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Biography and Memoir March 2026 |
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| Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America by Howard BryantSports journalist Howard Bryant's affecting history details how trailblazing Black actor Paul Robeson and Major League Baseball player Jackie Robinson's differing political ideologies often put them at odds with each other, culminating in Robinson's 1949 appearance at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he testified against Robeson. For fans of: The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. by Peniel E. Joseph.
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| Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain's Queen... by Ann FosterCaroline of Brunswick, niece of Britain’s King George III, was chosen as queen-to-be for his profligate heir, George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales. Never mind that she was treated cruelly by George’s family and thoughtlessly cast aside soon after his coronation: the Regency royals were so detested by the British populace that Caroline quickly became a heroine of the emerging tabloid press. History podcaster Ann Foster dishes all the dirt. Try this next: The Duchess Countess: The Woman Who Scandalized Eighteenth Century London by Catherine Ostler.
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| The Flower Bearers by Rachel Eliza GriffithsNovelist and poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Promise) grapples with the twin tragedies of the highly publicized and near-fatal attack on her new husband Salman Rushdie and, less than a year earlier, the sudden death of her closest friend, poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who ironically passed away on Griffiths’ wedding day. For another emotional memoir about enduring wrenching loss, try Elizabeth Gilbert’s All the Way to the River.
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Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built
by Gayle Feldman
The exhilarating (The Boston Globe) story of the legendary Random House founder, whose seemingly charmed life at the apogee of the American Century afforded him a front-row seat to literary and cultural history in the making A] big, beautiful biography . . . There's a new Power Broker in town.--The New York Times Feldman depicts a lost world, at times a lost paradise, when New York, Hollywood and the literary life were at their most glamorous and privileged.--The Washington Post At midcentury, everyone knew Bennett Cerf: witty, beloved, middle-aged panelist on What's My Line? whom TV brought into America's homes each week. But they didn't know that the handsome, driven, paradoxical young man of the 1920s had vowed to become a great publisher and, a decade later, was. By then, he'd signed Eugene O'Neill, Gertrude Stein, and William Faulkner, and had fought the landmark censorship case that gave Americans the freedom to read James Joyce's Ulysses. With his best friend and lifelong business partner Donald Klopfer, and other young Jewish entrepreneurs like the Knopfs and Simon & Schuster, Cerf remade the book business: what was published, and how. In 1925, he and Klopfer bought the Modern Library and turned it into an institution, then founded Random House, which eventually became a home to Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Ayn Rand, Dr. Seuss, Toni Morrison, James Michener, and many more. Even before TV, Cerf was a bestselling author and columnist as well as publisher; the show super-charged his celebrity, bringing fame--but also criticism. A brilliant social networker and major influencer before such terms existed, he connected books to Broadway, TV, Hollywood, and politics. A fervent democratizer, he published high, low, and wide, and from the Roaring Twenties to the Swinging Sixties collected an incredible array of friends, from George Gershwin to Frank Sinatra, having a fabulous time along the way. Using interviews with more than two hundred individuals, deeply researched archival material, and letters from private collections not previously available, this book brings Bennett Cerf to vibrant life, drawing book lovers into his world, finally laying open the page on a quintessential American original.
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Not Your Founding Father: How a Nonbinary Minister Became America's Most Radical Revolutionary
by Nina Sankovitch
A thrilling celebration of a forgotten early American renegade, Not Your Founding Father reconsiders just how radical the American experiment could have been. Early in the morning of October 9, 1776--in the small farming community of Cumberland, Rhode Island, in a house surrounded by cherry trees--twenty-three-year-old Jemima Wilkinson died, and the Public Universal Friend was born. Old Cherry Wilkinson's children had already gained a reputation for scandal. Two of his boys had been dismissed from the local Quaker meeting for joining the colonial militia, and one of the girls was expelled for having a baby out of wedlock. Now, here was another Wilkinson child, riding about the countryside, claiming to be a genderless messenger of God. Yet something about the Public Universal Friend set war-ravaged New England ablaze. The young minister seemed to embody the possibilities offered by the new nation, especially the right to total self-determination. To authorities, however, the minister was the devil in petticoats, a threat to the men who sought to keep America's power for themselves. And so the Public Universal Friend ventured west to create an Eden on the frontier, a place where everyone would have the right to not only life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness, but also peace and shared prosperity. But into every Eden comes a snake. And soon, financial scams, contested wills, adultery, plagiarism, allegations of murder, and murmurs of another war with England would threaten to destroy this new American utopia.
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Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood
by William J. Mann
Biographer William J. Mann's (Bogie & Bacall) well-researched true crime account offers fresh insights on the 1947 murder of actress Elizabeth Short, who posthumously came to be known by the moniker "Black Dahlia." Further reading: Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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