight into the inner world of one of the most influential writers of the modern age. Peter Stansky is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus at Stanford University. He has published extensively on the cultural, political, and literary milieu of twentieth-century Britain, including (with William Abrahams) the Orwell biographies The Unknown Orwell (1972) and The Orwell Transformation (1980). Joseph Kanon is the Edgar Award–winning author of The Accomplice, Defectors, Leaving Berlin, Istanbul Passage, Los Alamos, The Prodigal Spy, Alibi, Stardust, and The Good German, which was made into a major motion picture starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. He lives in New York City.
Darryl Pinckney on his memoir Come Back in September, with Thad Ziolkowski, May 2, 2023 Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-05-09 | Darryl Pinckney on his memoir Come Back in Septemberin conversation with Thad ZiolkowskiMay 2, 6:30 pm, the Kelly Skylight Room, the Graduate Center, CUNYDarryl Pinckney arrived at Columbia University in New York City in the early 1970s and had the opportunity to enroll in Elizabeth Hardwick’s creative writing class at Barnard. It changed his life. When the semester was over, he continued to visit her, and he became close to both Hardwick and Barbara Epstein, Hardwick’s best friend and neighbor and a fellow founder of The New York Review of Books. Pinckney was drawn into a New York literary world where he encountered some of the fascinating contributors to the Review, among them Susan Sontag, Robert Lowell, and Mary McCarthy. Yet the intellectual and artistic freedom that Pinckney observed on West Sixty-seventh Street could conflict with the demands of his politically minded family and their sense of the unavoidable lessons of black history.In Come Back in September, Pinckney recalls his introduction to New York and to the writing life. The critic and novelist intimately captures this revolutionary, brilliant, and troubled period in American letters. Darryl Pinckney is the author of two novels, High Cotton (1992), which won the Los Angeles Times award for First Fiction, and Black Deutschland (2016); and three other works of non-fiction, Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature(2002), which was awarded a Literature Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letter, Blackballed: The Black Vote and U.S. Democracy (2012), and Busted in New York and Other Essays (2019). He has been a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations, and of a Harold D. Vursell Award for Distinguished Prose from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Deputy Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography Thad Ziolkowski is the author the memoir On a Wave, which was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award in 2003, and Wichita, a novel. His most recent book, The Drop, which explores the relationship between surfing and addiction, was published by HarperCollins in 2021. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Bookforum, Artforum, Travel & Leisure, Interview Magazine and 4Columns. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has a PhD in English Literature from Yale University.
Carolyn Woods Eisenberg on Fire & Rain, with Timothy Naftali, Thursday, April 27, 7 pm on Zoom Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-05-09 | Carolyn Woods Eisenberg on Nixon, Kissinger & the Wars in Southeast Asiain conversation with Timothy NaftaliThursday, April 27, 7 pm on ZoomFire and Rain is a compelling, meticulous narrative that brings to life policy decisions about Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, conveying their significance to a new generation of readers. Drawing upon a vast collection of declassified documents, Carolyn Woods Eisenberg breaks fresh ground in contextualizing Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's decisions within a wider institutional and societal framework. While recognizing the distinctive personalities and ideas of these two men, this study more broadly conveys the competing roles and impact of the professional military, the Congress, and a mobilized peace movement.Carolyn Woods Eisenberg is a Professor of US History and American Foreign Relations at Hofstra University. She is the author of Drawing the Line: the American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-49, winner of the Stuart Bernath Book Prize of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Herbert Hoover Book Prize and a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Book Prize. She has written op-eds and done media appearances for numerous outlets, including the New York Times, National Public Radio, Fox, and C-SPAN. She has been a consultant to several members of Congress and is legislative coordinator for Historians for Peace and Democracy. Director of NYU’s Undergraduate Public Policy Program and, since 2016, a CNN presidential historian, Tim Naftali was apppointed the first federal director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in 2006. Naftali oversaw the release of over a million pages of documents, over 350 hours of the Nixon tapes, established the first video oral history program for a presidential library, and authored the Library’s Watergate gallery. Naftali, who wrote a biography of George H. W. Bush, is currently at work on a presidential biography of John F. Kennedy. His byline appears regularly in The Atlantic and Foreign Affairs and he has appeared in many documentaries, the most recent being “The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes” and “What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?”
Kerri Greenidge on The Grimkes, the Legacy of Slavery in an American Family, with Rachel Swarns Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-04-20 | Kerri K. Greenidge on The Grimkes, the Legacy of Slavery in an American Familyin conversation with Rachel L. SwarnsApril 17 6:30 pm, the Kelly Skylight Room, the Graduate CenterSarah and Angelina Grimke―the Grimke sisters―are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their privileged lives on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand activists in the North. Their antislavery pamphlets, among the most influential of the antebellum era, are still read today. Yet retellings of their epic story have long obscured their Black relatives. In The Grimkes, award-winning historian Kerri K. Greenidge presents a parallel narrative, indeed a long-overdue corrective, shifting the focus from the white abolitionist sisters to the Black Grimkes and deepening our understanding of the long struggle for racial and gender equality.A landmark biography of the most important multiracial American family of the nineteenth century, The Grimkes suggests that just as the Hemingses and Jeffersons personified the racial myths of the founding generation, the Grimkes embodied the legacy―both traumatic and generative―of those myths, which reverberate to this day. Kerri K. Greenidge is Mellon Associate Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University, where she also co-directs the African American Trail Project. She is the author of Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter (2019). Listed by the New York Times as one of its top picks of 2019, the book is the first biography of Boston editor, William Monroe Trotter, written in nearly fifty years. The book received the Mark Lynton Prize in History, the Massachusetts Book Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Award, the Sperber Award from Fordham University, and the Peter J. Gomes Book Prize from the Massachusetts Historical Society. Her writings have appeared in the Massachusetts Historical Review, the Radical History Review, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and the Guardian. Rachel L. Swarns is a journalist, author and associate professor of journalism at New York University, who writes about race and race relations as a contributing writer for The New York Times. Her articles about Georgetown University touched off a national conversation about American universities and their ties to this painful period of history. Her work has been recognized and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Biographers International Organization, the MacDowell artist residency program and others. Her forthcoming book, The 272: The Families who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church, will be published by Random House in June.
Annie Cohen-Solal on Picasso, with Blair Asbury Brooks, 3-29-23, the Graduate Center Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-04-09 | Before Picasso became Picasso, he was constantly surveilled by the police. In a country where the police and the conservative Académie des Beaux-Arts represented two major pillars of the establishment at the time, Picasso faced a triple stigma—as a foreigner, a political radical, and an avant-garde artist.Picasso the Foreigner approaches the artist’s career and work from an entirely new angle, making extensive use of fascinating and long-understudied archival sources. In this groundbreaking narrative, Picasso emerges as an artist ahead of his time not only aesthetically but politically, one who ignored national modes in favor of contemporary cosmopolitan forms. The artist never became a citizen of France, yet he enriched and energized its culture like few other figures in the country’s history. Annie Cohen-Solal is Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. She has served as the cultural counselor to the French embassy in the United States. Her books include biographies of Sartre, Leo Castelli, and Mark Rothko, all of which have been widely translated. Picasso the Foreigner was awarded the 2021 Prix Femina Essai; an exhibition curated by Cohen-Solal and based on the research for this book appeared in Paris at the Museum of the History of Immigration, in partnership with the national Picasso Museum, in 2021. Blair Asbury Brooks is a PhD candidate in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY and was the Leon Levy Center for Biography’s Dissertation Fellow in 2021-2022. Her dissertation, Heinz Berggruen: Dealing and Collecting Modern Art in the Shadow of World War II, is a comprehensive study of the life and career of the German-born dealer-collector. Previously, Brooks was Director of Exhibitions at Pace Gallery, Director at Peter Freeman, Inc., then a Director at Lisson Gallery.
David Waldstreicher on Phillis Wheatley, with Elizabeth McHenry, March 7, 2023 Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-03-17 | David Waldstreicher on Phillis Wheatleyin conversation with Elizabeth McHenryTuesday, March 7, 6:30 pm, the Skylight Room, the Graduate Center Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she composed elegies for local elites, celebrated political events, praised warriors, and used her verse to variously lampoon, question, and assert the injustice of her enslaved condition. “Can I then but pray / Others may never feel tyrannic sway?” In this new biography, David Waldstreicher offers the fullest account to date of Wheatley’s life and works, correcting myths, reconstructing intimate friendships, and deepening our understanding of her verse and the revolutionary era. David Waldstreicher has been a Distinguished Professor of History, American Studies and Africana Studies at the Graduate Center since 2014. He is the author of several previous books on early U.S. politics and culture, and has written recently for the Boston Review and The Atlantic. Elizabeth McHenry, Professor and Chair of the English Department at New York University, is the author of Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies (Duke 2002), which explores the long history of African Americans as readers in the context of their organized literary practices. Her most recent book, To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Practice, and African American Authorship (Duke, 2021), returns to the archives of Black literature to examine a variety of projects and conditions of authorship that have been dismissed or gone largely unnoticed in traditional accounts of African American literary history.
Melvyn P. Leffler on George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, with Peter Beinart, Mon, Feb 27, 2003 Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-03-17 | Melvyn P. Leffler on George W. Bush and Saddam Husseinin conversation with Peter BeinartMonday, February 27, 6:30 pmThe Kelly Skylight Room, the Graduate CenterAmerica's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations. In Confronting Saddam Hussein, Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and declassified American and British documents, Leffler vividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11.Melvyn P. Leffler is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of For the Soul of Mankind (2007), which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power (1993), which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (2017). Peter Beinart teaches national reporting and opinion writing at the Newmark J-School and political science at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is editor-at-large for Jewish Currents, a CNN political commentator, and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. His first book, The Good Fight, was published by HarperCollins in 2006. His second book, The Icarus Syndrome, was published by HarperCollins in 2010. His third, The Crisis of Zionism, was published by Times Books in 2012.
John A. Farrell on Ted Kennedy, with Kai Bird, Wednesday, February 22, 6:30 pm, 2023 Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-03-17 | John A. Farrell on Ted Kennedyin conversation with Kai BirdWednesday, February 22, 6:30 pmElebash Recital Hall, the Graduate CenterJohn A. Farrell’s magnificent biography of Edward M. Kennedy is the first single-volume life of the great figure since his death. Farrell’s long acquaintance with the Kennedy universe and the acclaim accorded his previous books—including his New York Times bestselling biography of Richard Nixon, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—helped garner him access to a remarkable range of new sources, including segments of Kennedy’s personal diary and his private confessions to members of his family in the days that followed the accident on Chappaquiddick. Farrell is, without question, one of America’s greatest political biographers and a storyteller of deep wisdom and empathy. His book does full justice to this famously epic and turbulent life of almost unimaginable tragedy and triumph.John A. Farrell (www.jafarrell.com) is the author of Richard Nixon: The Life, which won the PEN America award for the best biography, and the New-York Historical Society book prize for the best volume of American history, of 2017. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new book: Ted Kennedy: A Life, made the list of finalists for the National Book Award. In 2001 he published Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century, which won the Hardeman prize for the best book on Congress. His book, Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, won the Los Angeles Times book award for best biography of 2012.Leon Levy Center Executive Director Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005). A major motion picture based on this biography is scheduled to appear in 2023. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy—and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). His biography of President Jimmy Carter, The Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in 2021 by Crown Books.
Hilary A. Hallett on Elinor Glyn and the Invention of the It Girl, with David Nasaw, 2-16-23 Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-03-04 | Hilary A. Hallett on Elinor Glyn and the Invention of the It Girlin conversation with David NasawThursday, February 16, 6:30 pmThe Kelly Skylight Room, the Graduate Center In this groundbreaking portrait of a courageous icon of independence, Hilary A. Hallett traces Elinor Glyn’s rise from a depressed society darling to a world-renowned celebrity author who consorted with world leaders from St. Petersburg to Cairo to New York. After reporting from the trenches during World War I, Glyn was lured by American movie producers from Paris to Los Angeles for her remarkable third act. Weaving together years of deep archival research, Hallett movingly conveys how Glyn, more than any other individual during the Roaring Twenties, crafted early Hollywood’s glamorous romantic aesthetic. She taught the screen’s greatest leading men to make love in ways that set audiences aflame, and coined the term “It Girl,” which turned actress Clara Bow into the symbol of the first sexual revolution.Hilary A. Hallett is the Mendelson Family Professor and Director of American Studies and Associate Professor of History at Columbia University. The author of Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood, she has written for the Los Angeles Times.David Nasaw is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History Emeritus at the CUNY Graduate Center and a past president of the Society of American Historians. His most recent book is The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War. He is also the author of The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, a New York Times “Ten Best Books of the Year” and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography. His bestseller Andrew Carnegie was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and the winner of the New-York Historical Society’s American History Book Prize. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst was honored with several awards, include the Bancroft Prize for History.
Beverly Gage on J. Edgar Hoover in conversation with Kai Bird, Tuesday, February 7, 6:30 pm Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-02-24 | Beverly Gage on J. Edgar Hooverin conversation with Kai BirdTuesday, February 7, 6:30 pmElebash Recital Hall, the Graduate CenterJ. Edgar Hoover was a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape. Beverly Gage's monumental biography explores the full sweep of Hoover’s life and career. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was far more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission.Beverly Gage is professor of 20th-century American history at Yale. She is the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded, which examined the history of terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She writes frequently for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, among other publications.Leon Levy Center Executive Director Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005). A major motion picture based on this biography is scheduled to appear in 2023. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy—and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). His biography of President Jimmy Carter, The Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in 2021 by Crown Books.
Ancient Lives Panel: Thursday, December 15, 7 pm on Zoom Webinar Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-02-05 | Ancient Lives Panel: Francine Prose on Cleopatra, Peter Stothard on Crassus, James Romm on Demetriusmoderated by Daniel Mendelsohn Thursday, December 15, 7 pm on Zoom WebinarJoin us for a celebration of Ancient Lives, Yale University Press's new series of biographies of thinkers, writers, kings, queens, conquerors, and politicians from all parts of the ancient world. The series launches with three titles: Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth by Francine Prose; Demetrius: Sacker of Cities by James Romm; and Crassus: The First Tycoon by Peter Stothard. The discussion will be moderated by Daniel Mendelsohn, whose books include An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, a translation of the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, and three collections of essays. His tenth book, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate was published in 2020. Francine Prose is the author of numerous books, including Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 and Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. A Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College, she lives in New York. James Romm, editor the Ancient Lives series, is an author, a reviewer, and the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College. His reviews and essays appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Review of Books. Peter Stothard is an author, journalist, and critic. He is a former editor of The Times of London and of the Times Literary Supplement. His latest book is The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar.
Kal Raustiala on Ralph Bunche, in conversation with John Torpey, December 8, 2022, Zoom Webinar Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-02-05 | A legendary diplomat, scholar, and civil rights leader, Ralph Bunche was one of the most prominent Black Americans of the twentieth century. The first African American to obtain a political science Ph.D. from Harvard and a celebrated diplomat at the United Nations, he was once so famous he handed out the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Yet today Ralph Bunche is largely forgotten.From marching with Martin Luther King to advising presidents and prime ministers, Ralph Bunche shaped our world in lasting ways. This definitive biography gives him his due. It also reminds us that postwar decolonization not only fundamentally transformed world politics, but also powerfully intersected with America's own civil rights struggle.Kal Raustiala is the Promise Distinguished Professor of Comparative and International Law at UCLA Law School & Director of the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA.John Torpey is Presidential Professor of Sociology and History and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of numerous books, including The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State and Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics. He was president of the Eastern Sociological Society during 2016-2017.
Aidan Levy on Sonny Rollinsin conversation with Gary GiddinsFriday, December 2, 7 pm on Zoom Webinar Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-02-05 | Aidan Levy on Sonny Rollinsin conversation with Gary GiddinsFriday, December 2, 7 pm on Zoom Webinar Known as the “Saxophone Colossus,” Sonny Rollins is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time, winning Grammys, the Austrian Cross of Honor, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize and a National Medal of Arts. The story of Sonny Rollins—innovative, unpredictable, larger than life—is the story of jazz itself, and Sonny’s own narrative is as timeless and timely as the art form he represents. Part jazz oral history told in the musicians’ own words, part chronicle of one man’s quest for social justice and spiritual enlightenment, Aidan Levy's is the definitive biography of one of the most enduring and influential artists in jazz and American history.Aidan Levy is the author of Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed and editor of Patti Smith on Patti Smith: Interviews and Encounters. A former Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, JazzTimes, and The Nation. Gary Giddins wrote the "Weather Bird" jazz column in The Village Voice (1973-2003), co-founded the American Jazz Orchestra (1986-92), and served as Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center (2011-2016). His essays on music and film have appeared in dozens of publications and have earned him a Jazz Journalists Association Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim, Peabody, and Grammy, and six ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for Excellence in Music Criticism. His Visions of Jazz received a 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award and Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award; he won a second Gleason award and other honors for his two-volume life of Bing Crosby (2001, 2017). He wrote and co-directed three documentary films and is featured in many others, including Ken Burns’s Jazz and Tom Surgal’s Fire Music. His books include the biographies Satchmo and Celebrating Bird, the essay collections Weather Bird and Warning Shadows, and the textbook Jazz. He is now at work on a biography of George Gershwin. Giddins lives in New York with his wife Deborah Halper.
The Annual Leon Levy Lecture: Ramachandra Guha, “Preparing for Gandhi”Tuesday, October 18, 6:30 pm Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-02-05 | The Annual Leon Levy Lecture Ramachandra Guha, “Preparing for Gandhi”Tuesday, October 18, 6:30 pmRamachandra Guha is a historian and biographer based in Bengaluru. His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002), and a widely acclaimed history of his country, India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007) He is also the author of a two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi Before India, 2013, and Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 2018, both published by Knopf), and of a memoir of his life as a cricket fan, The Commonwealth of Cricket (William Collins, 2020). His most recent book is Rebels against the Raj (Knopf, 2022). His books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. Guha’s awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Howard Milton Prize of the British Society for Sports History, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies. He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate in the humanities from Yale University.
DT Max on Stephen Sondheim, with Adam Gopnik, December 13, 2022 at the Graduate Center Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-01-08 | In February 2022, The New Yorker published an exclusive online issue which featured excerpts from interviews longtime staff writer D. T. Max had conducted with Stephen Sondheim at the end of his life. Max was working on a major New Yorker profile timed to the eventual premiere of a new musical Sondheim was writing. The article generated an astonishing response from readers who praised it as one of—if not the best—interviews with Sondheim ever conducted; that Max had elicited a candor and vulnerability in the celebrated artist little shown before. Now, Max brings together those unedited conversations in this commemorative collection. This book reveals this cultural icon—a star who disliked the spotlight—at his most relaxed, thoughtful, sardonic, and engaging, as he talks about work, music, movies, family, New York City, aging, the creative process, and much more. Throughout, Max sets the scenes of the interviews, shares his impressions of Sondheim during each session, and explains how their unusual relationship evolved over the course of their “pas de deux.”This is a beautiful, surprising, and indelible portrait of an artist in his twilight, offering remarkable insight into the mind and heart of a genius whose work has indelibly influenced modern American musical theater and popular culture.D. T. Max is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery, published in 2007, and Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, published in 2012.Adam Gopnik has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1986. During his tenure at the magazine, he has written fiction, humor, book reviews, personal essays, Profiles, and reported pieces from abroad. He was the magazine’s art critic from 1987 to 1995 and the Paris correspondent from 1995 to 2000. From 2000 to 2005, he wrote a journal about New York life. His books, ranging from essay collections about Paris and food to children’s novels, include Paris to the Moon, The King in the Window, Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York, Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food and, most recently, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism.
Stacy Schiff on Samuel Adams, with Kai Bird, December 7, 2022, the Graduate Center Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-01-07 | Stacy Schiff on Samuel Adamsin conversation with Kai BirdWednesday, December 7, Elebash Recital Hall, 6:30 pmThomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” A singular figure at a singular moment, Adams packaged and amplified the Boston Massacre. He helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool in an innovative arsenal to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason. In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Stacy Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams’s improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies. Arresting, original, and deliriously dramatic, this is a long-overdue chapter in the history of our nation. Stacy Schiff has garnered universal acclaim for her style and scholarship in biographies of such figures as Cleopatra, Ben Franklin and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Her life of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), won the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, won the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. A number one bestseller, Cleopatra: A Life appeared on most end of year best books lists, including the New York Times'sTop Ten Books of 2010, and won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography. Her most recent book was the number one bestseller, The Witches: Salem, 1692 which The New York Times hailed as “an almost novelistic, thriller-like narrative.” A NYPL Library Lion, a Boston Public Library Literary Light, a recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Newberry Library Award winner, she was named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005). A major motion picture based on this biography is scheduled to appear in 2023. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy—and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames appeared in 2014. His biography of President Jimmy Carter, The Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in June of 2021 by Crown Books.
Jennifer Homans on George Balanchine, with Pamela Newkirk, Nov 29, the Graduate Center Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-01-07 | Jennifer Homans on George Balanchinein conversation with Pamela NewkirkTuesday, November 29, Elebash Recital Hall, 6:30 pm Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—The New York Times called him “the Shakespeare of dancing.” His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine’s tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances.With full access to Balanchine’s papers and many of his dancers, Jennifer Homans, the dance critic for The New Yorker and a former dancer herself, has spent more than a decade researching Balanchine’s life and times to write a vast history of the twentieth century through the lens of one of its greatest artists: the definitive biography of the man his dancers called Mr. B.Former Leon Levy Fellow Jennifer Homans is the dance critic for The New Yorker. Her widely acclaimed Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet was a bestseller and named one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. Trained in dance at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, she performed professionally with the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet. She earned her BA at Columbia University and her PhD in modern European history at New York University, where she is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence and the Founding Director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts.Former Leon Levy Fellow Pamela Newkirk is a journalist, professor, and multidisciplinary scholar whose work traverses history and journalism. Her latest book,Diversity Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business, will be released this fall. Her previous book, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga, was completed while she was a Leon Levy Biography fellow. The book was selected as the Best Book of 2015 by NPR, The Boston Globe, and The San Francisco Chronicle; an Editor's Choice by The New York Times and won the NAACP Image Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft on Winston Churchill, with Simon Winchester, November 16, 2022 Leon Levy Center for Biography 2023-01-07 | Geoffrey Wheatcroft discusses his new biography, Churchill’s Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill, which the New York Times Book Review called “the best single-volume indictment of Churchill yet published.”Geoffrey Wheatcroft is the author of The Randlords, the story of the South African mining magnates and their legacy, which appeared in 1985. In 1989 he published Absent Friends, a collection of biographical sketches, and in 1996 The Controversy of Zion, a study of Zionism and its effect on the Jewish people, which won an American National Jewish Book Award. His book Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France 1903-2003, published in 2003, was for several weeks at the head of the sports book bestseller list and was short-listed for an NSC Sports Book Prize. His next book The Strange Death of Tory England, which came out in England in 2005, was short-listed for the Channel 4 News Political Book Prize, and was followed by Yo, Blair! in the spring of 2007. Simon Winchester is the New York Times best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman. His recent titles include The Perfectionists, Atlantic, The Men Who United the States and Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. Winchester was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to journalism and literature. He lives in Massachusetts and New York City.
Margo Jefferson on Constructing a Nervous Systemin conversation with Elizabeth Kendall Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-11-11 | Margo Jefferson on Constructing a Nervous Systemin conversation with Elizabeth KendallWednesday, October 26, Elebash Recital Hall, 6:30 pm Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson has lived in the thrall of a cast of others—her parents and maternal grandmother, jazz luminaries, writers, artists, athletes, and stars. These are the figures who thrill and trouble her, and who have made up her sense of self as a person and as a writer. In her much-anticipated follow-up to Negroland, Jefferson brings these figures to life in a memoir of stunning originality, a performance of the elements that comprise and occupy the mind of one of our foremost critics. In Constructing a Nervous System, Jefferson shatters her self into pieces and recombines them into a new and vital apparatus on the page, fusing the criticism that she is known for, fragments of the family members she grieves for, and signal moments from her life, as well as the words of those who have peopled her past and accompanied her in her solitude, dramatized here like never before. Bing Crosby and Ike Turner are among the author’s alter egos. The sounds of a jazz LP emerge as the intimate and instructive sounds of a parent’s voice. W. E. B. Du Bois and George Eliot meet illicitly. The muscles and movements of a ballerina are spliced with those of an Olympic runner, becoming a template for what a black female body can be. Margo Jefferson has been a staff book, theater and arts critic for The New York Times and Newsweek. She has written for The Washington Post, New York Magazine, VOGUE, O, The Believer, Guernica, Bookforum, The Washington Post and The Nation. Her essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays; The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death; The Best African American Essays; The Jazz Cadence of American Culture; The Mrs. Dalloway Reader and elsewhere. She has written three books: On Michael Jackson (2005), Negroland (2015), and Constructing a Nervous System. (2022). Negroland received the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, The Heartland Prize and The Bridge International Prize. Recently, she received the 2022 Windham Campbell Prize for Nonfiction. She lives in New York and teaches writing at Columbia University. Former Leon Levy Fellow Elizabeth Kendall is a dance and culture critic/historian and a Literary Studies professor at Lang College and NSSR, both of New School. Her book Balanchine and the Lost Muse: Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer was published in July, 2013, by Oxford U. Press; paperback 2015. She has also written Where She Danced, (Knopf & U. of California Press); The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the l930’s (Knopf & Cooper Square Press), two memoirs, American Daughter (Random House), Autobiography of a Wardrobe (Pantheon and Anchor/Doubleday), and numerous articles about dance, fashion and movies. She has received fellowships from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, Guggenheim Foundation, Cullman Center, Fond Likhacheva, and Leon Levy Center for Biography. Forthcoming is an experimental narrative of choreographer George Balanchine’s early years in the U.S. (1933-1946), Balanchine Finds his America: a Tale of Dance, Sex, Solitude, and Longing.
David Maraniss on Jim Thorpe, in conversation with Dave Zirin Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-11-11 | David Maraniss on Jim Thorpein conversation with Dave ZirinThursday, October 13, Elebash Recital Hall, 6:30 pmJim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. He won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind.But despite his colossal skills, Thorpe’s life was a struggle against the odds. As a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, he encountered duplicitous authorities who turned away from him when their reputations were at risk. At Carlisle, he dealt with the racist assimilationist philosophy “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” His gold medals were unfairly rescinded because he had played minor league baseball. His later life was troubled by alcohol, broken marriages, and financial distress. He roamed from state to state and took bit parts in Hollywood, but even the film of his own life failed to improve his fortunes. But for all his travails, Thorpe did not succumb. The man survived, complications and all, and so did the myth.David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s—Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lucas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History). Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation Magazine. He is also the author of 11 books on the politics of sports including most recently The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World. His books include the NAACP Image Award nominee The John Carlos Story. His writings have been seen in The New York Times, The Washington Post. And The Source. He is also the host of the Edge of Sports Podcast and co-host of The Collision along with former NBA player Etan Thomas which broadcasts on WPFW in Washington DC.
Gene Andrew Jarrett on Paul Laurence Dunbar, in conversation with Kerri Greenidge Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-11-11 | Gene Andrew Jarrett on Paul Laurence Dunbarin conversation with Kerri GreenidgeOctober 7, 2022 7 pm, Zoom Webinar A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the "poet laureate of his race" hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his famous poem, felt like a "caged bird" that sings.
Andrew Meier on the Morganthau Dynasty, with Kai Bird Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-10-28 | Andrew Meier on the Morganthau Dynastyin conversation with Kai BirdTuesday, October 11, Elebash Recital Hall, 6:30 pmfamily, a dynasty of power brokers and public officials with an outsize—and previously unmapped—influence extending from daily life in New York City to the shaping of the American CenturyAfter coming to America from Germany in 1866, the Morgenthaus made history in international diplomacy, in domestic politics, and in America’s criminal justice system. With unprecedented, exclusive access to family archives, award-winning journalist and biographer Andrew Meier vividly chronicles how the Morgenthaus amassed a fortune in Manhattan real estate, advised presidents, advanced the New Deal, exposed the Armenian genocide, rescued victims of the Holocaust, waged war in the Mediterranean and Pacific, and, from a foundation of private wealth, built a dynasty of public service. In the words of former mayor Ed Koch, they were “the closest we’ve got to royalty in New York City.”Former Leon Levy Fellow Andrew Meier is the author of Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall, and The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service, both published by Norton and named books of the year by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and NPR. He has reported on Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus for two decades, including as Moscow correspondent for Time, and is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine. Meier has received fellowships from the NEH, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, and he was the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellow at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library. Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005). A major motion picture based on this biography is scheduled to appear in 2023. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy—and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames appeared in 2014. His biography of President Jimmy Carter, The Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in June of 2021 by Crown Books.
Mark Rozzo on Dennis Hopper & Brooke Hayward, with Thad Ziolkowski Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-09-29 | Mark Rozzo on Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward & 1960s Los Angelesin conversation with Thad ZiolkowskiTuesday, Sept 13, 2022 Elebash Recital Hall 6:30 pmThe Graduate Center, CUNY 365 5th AveNew York, New York
Annette Gordon-Reed Delivers the Annual Leon Levy Lecture on Biography, May 4, 2022 Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-05-17 | Annette Gordon-Reed Delivers the Annual Leon Levy Lecture on Biography, May 4, 2022, at the Century Association
Kate Clifford Larson on Fannie Lou Hamer, with Tamara Payne, April 19, 2022 on Zoom Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-04-30 | ...
Rebecca Traister & Lisa Miller on AOC, with Michael Kazin. April 13, 7:30 pm on Zoom Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-04-21 | Rebecca Traister & Lisa Miller on Take Up Space: the Unprecedented AOC. In conversation with Michael Kazin. April 13, 7:30 pm on Zoom
Neda Toloui-Semnani on They Said They Wanted Revolution: a Memoir of My Parents, with Jason Rezaian Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-04-07 | Neda Toloui-Semnani on They Said They Wanted Revolution: a Memoir of My Parents, with Jason Rezaian, Wednesday, April 6, 2022 on Zoom In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow. Conflicted about her parents’ choices for years, Neda realized that to move forward, she had to face the past head-on. Through extensive reporting, journals, and detailed interviews, Neda untangles decades of history in a search for answers. Both an epic family drama and a timely true-life political thriller, They Said They Wanted Revolution illuminates the costs of righteous activism across generations.
The Life of George Soros discussed by Peter Osnos, Eva Hoffman, Sebastian Mallaby & Leon Botstein Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-03-28 | The Life of George Soros discussed by Peter Osnos, Eva Hoffman, Sebastian Mallaby & Leon Botstein, March 17, 2022 on Zoom
Maggie Nelson on Freedom, with Wayne Koestenbaum Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-03-28 | Maggie Nelson on Freedom, with Wayne Koestenbaum, March 10, 2022, on Zoom
Radical Biography: David Nasaw, Teresa Meade, Benjamin Talbot, Manu Bhagavan, Brian Peterson Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-03-25 | Radical Biography: David Nasaw, Teresa Meade, Benjamin Talbot, Manu Bhagavan, Brian Peterson, on Zoom, March 23, 2022
Nicole Rudick on Niki de Saint Phalle with Dan Rudick Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-03-07 | Nicole Rudick on Niki de Saint Phalle with Dan Rudick, Wednesday, March 2, 6:00 pm on Zoom
Biographic Departures Roundtable: Judith Thurman with Paul Auster, Martha Saxton, Stacy Schiff Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-02-26 | Biographic Departures Roundtable: Judith Thurman, with Paul Auster, Martha Saxton, Stacy Schiff: Wednesday, February 23, 2022, 6 pm on Zoom
Michael Greenberg, Jean Strouse, Katie Roiphe and Benjamin Taylor discuss Janet Malcolm on biography Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-02-18 | Michael Greenberg, Jean Strouse, Katie Roiphe and Benjamin Taylor discuss Janet Malcolm on biography: 6 pm, Wednesday, February 16, 2022 on Zoom
Julian Zelizer on Abraham Heschel, with David Blight Leon Levy Center for Biography 2022-01-21 | Julian Zelizer on Abraham Heschel, with David Blight6 pm, Thursday, Jan 20, 2021 on Zoom
Richard Rhodes on E.O. Wilson, with Simon Winchester Leon Levy Center for Biography 2021-12-17 | Richard Rhodes discusses his biography of E. O. Wilson, The Scientist, with Simon Winchester. Wednesday, December 15 , 6 pm on Zoom
Kati Marton on Angela Merkel, with Kai Bird Leon Levy Center for Biography 2021-12-10 | Kati Marton discusses The Chancellor, her biography of Angela Merkel, with Kai Bird, Wednesday, December 8, 2021 at 6 pm on Zoom
