Categorie archieven: Biografie

Biografie, Duitse filosoof

Peter E. Gordon – Walter Benjamin biography

Peter E. Gordon Walter Benjamin biography review and information book about the Jewish-German culture philosopher and writer. Yale University Press will publish the new book in the Jewish Lives series on Walter Benjamin, The Pearl Diver, February 24, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.

Peter E. Gordon Walter Benjamin biography review

  • “By reading Benjamin’s own texts against the grain of the hagiography that has come to surround him, Peter Gordon unwinds the myths, and in the most learned and informed fashion, gives us back the human being.” (Susan Buck-Morss, CUNY Graduate Center and Cornell University)

Peter E. Gordon Walter Benjamin biography

Walter Benjamin

The Pearl Diver

  • Author: Peter E. Gordon (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: February 24, 2026
  • Length: 224 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 28.00
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol

Blurb of the Walter Benjamin biography

An accessible and authoritative biography of Walter Benjamin that guides the reader through the complexity of his intellectual legacy and the turbulence of his time.

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen and capacious imagination, he developed a unique style of criticism—his friend Hannah Arendt called it pearl-diving—that sought out fragments of redemption in the ruins of bourgeois civilization.

Award-winning author Peter E. Gordon tells Benjamin’s story in a vivid and poetic style, inviting the reader to look beyond the image of Benjamin as a tragic figure of German-Jewish history and portraying him as a complex personality of unique and multifaceted gifts. Tracing Benjamin’s life from his Berlin childhood to his Parisian exile, through the romanticism of the youth movements and the conflicts over modernism and Marxism, Gordon brings Benjamin to life.

Peter E. Gordon teaches social theory and philosophy at Harvard University. His books include Migrants in the Profane: Critical Theory and the Question of Secularization and A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity. He lives in Cambridge, MA.

Matching books

Biografie, Theater

Danny van Zuijlen – De ster van de revue

Danny van Zuijlen De ster van de revue recensie en informatie biografie en boek over revuester Louisette, Louisa Augusta van Geijtenbeek. Op 20 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Walburg Pers het boek over Louisette, de ster van de revue. De biografie is geschreven door Dany van Zuijlen. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van het boek, de auteur en over de uitgave.

Danny van Zuijlen De ster van de revue recensie

  • “Een theatervoorstelling is vluchtig: als de zaallichten weer aangaan is het al herinnering… Gelukkig hebben we tegenwoordig Spotify, om de herinnering aan Wim Sonneveld of Conny Stuart levend te houden. In de tijd van Louisette was dat er niet. Wat heerlijk dat er nu een boek is over haar leven en successen.” (Simone Kleinsma, zangeres en actrice)

Danny van Zuijlen De ster van de revue

De ster van de revue

Het wonderbaarlijke leven van Louisette (1882-1965)

  • Auteur: Danny van Zuijlen (Nederland)
  • Soort boek: biografie, theatergeschiedenis
  • Uitgever: Walburg Pers
  • Verschijnt: 20 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 176 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: paperback
  • Prijs: € 24,99
  • Boek bestellen bij: Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van het boek over revuester Louisette

Van bittere armoede in de Amsterdamse Nes naar Broadwayster: Louisa Augusta van Geijtenbeek, bekend onder de artiestennaam ‘Louisette’, leefde het onmogelijke. Werkzaam als huishoudster van een beroemde variétékomiek greep ze haar kans toen ze door hem werd ontdekt. Een glansrijke carrière volgde, met uitverkochte zalen in Carré tot een ontvangst als vorstin in Nederlands-Indië en een spectaculaire tour door Amerika.

In een tijd waarin vrouwen weinig mochten, durfde Louisette alles. In de jaren ’30 groeide ze met grote, zelfgeproduceerde shows uit tot de Nederlandse Mistinguett. Tot in de Tweede Wereldoorlog het noodlot toesloeg. In de jaren daarna verloor Louisette haar glans en veranderde ze van een ster in een paranoïde oude vrouw.

Theatermaker Danny van Zuijlen ontrafelt het ontroerende en gelaagde portret van een vrouw die leefde tussen schijnwerpers en schaduwen – een leven vol ambitie, opoffering, liefde en eenzaamheid. De ster van de revue mag dan vergeten zijn, haar verhaal verdient opnieuw applaus.

Danny van Zuijlen is theatermaker, producent en verhalenjager. In 2010 produceerde hij zijn eerste theatervoorstelling ‘Zing nog eens, Louisette!’ Sinds enkele jaren vervlecht hij historische verhalen met digitale technologie in producties ‘Op klompen door de dessa’ en ‘Schokland – Geen weg terug’.

Bijpassende boeken

Biografie, Filosofie, Filosoof

Anthony Gottlieb – Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie

Anthony Gottlieb Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie recensie, review en informatie over de inhoud van het boek over de filosoof. Op 21 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Yale University Press in de reeks Jewish Lives de biografie van de Oostenrijks-Britse filosoof Ludwig Wittgenstein. Het boek is geschreven door Anthony Gottlieb . Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Anthony Gottlieb Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie recensie en review

  • “With philosophical sophistication and writerly grace, Anthony Gottlieb crafts a narrative rich with historical and intellectual detail and subtlety. But though the vistas can be broad, the result is an intimate portrait of a thinker who redefined the boundaries of philosophy.” (Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York University)
  • “The outline of Wittgenstein’s life is well known. But he remains enigmatic, and in this book Anthony Gottlieb casts valuable new light on the role of his family, and of his wider intellectual and musical environment, in fashioning the strange and contradictory genius he became.” (Simon Blackburn)

Anthony Gottlieb Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes

  • Auteur: Anthony Gottlieb (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: biografie van de Oostenrijks-Britse filosoof
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Yale University Press
  • Reeks: Jewish Lives
  • Verschijnt: 21 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 232 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 28,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie van Anthony Gottlieb

The first biography in more than three decades of the Austrian-born thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.

According to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), philosophy is a “battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” This audacious idea changed the way many of its practitioners saw their subject. In the first biography of Wittgenstein in more than three decades, Anthony Gottlieb evaluates this revolutionary idea, explaining the evolution of Wittgenstein’s thought and his place in the history of philosophy.

Wittgenstein was born into an immensely rich Viennese family but yearned to live a simple life, and he gave away his inheritance. After studying with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge, he wrote his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus while serving in World War I. He then took several positions as a primary-school teacher in rural Austria before returning as a fellow to Cambridge, where a cultlike following developed around him. Wittgenstein worked not only as a philosopher and schoolteacher, but also as an aeronautical engineer in Manchester and as an architect in Vienna.

Gottlieb’s meticulously researched book traces the itinerant and troubled life of Wittgenstein, the development of his influential ideas, and the Viennese intellectual milieu and family background that shaped him.

Anthony Gottlieb is born in 1956. He is an author, book critic, and former executive editor of The Economist. He is the author of The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance and The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy.

Bijpassende boeken

Biografie, Joden

Jenna Weissman Joselit – Mordecai M. Kaplan biography

Jenna Weissman Joselit Mordecai M. Kaplan biography review and information book about the rabbi, writer, teacher, and thinker.Yale University Press will publish the new book in the Jewish Lives series on Mordecai M. Kaplan, Restless Soul, March 17, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.

Jenna Weissman Joselit Mordecai M. Kaplan biography review

  • “To capture Mordecai Kaplan’s long and astonishingly productive life takes skill and discernment and a deep understanding of American Jewish life. All these qualities are on display is Joselit’s wonderful volume. She has done justice to a remarkable man.” (Rabbi David Wolpe, author of David: The Divided Heart)

Jenna Weissman Joselit Mordecai M. Kaplan Biography

Mordecai M. Kaplan

Restless Soul

  • Author: Jenna Weissman Joselit (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: March 17, 2026
  • Length: 320 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 32.50
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol

Blurb of the Mardecai M. Kaplan biography

An engaging biography that goes behind the myths to reveal the complex life of a transformative figure in modern American Judaism.

Rabbi, writer, teacher, and thinker, Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881–1983) was one of the leading Jewish personalities of twentieth-century America. Founder of the Reconstructionist movement, he was a maverick who reshaped religious faith and practice, generating controversy at every turn. Known for his relentless energy and imagination, Kaplan redefined Jewish identity, emphasizing reason over superstition, and intellectual discovery over passive inheritance. He introduced new rituals, reevaluated the role of tradition, and advocated for a Judaism that evolved with the times and fostered inclusive community.

Drawn extensively from Kaplan’s private diaries and correspondence with family and close friends, Jenna Weissman Joselit’s intimate portrait of this influential and iconoclastic thinker sheds new light on the meaning of American Judaism, identity, the limits of belonging, and the role of faith in modern society.

Jenna Weissman Joselit is the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and professor of history at the George Washington University. The author, most recently, of Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments, she lives in New York.

Matching books

Amerikaanse muziek, Biografie, Muziek

Daniel Okrent – Stephen Sondheim biography

Daniel Okrent Stephen Sondheim biography review and information book about the Jewish-American composer and songwriter. Yale University Press will publish the new book in the Jewish Lives series on Stephen Sondheim, Art Isn’t Easy, March 17, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.

Daniel Okrent Stephen Sondheim biography review

  • “An intricate, elegant tour through the life and psyche of an uneasy genius. Okrent’s book is stuffed with new matter and fascinating insights even for specialists like me who’ve been immersed in Sondheim’s biography and art for decades.” (Laurie Winer, author of Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical)
  • “In this compact, densely pleasurable life of Stephen Sondheim, Daniel Okrent has achieved the remarkable feat of bringing to fresh life an endlessly chronicled subject in a compellingly readable and authoritative way.” (James Kaplan, author of Irving Berlin)

Daniel Okrent Stephen Sondheim biography

Stephen Sondheim

Art Isn’t Easy

  • Author: Daniel Okrent (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: March 17, 2026
  • Length: 336 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 35.00
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol

Blurb of the Stephen Sondheim biography

A revelatory look at the complex inner world of one of the twentieth century’s most beloved theatrical composers.

Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) was a towering figure in American musical theater. Celebrated for his iconic Broadway shows such as Company, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods, his accolades include eight Tony Awards, multiple Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. In this intimate biography, Daniel Okrent follows Sondheim through the tumult of his upbringing and his parents’ divorce, his acquaintance with Oscar Hammerstein II and subsequent discovery of musical theater, and his rise to fame as both a lyricist and composer.

Okrent shines new light on Sondheim’s tormented emotional life, wavering self-confidence, and alcoholism, drawing on the artist’s intimate correspondence with such notable figures as Hal Prince, Leonard Bernstein, and Arthur Laurents; exclusive interviews with his close friends and collaborators, including James Lapine and John Weidman; and Sondheim’s own oral history, which remained closed until his death. As Okrent explores the ways Sondheim’s music and lyrics express the inner man, he reveals a life that was defined by two parallel arcs: the movement from alienation to connection, and from ambivalence to resolution.

Daniel Okrent had careers as a book and magazine editor and was the first public editor of the New York Times. He is the prize-winning author of six books, including The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. He lives in New York City and on Cape Cod.

Matching books

Amerikaanse muziek, Biografie, Jazzmuziek, Muziek

Bruce H. Klauber and Andrea Kauffman – Let Me Be Frank

Bruce H. Klauber and Andrea Kauffman Let Me Be Frank review, recensie en informatie boek en biografie over het buitengewone leven en de muziek van Frank Sinatra Jr. Op 15 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij University Press of Mississippi de biografie van de Amerikaanse zanger Frank Sinatra Jr. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Bruce H. Klauber and Andrea Kauffman Let Me Be Frank review en recensie

  • “Let Me Be Frank is the first biography of the enigmatic Frank Sinatra, Jr., a singer who lived most of his life in the immense shadow of his legendary father. The authors, Bruce Klauber and Andrea Kauffman, created this work as a labor of love for a man they knew well. Their research is extensive, drawn from over forty in-depth interviews, including one with Michael Sinatra, the singer’s son. Kauffman was Frank Jr.’s manager for over thirty years, and she chronicles his evolution from someone who insisted on going his own way to someone who embraced his father’s legacy after his death in 1998.” (Anthony DiFlorio, entertainment archivist and WRDV-FM host)

Bruce H. Klauber and Andrea Kauffman Let Me Be Frank

Let Me Be Frank

The Extraordinary Life and Music of Frank Sinatra, Jr.

  • Auteurs: Bruce H. Klauber, Andrea Kauffman (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: biografie van zanger Frank Sinatra Jr.
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: University Press of Mississippi
  • Reeks: American Made Music Series
  • Verschijnt: 15 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 277 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 30,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Libris

Flaptekst van de biografie van zanger Frank Sinatra Jr.

How the son of one of the most famous performers in history fought for his own star as a musician.

As an American singer, conductor, composer, and actor, Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1944–2016), had a long and successful music career and was recognized for his many contributions to American popular song. Yet, his own star has often been overshadowed by his world-famous father. The first book ever published about Frank Sinatra, Jr., Let Me Be Frank: The Extraordinary Life and Music of Frank Sinatra, Jr., details how this complex and often misunderstood artist dealt with professional struggles, personal demons, and endless comparisons with his father to emerge as a thriving performer who finally made peace with the name “Sinatra.”

Let Me Be Frank chronicles Frank Sinatra, Jr.’s life and music career, including the lifetime loyalty of his friends and bandsmen, and his notorious womanizing. It also, of course, details the challenging relationship with his father, including an incident with his father that may have changed Frank Jr. forever. He ran from comparisons to his father and lost work due to his refusal to sing his father’s songs. The book also details Frank Jr.’s kidnapping in 1963 when he was nineteen.

Included are over forty interviews with Frank Jr.’s friends, family, and colleagues. It also features a compelling narrative from Andrea Kauffman, Frank Jr.’s personal manager and close friend of thirty-one years, and an in-depth musical analysis of four decades of Frank Jr.’s recordings and stage shows. Let Me Be Frank finally sets the record straight about a brilliant man and a brilliant performer who never truly got the credit he deserved.

Frank Sinatra Jr. was born on January 10, 1944, in Jersey City, the son of famous singer Frank Sinatra and Nancy Barbota. He was active as a singer, conductor, and actor. In 1963, he was kidnapped by a gang led by Barry Keenan and held captive in a hotel in Stateline, Nevada. After his father paid the kidnappers a $240,000 ransom, he was released two days later. On March 16, 2016, Frank Sinatra Jr. died in a Daytona Beach hospital from a heart attack he had suffered earlier. He was 72 years old.

Frank Sinatra Jr. is geboren op 10 januari 1944 in Jersey City als de zoon van de beroemde zanger Frank Sinatra en Nancy Barbota. Hij was actief als zanger, dirigent en acteur. Hij werd in 1963 ontvoerd door een bende van figuur Barry Keenan en werd gevangen gehouden in een hotel in Stateline, Nevada. Nadat zijn vader 240.000 dollar aan de ontvoerders losgeld had betaald werd hij twee dagen later vrij gelaten. Op 16 maart 2016 overleed Frank Sinatra Jr. in een ziekenhuis Daytona Beach aan de gevolgen van een hartaanval die hij eerder had gekregen. Hij werd 72 jaar oud.

Bijpassende boeken en informatie

Biografie, Muziek, Popmuziek

Jos de Gruiter – Hans Vermeulen

Jos de Gruiter Hans Vermeulen recensie en informatie over de inhoud van de biografie van de Nederlandse zanger, componist en muzikant. Op 15 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Uitgeverij Noordboek Van Gorcum de biografie van Hans Vermeulen, Briljant muzikant, maar niet elke dag. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van het boek, de auteur en over de uitgave.

Jos de Gruiter Hans Vermeulen recensie

Als er in de media een boekbespreking, review of recensie verschijnt van Hans Vermeulen, Briljant muzikant, maar niet elke dag, de biografie en het boek geschreven door Jos de Gruiter, dan besteden we er op deze pagina aandacht aan.

Jos de Gruiter Hans Vermeulen

Hans Vermeulen

Briljant muzikant, maar niet elke dag

  • Auteur: Jos de Gruiter (Nederland)
  • Soort boek: biografie, muziekboek
  • Uitgever: Noordboek Van Gorcum
  • Verschijnt: 15 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 208 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: paperback
  • Prijs: € 24,90
  • Boek bestellen bij: Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de biografie van Hans Vermeulen

Hans Vermeulen (1947-2017) was zanger, instrumentalist, producer, arrangeur en songwriter van Sandy Coast, Rainbow Train en onder meer Anita Meyer. Hits als ‘True Love That’s A Wonder’ en ‘The Eyes Of Jenny’ zijn nog regelmatig te horen op de radio. Een prima gozer wordt hij genoemd, charismatisch maar ook gevoelig voor verleidingen en gemakzuchtig. Daardoor breekt hij nooit door in Amerika.

Na een echtscheiding, een buitenechtelijke dochter, een miljoenenschuld en een drank- en drugsverslaving emigreerde Vermeulen eind jaren negentig naar het Thaise eiland Koh Samui, waar hij huwde met zangeres/gitariste Jariya ‘Aom’ Chatsuwan en leefde van de opbrengst van zijn hits.

In dit boek laat Jos de Gruiter dertig direct betrokkenen aan het woord, onder wie Vermeulens Thaise weduwe, zijn kinderen, managers, voormalige bandleden, touroperators, roadies, Anita Meyer, Hilde Marchal (Vermeulens eerste vrouw), Harry Knipschild, Earringbassist Rinus Gerritsen, voormalig deejay en ondernemer Tony Berk en dirigent Dick Bakker van het Metropole Orkest. Zij schetsen het beeld van een muzikant die door velen geniaal werd genoemd, ‘maar niet iedere dag’, zoals een van de geïnterviewden vaststelt.

Jos de Gruiter is journalist, bladenmaker en schrijver van non-fictie boeken, onder meer over de rechterlijke macht, het verschijnsel ‘nakomertje’ en het leven tijdens de bezettingsjaren in het duodorp Hoogmade/Woubrugge.

Bijpassende boeken

Biografie, Film, filmboek, Filmgeschiedenis, Wales

Gillian Kelly – Ray Milland

Gillian Kelly Ray Milland review, recensie en informatie biografie van de auteur en filmregisseur uit Wales. Op 15 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Mississippi University Press de biografie van Gillian Kelly. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Gillian Kelly Ray Milland review en recensie

  • “Ray Milland: Identity, Stardom, and the Long Climb to ‘The Lost Weekend’ is a welcome addition to scholarship on film stardom, especially in addressing the somewhat neglected realm of what Kelly terms the ‘second level studio luminaries’ and Milland’s role in supporting female stars like Lamour, Colbert, and Goddard at Paramount. With an excellent and detailed discussion of performance, image, and masculinity, this volume has the potential to reach a wide readership.” (Michael Williams, professor of film at University of Southampton)

Gillian Kelly Ray Milland

Ray Milland

Identity, Stardom, and the Long Climb to The Lost Weekend

  • Auteur: Gillian Kelly
  • Soort boek: biografie, filmbook
  • Taal; Engels
  • Uitgever: Mississippi University Press
  • Verschijnt: 15 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 288 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: paperback / gebonden boek
  • Prijs: $ 30,00 / $ 110,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de biografie van Ray Milland de Welsh acteur en filmregisseur

A comprehensive study of one Welsh actor’s image and performance in Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Ray Milland (1907–1986) was the inaugural Welshman to win the Best Actor Academy Award, as well as a performer boasting a rich and varied oeuvre from the silent era in 1920s Britain to New Hollywood in the 1980s. Despite being one of the most prolific actors in cinema history who left behind a legacy of almost 180 film and television appearances across seven different decades, Milland remains a somewhat forgotten figure of cinematic history. Ray Milland: Identity, Stardom, and the Long Climb to “The Lost Weekend” fills this void in scholarship by offering a detailed examination of Milland as one of Hollywood’s most durable and fascinating performers of the studio era.

The volume begins by exploring Milland’s unique Welsh identity in Hollywood, which was essentially erased by the studios. It then turns to his underexplored early career at MGM prior to signing with Paramount Pictures, where he remained for over two decades. Author Gillian Kelly discusses his early roles as a stereotypical “Brit” in Hollywood as well as his “stardom years” at Paramount where he often provided support for the studio’s leading ladies, including Claudette Colbert, Dorothy Lamour, and Paulette Goddard. A chapter is dedicated to his Oscar-winning performance in The Lost Weekend, and important later films like Dial M for Murder and Love Story also receive detailed analysis. Overall, Ray Milland provides a reappraisal of Milland’s earlier career and situates his performances within the broader tradition of star studies.

Bijpassende boeken

Amerikaanse Schrijvers, Biografie

Steven J. Zipperstein – Philip Roth biografie

Steven J. Zipperstein Philip Roth biografie recensie, review en informatie over de inhoud van het boek over de Amerikaanse schrijver. Op 14 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Yale University Press in de reeks Jewish Lives de nieuwe Philip Roth biografie. Het boek is geschreven door Steven J. Zipperstein. Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Steven J. Zipperstein Philip Roth biografie recensie en review

  • “Steven Zipperstein’s appreciation of Philip Roth is literary biography at its best. Acute and original judgments of Roth’s written worlds come embraided with revelatory portrayals of the worlds Roth inhabited, scrutinized, and provoked, and of Roth himself, solemn and hilarious, voraciously curious, a boundless sensual spirit riven by his craft.” (Sean Wilentz)
  • “This is one of the fairest and finest literary biographies I have read, with the emphasis on literary. Zipperstein does Philip Roth and his life’s work more than justice. He has produced a book that is a work of literature itself. Not every writer is what Roth called (and was called) ‘a writer’s writer.’ And not every scribe who undertakes to write a major life is truly a writer’s biographer. Zipperstein is one.” (Judith Thurman)

Steven J. Zipperstein Philip Roth

Philip Roth

Strung by Life

  • Auteur: Steven J. Zipperstein (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: biografie
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Yale University Press
  • Reeks: Jewish Lives
  • Verschijnt: 14 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 368 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 28,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de biografie van Philip Roth door Steven J. Zipperstein

A landmark biography of one of our most prominent chroniclers of American life.

In this groundbreaking literary biography, Steven J. Zipperstein captures the complex life and astonishing work of Philip Roth (1933–2018), one of America’s most celebrated writers. Born in Newark, New Jersey—where his short stories and books were often set—Roth wrote with ambition and awareness of what was required to produce great literature. No writer was more dedicated to his craft, even as he was rubbing shoulders with the Kennedys and engaging in a spate of famous and infamous romances. And yet, as much as Roth wrote about sex and self, he viewed himself as socially withdrawn, living much like an “unchaste monk” (his words).

Zipperstein explores the unprecedented range of Roth’s work—from “Goodbye, Columbus” and Portnoy’s Complaint to the Pulitzer Prize–winning American Pastoral and The Plot Against America. Drawing on extensive archival materials and over one hundred interviews, including conversations with Roth about his life and work, Zipperstein provides an intimate and insightful look at one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers, placing his work in the context of his obsessions, as well as American Jewishness, freedom, and sexuality.

Steven J. Zipperstein is born in 1950. He is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing and Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Bijpassende boeken

Amerikaanse geschiedenis, Biografie, Engelse historicus

Matthew Restall – The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus

Matthew Restall The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus review, recensie en informatie van de In Genua geboren ontdekkingsreiziger. Op 8 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij W.W. Norton & Company de biografie van Columbus, geschreven door Matthew Renstall, de Engelse historicus. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Matthew Restall The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus review en recensie

  • “In this compelling book, Matthew Restall comprehensively dismantles the myths surrounding Christopher Columbus while simultaneously revealing their power and importance for understanding his ever-changing legacy. A fascinating read for anyone seeking to understand how history is made, contested, and remembered.” (Caroline Dodds Pennock, author of On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe)
  • “I found The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus to be a marvelous fusion of ingenuity and scholarship, a kaleidoscope of the explorer’s provocative legacies.” (Laurence Bergreen, author of Columbus: The Four Voyages)

Matthew Restall The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus

The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus

  • Auteur: Matthew Restall (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: biografie
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: W.W. Norton & Company
  • Verschijnt: 8 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 368 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 35,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de Columbus biografie van Matthew Restall

A gifted historian presents a definitive book on Columbus—his life, his legacies, and the controversies that outlived him.

Christopher Columbus was born Cristoforo Colombo, in the autumn of 1451 in the Mediterranean port city of Genoa, and he died in the Spanish city of Valladolid in May 1506, as don Cristóbal Colón. More than five centuries later, we are still arguing over his life and its significance. Millions if not billions of people have learned his name. Most have some sense of what he did, that it was momentous, a great achievement, an act of primacy. But was his achievement “great” because he “discovered America” and thus made possible the hemisphere’s “great” nations? Or was it an apocalyptic catastrophe for tens of millions of Indigenous and African peoples?

In The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus, acclaimed historian Matthew Restall, perhaps the leading scholar of the Spanish Empire, presents a new, authoritative biography of Columbus, while at the same time tracing his many afterlives down into our own time. He explores the mysteries, many of them manufactured, that color our understanding of Columbus even in the twenty-first century—mysteries surrounding Columbus’s name, nationality, place of birth, ancestry, education, religion, intellectual vision, moral fiber, sexual proclivities, and current resting place. He shows how Columbus became an iconic American hero in the nineteenth century, and how a parallel hero emerged in the form of the Italian American Columbus.

Restall takes us beyond polemic, sifting through the evidence across nations, languages, and five centuries to explore the many questions that make up what he calls “Columbiana.” He demonstrates that, far from a uniquely talented individual, Columbus was typical of the Iberian and northern Italian men of his day—a merchant mariner who became an explorer, slave-trader, and conquistador-settler. And Restall challenges the notion, deeply held to this day, that Columbus can be credited or blamed for all that happened after 1492.

Whatever one’s views of Columbus, Restall’s book is the necessary, definitive account. It dispels the myths and gives us Columbus as he was. It shows how he has been distorted in the centuries since his death—and how we might come to understand him, and his legacies, anew.

Matthew Restall is born on 17 March 1964 in London. He is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Anthropology, and director of Latin American Studies, at Penn State University. He is the author of Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest and When Montezuma Met Cortés, among other books.

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