Biography & Memoir

‘And I One of Them’

Nancy Cunard’s relationship with the jazz musician Henry Crowder helped inspire her years of civil rights activism. Her romance wasn’t just with him, but with Blackness.

December 2, 2021 issue

Kathryn Hughes

The White Heat of Conviction

There is nothing judicious, careful, or patient in Frances Wilson’s new biography of D.H. Lawrence, which is exactly how Lawrence would have wanted it.

November 18, 2021 issue

Colin Grant

Sins of the Fathers

In Life of a Klansman, Edward Ball’s white supremacist great-great-grandfather becomes a case study in the enduring legacy of slavery.

November 18, 2021 issue

Andrew O’Hagan

In the Act of Living

Hermione Lee, in her new biography of Tom Stoppard, has given shape to his quest for meaning, consciousness, history, and goodness.

April 29, 2021 issue

Margaret Eby

The Gourmand’s Way

Along with his celebration of American vernacular cooking, James Beard brought playfulness into the kitchen. But an ethical opportunism is part of his legacy and the culture he helped create.

June 10, 2021 issue

Alan Hollinghurst

A Snob’s Progress

A new edition of Henry “Chips” Channon’s diaries gives fascinating glimpses of homosocial desire in a hectic narrative of aristocratic and political life.

May 27, 2021 issue

Brenda Wineapple

A Posthumous Life

The great-grandson of a president and the grandson of another, Henry Adams struggled to break free of a personal history intimately tied to that of the country.

April 8, 2021 issue

Brandon M. Terry

Malcolm’s Ministry

Malcolm X’s dramatic life, and his insistence that the most disadvantaged play a part in their own emancipation, exert a strong pull on his many biographers.

February 25, 2021 issue

The Latest

Eduardo Halfon

The Last Tiger

Kullu seemed haunted by the tale he told me of his grandfather’s encounter with a mighty predator. But he had another history to share, one to haunt me.

November 30, 2021

Krithika Varagur

The Anti-Nazi Punjabi Princess

Catherine Duleep Singh was an Anglo-Indian aristocrat who lived much of her life quietly with another woman in Germany. Then she became a savior of Jewish refugees.

November 27, 2021

Dan Chiasson

Frost at Midnight

A new, beautifully edited volume of Robert Frost’s letters finds him at the height of his artistic powers while suffering a series of losses almost unimaginable to the fortunate among us.

December 16, 2021 issue

Irving Howe

Finding Babel in the Drawer

“Speak the name of Isaac Babel,” Irving Howe wrote in a recently unearthed introduction, “and one phrase comes insistently to mind: a writer of genius.”

December 16, 2021 issue

Anastasia Edel

A Taste of Home

Back in the USSR, pirozhki—the stuffed buns sold by street vendors all over Russia—were the quintessential comfort food in a world of paucity and mystery meat.

November 24, 2021

David Motadel

Nazis on the Run

Many perpetrators of the Holocaust escaped justice. Should Germany prosecute as accessories to murder the elderly few who remain alive?

December 2, 2021 issue

Michael Gorra

What Fear Feels Like

Paul Auster’s biography of Stephen Crane captures the life of a writer who found his material in “extreme situations…matters of life and death: war, poverty, and physical danger.”

November 18, 2021 issue