Published biographies
Andrew Meier; Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty
Andrew Meie is a 2013 – 2014 Fellow
After 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.
Susan Bernofsky; Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser
Susan Bernofsky is a 2012 – 2013 Fellow
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography
The great Swiss-German modernist author Robert Walser lived eccentrically on the fringes of European society—his pronounced interest in everything inconspicuous and modest prompted W. G. Sebald to dub him “a clairvoyant of the small.” His revolutionary use of short prose forms won him the admiration of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Robert Musil, and many others. In this immaculately researched and beautifully written biography Susan Bernofsky sets Walser in the context of early twentieth century European history, establishing him as one of the most important modernist writers.
Rebecca Donner: All The Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
Rebecca Donner is a 2018 – 2019 Fellow
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment -- a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler's regime and called for revolution.
Heather Clark: Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
Heather Clark is a 2016 – 2017 Fellow
With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant Sylvia Plath, who had precocious poetic ambition and was an accomplished published writer even before she became a star at Smith College. Refusing to read Plath’s work as if her every act was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark considers the sociopolitical context as she thoroughly explores Plath’s world.
Justin Gifford: Revolution or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver
Justin Gifford is a 2017 – 2018 Fellow
Charismatic, brilliant, and courageous, Eldridge Cleaver built a base of power and influence that struck fear deep in the heart of White America. It was therefore shocking to many left-wing radicals when Cleaver turned his back on Black revolution, the Nation of Islam, and communism in 1975.
Samanth Subramanian; A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane
Samanth Subramanian is a 2018 – 2019 Fellow
J. B. S. Haldane’s life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama―from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War.
Blake Gopnik: Warhol
Blake Gopnik is a 2015 – 2016 Fellow
In Warhol, esteemed art critic Blake Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions. “The meanings of his art depend on the way he lived and who he was,” as Gopnik writes. “That’s why the details of his biography matter more than for almost any cultural figure,” from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing as the child of immigrants to his early career in commercial art to his total immersion in the “performance” of being an artist, accompanied by global fame and stardom—and his attempted assassination.
Stephen Heyman; The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution
Stephen Heyman is a 2018 – 2019 Fellow
Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America's first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.