Biographers International Organization

This author’s biography, The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic, was published by Simon & Schuster in December 2024. Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, and he served as the executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council and as a board director at Next Digital, the Hong Kong media giant founded and majority-owned by Jimmy Lai. During Clifford’s nearly three decades in Hong Kong, he was the editor-in-chief of two English-language newspapers and won numerous journalism, academic, and book awards. His previous book was Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China’s Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere. Mark Clifford was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

This historian, best-selling author and foreign-policy analyst talks about his latest book, Reagan: His Life and Legend. Published by Liveright in September 2024, this biography was recognized as one of the Ten Best Books of this year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post and the Economist. Boot’s previous biography, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, also was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Boot has served as a foreign policy adviser to the presidential campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Marco Rubio, and he has contributed regularly several publications, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy and The New York Times. Now serving as a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Max Boot was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

This journalist’s co-authored and Pulitzer Prize winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, served as the inspiration for the Oscar winning film, Oppenheimer. Bird has written several critically acclaimed biographies, including The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms; The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment; The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames; and The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter. Bird currently serves as the Executive Director and Distinguished Lecturer at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Leon Levy Center for Biography in New York City. Presently, he is working on a biography of lawyer Roy Cohn. Kai Bird was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John “Jack” Farrell.

Historian and author Pamela D. Toler’s latest book, The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany, was published in August 2024 by Beacon Press. In addition to this biography of Sigrid Schultz, the fearless woman who headed the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau from 1925 to 1941, Toler has authored ten books of popular history for children and adults, including Heroines of Mercy Street: Real Nurses of the Civil War and Women Warriors:  An Unexpected History. Toler’s work has appeared in American Scholar, Aramco World, Calliope, History Channel Magazine, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Ms., Time.com, The Washington Post and the National Geographic. Pamela D. Toler was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Sonja Williams.

This veteran author and Rutgers University journalism professor speaks with BIO member Kevin McGruder about his latest book, John Lewis: A Life. It was published by Simon and Schuster in October 2024 and supported by grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography. Greenberg’s previous books include Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image and Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. Formerly acting editor of The New Republic and a columnist for Slate, Greenberg now writes regularly for Politico, Liberties, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. His work has also been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous academic journals.

Veteran biographer and emeritus Baruch College journalism professor Carl Rollyson talks about his latest book, Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume 2, published by the University Press of Mississippi in August 2024. Rollyson’s impressive literary output—of more than 40 books—includes examinations of William Faulkner, Amy Lowell, Walter Brennan, Lillian Hellman, Norman Mailer and Marilyn Monroe. He also coauthored Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated. Rollyson’s reviews of biographies have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and New Criterion, and he writes a twice weekly column on biography for the New York Sun. Carl Rollyson was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell.

Award-winning historian, curator and biographer, Heath Hardage Lee, talks about her  latest book, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady.  It was published by St. Martin’s Press in August 2024. Lee’s work has been featured on the Today Show, C-Span, and on the Smithsonian Channel’s America’s Hidden Stories. She also writes about history and politics for publications such as Time, The Hill, The Atlantic and White House History Quarterly, and her second book, The League of Wives, is being developed into a television series. Heath Hardage Lee was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member John A. Farrell.

Celebrated documentary filmmaker and Television Hall of Fame inductee Ken Burns, talks about his latest film, Leonardo da Vinci. It will air nationwide on PBS network stations on November 18 and 19, 2024. Burns has directed and produced such acclaimed historical documentaries as, The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks:  America’s Best Idea; Prohibition, The Vietnam War; Country Music; The U.S. and the Holocaust and The American Buffalo. Burns’ biographical documentaries include The Roosevelts:  An Intimate History; Muhammad Ali; Benjamin Franklin; Jackie Robinson and Hemmingway. Burn’s films have earned dozens of major awards, including seventeen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. Additionally, he earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Ken Burns was interviewed by BIO member John A. Farrell.

Author Susan Blumberg-Kason talks about her latest book, Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China, published by Post Hill Press in November 2023. Blumberg-Kason has also authored Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong and she co-edited the book Hong Kong Noir. Blumberg-Kason is a regular contributor to the Asian Review of Books and World Literature Today, and her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, PopMatters, and the South China Morning Post. She is currently working on a biography of Golda Meir. Susan Blumberg-Kason was interviewed by BIO member Jenny Skoog.

This week we interview Benjamin Taylor, author of Chasing Bright Medusas: The Life of Willa Cather. This biography of Cather, a celebrated American novelist, was published in November 2023 by Viking. In 2021, Taylor received an award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. One of his previous memoirs, The Hue and Cry at Our House, received the 2018 Los Angeles Times/Christopher Isherwood Prize, and it was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Taylor’s Proust: The Search was named a Best Book of 2016 by Thomas Mallon in The New York Times Book Review and by Robert McCrum in The Observer (London). Taylor is a past fellow and current trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and he serves as president of the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Benjamin Taylor was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina.