David Reynolds, an award-winning historian and literary scholar, speaks with noted historian Annette Gordon-Reed about his new book, Two Ships. Called “essential reading for today’s polarized times” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the book is a revelatory history of American division through the prism of two ships once widely used as symbols of the conflict between North and South.

From Lead Belly to Johnny Cash to Tupac Shakur, the story of American music runs through prisons, as this unique new book tells. The author speaks about it with a Pulitzer-winning historian.

Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor is a spellbinding narrative history that defies modern assumptions about women’s lives in the Middle Ages and informs contemporary debates about sexual violence and the limits of justice. Join author and historian Sara McDougall for this urgent conversation. 

David Blight, one of America’s leading historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom gives this year’s Leon Levy Lecture on the craft of biography. In his talk, titled “Biography and History in Authoritarian Times," Blight intends to “address the current crisis … as well as dive into the details of biography as it has developed over recent decades.”

From the 1950s to the 1980s, the many dramas of American political life had one common denominator: Roy Cohn. In his twenties, the infamous young prosecutor sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair, and as the chief aide to Senator Joe McCarthy became the baby-faced symbol of ruthless communist-hunting. By his thirties, Cohn had begun working as the Mafia’s hired legal gun. In his forties, he was an informal adviser to Richard Nixon. In his fifties, he partied with the glitterati at Studio 54 and visited the Reagan White House, where he traded gossip with the first lady. Perhaps most significant, Cohn mentored the young Donald Trump, who telephoned the older man daily and studiously emulated not only his mannerisms but core philosophies.

Years after his death in 1986 from AIDS-related complications, Cohn emerged as a central figure in Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America. Cohn’s feistiness, his surly defiance—and, yes, his charm—were frequently flourished to conceal vast insecurities, particularly regarding his closeted sexuality.

A street fighter, self-promoting hustler, and a true Zelig of the dark side, Cohn was a nefarious actor in a startling number of history-shaping events whose influence resonates to the present day.

Ru Marshall discusses his gripping exposé of deception, cult power, and the long shadow of Carlos Castaneda, the man behind the biggest literary hoax of the twentieth century. Twenty years in the making, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda unravels the story of the secretive faux-anthropologist who pulled off one of the greatest literary hoaxes in modern history. Both an investigation of the techniques employed by charismatic narcissists and a study of the cult dynamics that still shape American life, American Trickster defies conventional biography. It emerges as a chilling allegory for the Trump era, a trenchant critique of academia’s complicity in distorting and erasing Indigenous culture, and a deep dive into the mechanics of New Age spiritual abuse.

In 1959, though just twenty-six years old and a graduate student, George B. Schaller shrugged off warnings of mortal danger and set off for the Belgian Congo to do what no other scientist had dared: study mountain gorillas, the real King Kong, by living alongside them. Boldly refusing arms and retinue, Schaller and his wife, Kay, established a home in the jungle and came to share the apes’ rhythms and rules. After more than two years of immersive research—a groundbreaking methodology he would spend his life honing—Schaller transformed how the world viewed gorillas; they were not murderous brutes but tender creatures, and more like humans than any twentieth-century scientist had recognized. His mission to revolutionize our perceptions of wild animals would propel him across four continents and inspire generations of scientists.

At the time of her premature death Alice Baber had already entered the permanent collections of several prominent museums. How could such an accomplished and visionary artist then fall into near obscurity?

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner’s new book is an intimate and captivating exploration of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s artistic journey, revealing how the creator of the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights found his unique voice and redefined musical theater. How did Lin-Manuel Miranda, the son of Puerto Rican parents from an immigrant neighborhood in Manhattan, rise to become the preeminent musical storyteller of the 21st century? Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist traces Miranda’s path to becoming the winner of multiple Tonys and Grammys; a global chart-topper; and the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Pollack-Pelzner — who has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times — speaks about the book with Jennifer Schuessler, culture reporter for The New York Times.

Mark Clifford’s new book is “a sympathetic and inspiring biography” (The Wall Street Journal) of billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist who became China’s most famous political prisoner. Lai escaped China at 12 and worked in Hong Kong factories, eventually owning one and becoming a global leader in “fast fashion.” After Tiananmen Square, he entered the media industry with Next and Apple Daily, publications critical of the Chinese Communist Party, eventually meeting with American officials about human rights and free speech; since 2020 he has been in solitary confinement in China. Clifford, a writer who is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, speaks about Lai’s extraordinary story with Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Bennett Cerf co-founded Random House in the 1920s; by the 1960s, it was the greatest literary publisher in the U.S. There was nothing random about this American original who changed our culture by straddling books, Broadway, Hollywood, and TV.

Jessica Mitford, fifth of the six famous “Mitford Girls,” was brought up to marry well and reproduce her wealth and privilege, not to advocate for the less advantaged. Her five beautiful sisters have been subjects of books and movies dedicated to their naughty, glamorous lives.

Please join us for this discussion on Biography with Megan Marshall author of "After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart" and Martha Hodes, Professor of History at New York University, and author of "My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering."

The author of a new biography of James Baldwin speaks with the New York Times columnist.

Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler, born to wealth and privilege in New York’s Hudson Valley during the latter half of the eighteenth century, were raised to make good marriages and supervise substantial households. Instead they became embroiled in the turmoil of America's insurrection against Great Britain―and rebelled themselves, in ways as different as each was from the other, against the destiny mapped out for them. 

Please join the Leon Levy Center for a discussion with Steven J. Zipperstein on the life and work of Philip Roth.

In conversation with Philip Gourevitch, Lance Richardson discusses his new book True Nature, which depicts Peter Matthiessen’s life.

The author discusses her new book about the technology that is rapidly changing our world.

Nathan Kernan’s A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler is the definitive biography of the great American poet who, along with Frank O’Hara, Barbara Guest, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Koch, was an original member of the so-called New York School of poetry. Schuyler’s poetry embodies the quiet beauties of the natural world and the mundane stuff of everyday existence, even as his own life was often messy and troubled. In A Day Like Any Other, Kernan explores this and other paradoxes of Schuyler’s singular life within the vibrant milieu of mid-century New York’s poets and painters.

Dubbed the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s” by poet Langston Hughes, A’Lelia Walker, daughter of millionaire entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and the author’s great-grandmother and namesake, is a fascinating figure whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem Renaissance. After inheriting her mother’s hair care enterprise, A’Lelia would become America’s first high profile black heiress and a prominent patron of the arts.

Mary Beard, Cambridge Professor Emerita, is one of Britain’s best-known Classicists. She has written numerous highly-acclaimed books, including Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, SPQR – A History of Ancient Rome, and Women & Power and Twelve Caesars – Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern. In addition Mary wrote The Invention of Jane Harrison, a biography exploring the life and work of the pioneering Cambridge Classicist. Mary’s most recent book, Emperor of Rome, delves a little deeper into what it actually meant to be a Roman emperor, offering insights into the nature of the person and the role. A regular broadcaster and media commentator, Mary has written and presented television documentaries on history and culture as well as the highly-acclaimed TV series, Meet the Romans and Rome – Empire without Limit. Mary is Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books and writes an engaging blog, A Don’s Life. Mary’s scholarship has been recognized on both sides of the Atlantic: by the British Academy, the American Academy and the American Philosophical Society amongst others. She was made a Dame in 2018 for services to Classical scholarship, is a trustee of the British Museum and has also been awarded the prestigious Getty Medal.

Walter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and, most recently, Elon Musk. He is a professor of history at Tulane and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023.

Ramachandra 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. 

Annette Gordon-Reed, the renowned historian and author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award), gives this year’s talk on writing and researching biography. Her many other books include Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy; Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History; and On Juneteenth. Gordon-Reed, who is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, has received numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Humanities Medal.​

Judith Thurman has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1987, and since 2000, as a Staff Writer specializing in profiles and cultural criticism. She is the author of “Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller,” which won the 1983 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and served as the basis for Sydney Pollack’s Oscar-winning film, Out of Africa. Her second biography, “Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette,” won the Los Angeles Times and the Salon Book Awards for Biography. She is also the author of “Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire,” a collection of her essays. Thurman won the Harold G. Vursell Award for prose style, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Rungstedlund Prize from the Danish Royal Academy; and Bard College’s Mary McCarthy Award for a woman writer’s life work. She is also a chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In telling the stories of three powerful men—Andrew Carnegie, William Randolph Hearst, and Joseph P. Kennedy—David Nasaw discovered that individuals, no matter how rich and politically influential, do not make history by themselves. Nasaw—who is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Distinguished Professor at The Graduate Center, CUNY—reveals what he learned about the exercise and limits of power, in this year’s annual talk on writing and researching biography. His highly acclaimed and best-selling books include The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy; Andrew Carnegie; and The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst.

Geoffrey C. Ward delivers the Annual Leon Levy Lecture: “The Biographer’s Dilemma: Searching for the Known and Unknowable.” Historian, biographer and screenwriter, Ward the author of sixteen books, including A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has written or cowritten many documentary films, including The War, The Civil War, Baseball, The West, Mark Twain, Not for Ourselves Alone, and Jazz.

Taylor Branch is best known for his landmark trilogy chronicling the life of  Martin Luther King, Jr. and the history of the American Civil Rights Movement. The trilogy’s first book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, won the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards in 1989. The third and final volume of the 2,912-page trilogy—collectively called America in the King Years—was released in January 2006, and a selected summary of the trilogy, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, was published in 2013. His 2009 memoir, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, chronicles an unprecedented eight-year project to gather a sitting president’s comprehensive oral history secretly on tape. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Hermione Lee is the author of the definitive life of Virginia Woolf, a signal achievement in literary biography, as well as biographies and critical studies of Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Philip Roth, Elizabeth Bowen, and most recently, the brilliant late-developer Penelope Fitzgerald, who published her first book (a biography) at age 58; Lee won the 2013 James Tait Black Prize for Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. She has written extensively on the art and craft of ‘life-writing,’ in Virginia Woolf’s Nose: Essays on Biography and Biography: A Very Short Introduction, and participated memorably in the Leon Levy Center’s 2013 Biography Conference. Educated at Oxford, she has taught at the College of William & Mary, the University of Liverpool, and the University of York. In 1998 she was the first woman to be named Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, and in 2008 she was elected the President of Wolfson College, Oxford, where she directs the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Lee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, she was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). 

Brenda Wineapple is the author of the widely acclaimed biographies Genêt; A Biography of Janet Flanner; Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein; Hawthorne: A Life (2003, winner of the Ambassador Award for Best Biography); and White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2008, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). In 2013 she published Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, a groundbreaking study of how America confronted slavery and redefined itself as a nation. Writing in the New York Times, David S. Reynolds described it as “history as it feels in real time … delivered through its vivid portrayal of the human side of an era.” Wineapple has received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim, and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of American Historians, and the New York Institute of the Humanities. Formerly Distinguished Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, she has taught at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, The New School, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Union College. She is now teaching a new master’s course on biographical narrative sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center.