Tag Archives: women’s biography

Dispatches from the Writing Life #10: Revisions, Real and Imagined

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This past Tuesday, I enjoyed presenting “She Defied Them All.” This talk about Dr. Mary Walker is now available on John Heckman’s YouTube channel, The Tattooed Historian, for you to watch at your leisure. You can also find The Tattooed Historian page on Facebook, Instagram, this podcast, and on Substack. A lot of good history content is there.

Any presentation I give is the result of several days of preparation. I start with a basic set of PowerPoint slides and corresponding notecards (to keep me from wandering from my point) that I created back in 2020, when Dr. Mary Walker’s Civil War first came out. Then I tailor it for each individual event. This time, the talk revolved around the theme of defiance, and plenty of it was in evidence throughout Walker’s life.

That tailoring means I reread portions of my own book to reacquaint myself with the details of Mary Walker’s experiences and beliefs. And that’s hard for me to do because I always, always find sentences, paragraphs, and even entire pages that I wish I could rewrite to make them better. It’s less about historical facts and analysis and more about style.

I have yet to find the sweet spot where historical analysis meets elegant narrative. I have to keep working at it. I do this by doing: writing and rewriting. I also read books on craft written by very accomplished people. I take workshops with very accomplished people. I read and reread books that I admire.

Right now, I’m in awe of Julia Cooke’s style. I finished reading Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World this week, and it’s one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. That’s the way I wish I could write. It’s something to aim for.

And this may be one of the reasons why I’ve been drawn to Jane Grant’s story. She tried to do so many things with her life and rarely achieved the success she envisioned. In writing about her life, I am trying to uncover the source(s) of her motivation, how she handled disappointments, and what she marked as achievements.

These are the things I think about as I continue with this new draft of the Jane Grant book. It seems about as rough as the last one. But I’m still at it every day, still sticking with my decision to carve out a whole separate chapter about Jane’s determination to get the France during World War I. I think it’s crucial for understanding her aspirations for her career and her personal life. And it was a pivotal time for thousands of American women who, like Jane, felt compelled to decide how (or if) they were going to support the war effort.

Women’s History Month

It’s almost over for 2026. Pamela Toler’s annual WHM blog series on History in the Margins ends today, but you can always read the pieces any time. Be sure to take a look.

What I’m Reading

My leisure reading book is Ocean Vuong’s luminous novel, The Emperor of Gladness. I had to skip the section about the hogs.

I’ve started The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, and Paris on the Eve of WWII by Mark Braude. Not that you would know it from the title (I know title and cover design are about marketing and selling books), but it’s about the great writer Janet Flanner, who Jane Grant recruited in 1925 as the Paris correspondent for The New Yorker.

I probably would never have picked up this book if I hadn’t read a review of it that actually identified Flanner as that American journalist. For me, that’s the book’s biggest draw. So far, I’ve been enjoying the sections about her life in France and her writing career. I’m curious about how and why a serial killer becomes important to Flanner. So, I keep reading.

I also have Gayle Feldman’s magisterial Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built. I’ve only looked through the table of contents, index, bibliography, and skimmed some of the 800+ pages of text. I don’t know how much of it I’ll have the time to read.

What I’m Watching

One episode in on each of the new PBS dramas, The Forsytes and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Started the new Netflix series, Detective Hole, set in contemporary Oslo, Norway.

Another weekly episode of Mudtown (BritBox), a crime series set in Wales, featuring a female magistrate. It’s intense.

Only one episode left of Young Sherlock (Prime)

The filler sitcom has been Animal Control (Netflix), an amusing workplace comedy.

Still haven’t been back to Hope Street (BritBox) or Scarpetta (Prime).

What Else Is Happening

Back to two games of mediocre bowling for me. But it was still fun.

Almost all the snow from the big blizzard is gone. The birds are singing again in the morning. I watched a young buck saunter through the back forty here at Southfork. But I haven’t seen any new greenery popping up yet.

Thanks for reading!

Dispatches from the Writing Life #9: A Blizzard and Its Aftermath

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Two things from this week:

1. In revisionland, it was another week of digging into primary sources. This time I was examining a pair of letters that Alexander Woollcott sent to Jane Grant while he was in France during World War I. They were colleagues at the New York Times where he worked as a drama critic before he enlisted, and they exchanged gossip about co-workers and other people they knew in New York.

I fell down a bit of a research rabbit hole trying to fill in the details about one of the subjects of their gossip whose important position with the newspaper was tied directly to the war. And I kept coming up with almost nothing. I searched through the Times as well as the Newspapers.com database, both of which returned scant information. Ancestry returned to many hits that sorting through them would have taken much more time than I wanted to devote to a short scene. But I had to know something more about this person.

Turns out I had been misspelling the name. It all came down to the placement of one “e,” which actually belonged someplace else. That threw everything off in the searches. Once I corrected that I found what I needed, finished writing the section, and moved on.

2. I’ve been thinking a lot about Jennifer Szalai’s review of Julia Cooke’s Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World in the March 15 issue of the New York Times Book Review. It is a positive review. Szalai pronounces the book “a vibrant triple biography” of the writers Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, and Emily Hahn, appreciating how Cooke writes with “verve and expansiveness.” Although I haven’t finished reading Starry and Restless yet, I agree. Cooke is a wonderful writer, and I get totally immersed in these women’s lives whenever I sit down with the book.

Then there is Szalai’s final paragraph:

“Apparently the cultural imperative to wrest salutary lessons, even from the most audacious and defiant women is strong: ‘Maybe they offer a new compass by which a person may orient herself within her own choices.’ Maybe. Or maybe the idiosyncratic lives of these peregrinating writers invite a simpler, but no less significant, proposal: Read this book and be enthralled.”

That’s the part that has stuck with me all week as I think about the subject of my book and the very different worlds of writing (i.e. Toni Morrison’s advice: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”) and publishing (i.e. who is going to read and buy this book?)

And how many times do you think I checked the spelling of Szalai’s name?

Women’s History Month

Final reminder that I will appear live on John Heckman’s YouTube channel on March 24 at 2:00 p.m. Central to talk about Dr. Mary Walker. The installment bears the bold title, “She Defied Them All.” You can find The Tattooed Historian’s page on Facebook, follow him on Instagram, listen to his podcast, read him on Substack, and/or watch his YouTube channel.

Pamela Toler’s annual WHM blog series on History in the Margins is still posting new Q&As. Be sure to take a look.

What I’m Reading

As mentioned above, I’m still reading Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World by Julia Cooke. I’ve found Emily Hahn’s life particularly fascinating, plus it’s been interesting to see Alexander Woollcott make an appearance. He was one of Jane Grant’s first friends when she joined the New York Times.

Finished Dinner at the Night Library, a novel by Hika Harada, translated by Philip Gabriel, which was lovely.

Kind of hurriedly finished Mike Pitts’s Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island because it was due back at the library and was non-renewable.

What I’m Watching

Finished How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix) and liked it. Not sure what will come next.

Sticking with Mudtown (BritBox), a crime series set in Wales, featuring a female magistrate, with episodes that drop once a week. That’s okay. We’ve never done binge-watching.

Also continuing Young Sherlock (Prime) but haven’t been back to Hope Street (BritBox) yet because of its unevenness and soapiness. And haven’t felt at all compelled to return to Scarpetta (Prime) after that first episode.

What Else I’ve Been Doing

This was the first time in over three weeks that bowling went very well, this despite a bigger crowd because of spring break, one lane that stopped properly resetting the pins, and another lane that only periodically returned the balls. Yet one of us had their highest lifetime score and the other one had no trouble breaking 100 in each game. Then we went for ice cream.

I finally hemmed a pair of black jeans, just in time to get a few more wears out of them before I do my seasonal closet changeover.

We got through an actual blizzard. More than 20 inches fell here at Southfork over last weekend. But thanks to prompt and excellent snow removal (especially by the foreman) plus moderate to mild temperatures, right now it looks like only an average amount of snow on the ground for early spring.

So, happy spring and thanks for reading. See you next week.

Dispatches from the Writing Life #8: Jane Grant in Love?

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I became totally engrossed with archival sources when I decided to look more closely at Jane’s pre-World War I romances. I spent the whole week not only piecing together her love life but also thinking about how and why people choose which documents to keep with them throughout their lives and how those items end up in boxes in archives for researchers to later scrutinize.

The papers in this particular box of Jane’s papers that are held at the University of Oregon comprise her correspondence from 1911-1918, but it is one-sided, made up of letters she received. Sometimes they provide clues about what Jane had written to prompt a response, sometimes they don’t. It’s up to the historian to figure out what was going on.

For example, one letter, undated (which adds another layer of difficulty), was addressed to “My Dear Little Jeanette” (Jane’s legal first name) and signed “Geo.” Someone had penciled in a date range of 1912-1915 at the top of the first page, which confirmed a year referred to by “Geo” within the letter.

The letterhead was printed with “Newton Farm, Los Gatos, California.” It was easy to conclude that the letter was written by George Newton. Supplied with a date range, location, and name, I turned to Ancestry and Newspapers.com, two online library databases. A few hours of searching enabled me to make some informed assumptions.

George F. Newton, born in Iowa and in the mid-1910s somewhere in his middling forties, owned the eponymous farm, but used it as a country getaway. He and his new wife Avis, some twelve years his junior, lived most of the year in the San Francisco/Oakland area where he ran a fireworks company.

Newton wrote to Jane to thank her for her “sweet little birthday letter.” Because he told her he couldn’t spend much time on the farm until after the Fourth of July (a big day for fireworks) and because he encouraged her to come visit in 1915, I think the letter was written in the spring or early summer of 1914.

But it’s not clear how Jane knew Newton. At one point, when he was young, his family lived in Kansas, so it’s possible he was an old family friend or even a relative. In the opening salutation, he called her Jeanette, the name she tried to put behind her when she moved to New York.

I’m still trying to figure out if this sentence provides a clue about their relationship: “I have the limousine in the city and think of you every time I ride in it.” Did Newton know about Jane’s career ambitions, and did he pick up on her desire to have fine things?

Newton wasn’t angling for an affair, though. Twice in the letter he mentioned his wife, and he explained the reason behind his invitation to visit. “I am sure you could get along better here than in that big cold city of N.Y. Mrs. Newton says for you to come out here and call us Father and Mother and see how you like this country. If I can find you a position in advance will you come?” Newton understood that Jane’s career was important to her.

And here’s the connection to Jane’s love life. Newton tried to sweeten the offer in his P.S.: “I have a dandy handsome fellow picked out here for you his name is Billie.” Apparently, he knew about how she socialized with young men and wanted to assure her that she would have plenty of options in California. But maybe Jane worried that Newton’s main purpose was to get her married and settled. That was not what she wanted.

It’s not surprising that Jane didn’t take Newton up on his offer. His letter only indirectly refers to Jane’s dating. There are no other letters in the collection from Newton, but there are some from men that provide more evidence about her relationships. These men were involved with her, and thought they knew her and knew how she felt about them. But it seemed they were very wrong.

For some reason, these letters ended up with all of Jane’s other papers at the University of Oregon. It’s hard to know if she kept them on purpose because they brought back particular memories, or if they just got stuck in a folder somewhere and never got tossed out. This may all become clearer after I conduct another round of research. Or it may not.

Women’s History Month

A reminder that I will appear live on John Heckman’s YouTube channel on March 24 at 2:00 p.m. Central to talk about Dr. Mary Walker. The installment bears the bold title, “She Defied Them All.” You can find The Tattooed Historian’s page on Facebook, follow him on Instagram, listen to his podcast, read him on Substack, and/or watch his YouTube channel.

Also remember to check out Pamela Toler’s annual WHM series on her blog, History in the Margins. She runs the best Q&As with people who write women’s history.

What I’m Reading

I picked up my library copy of Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World by Julia Cooke. I’ve been particularly interested to read about Emily Hahn, one of the women I wrote about in my very first book, Prisoners in Paradise. I’m pleased to see that Jane Grant’s name pops up a few times in Starry and Restless, and the book had got me thinking about some of the choices Jane made during the 1930s, after she’d been shut out of The New Yorker and she left her job at the New York Times. Jane was restless then, but not, I think, starry.

I’m continuing with Mike Pitts’s Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island. It still holds my interest.

For pure leisure reading, I’ve been enjoying Dinner at the Night Library, a novel by Hika Harada, translated by Philip Gabriel.

What I’m Watching

Started Mudtown (BritBox), a crime series set in Wales, featuring a female magistrate, and it’s good so far. Better though—at least based on the first two episodes—is Young Sherlock (Prime). I always like a good reimagining of Sherlock Holmes.

I’m much more on the fence after watching the first episode of Scarpetta (Prime). I don’t mind the dual timeline, but the portion that takes place in the present day (with Nicole Kidman as Kay Scarpetta) reminds me of why I stopped reading the novels by Patricia Cornwell that the series is based on.

Hope Street (BritBox) has been a bit uneven, but I’ve been enjoying How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix).

Finished Starfleet Academy (Paramount+) and The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix). The season finale of Starfleet displayed the qualities I’d hoped to see in all of the episodes but didn’t.

What Else I’ve Been Doing

Weekly bowling, two games. The first was abysmal, the second mediocre. So, progress, I guess.

Almost finished another very small sewing project: hemming a pair of jeans, something I’ve been meaning to do ever since I bought them two or three years ago. No matter how much I measure and pin and try them on, I keep thinking I’m going to make them too short.

Thanks for reading. I’m not sure what’s more ferocious than a March lion, but whatever it is, it’s barreling into the upper Midwest. Between Saturday night and Monday morning there might be at least twenty inches of snow, accompanied by high winds. Here at Southfork, we’re under a blizzard warning, and there is ample gasoline for the snowblower and a fully stocked refrigerator, both courtesy of the foreman (who is also my bowling partner and my partner in everything, especially life).

See you next week.

Dispatches from the Writing Life #1

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Welcome to the first in a weekly (I hope) series that charts the progress of my current writing project, Invisible Me: Jane Grant and The New Yorker.

Since I have no deadline for finishing this book, the pace of progress is up to me. I’ve set goals throughout and meeting them has been greatly aided by three very supportive online writing communities. I envision this weekly series as adding another layer of accountability and cultivating another community (all of you).

I’ve been working on Invisible Me for a few years. Writing nonfiction history requires lots of time-consuming research and lots of writing, through multiple drafts. For this project, I’ve already made two major research trips, tracked down digitized online collections, and read dozens of published sources. Then I wrote an extremely bloated and somewhat blurry first draft.

After I finished, I wrote a book proposal so I could query literary agents for representation. The proposal, basically a sales pitch for the book, forced me to focus on the contours of the story, to make sure that Jane comes across as a multi-faceted person with plans and dreams, failures and successes, who has historical importance. During this past week, the last queries went out, and now I’m waiting to hear back from the agents. Or not. Many agents now don’t have the time to even send a rejection email, so if I don’t receive a response in a few weeks or a few months, it means they’ve passed. Or not. It’s fair game to nudge them once or twice before giving up.

While in agent-waiting mode, I’ll read through those first draft chapters to assess the scope of writing work ahead, to start a second, bloat-free draft. I may set an initial goal of completing one chapter per month.

Writing occupies part, but certainly not all, of my day. It’s the work part of my day. Luckily, since I’ve retired from academia, I set my own hours. I also read a lot and watch shows on various streaming services.

What I’m Reading

I recently finished a couple of nonfiction books about spies: The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland by Michelle Young and Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor by Christine Kuehn. Both are good, and Kuehn’s book especially packs a lot of yikes moments.

In two blissful sittings I read Maddie Ballard’s compact memoir, Patchwork: A Sewist’s Diary. I recently returned to sewing after a thirty-some year hiatus, and I loved how Ballard wrote about garment construction and identity and relationships. It’s beautiful.

And now I’m a few chapters into Palace of Deception: Museum Men and the Rise of Scientific Racism by Darrin Lunde, not at all the usual kind of book I pick up. But I’m a big fan of museums, and he presents an interesting story.

On the fiction front, I recently read Ann Cleeve’s The Killing Stone, a new Jimmy Perez story. I’m a big fan of Shetland (see below) and was happy that Cleeve brought back one of my favorite detectives, even if he’s not on Shetland anymore. I absolutely loved Sacrament, Susan Straight’s marvelous novel about nurses at a California hospital during Covid. And I continue reading (or sometimes plodding through) Vanity Fair, the 19th century classic by William Makepeace Thackeray. I’m sticking with it for an online book discussion next month. In previous years, this group has read Anna Karenina and Middlemarch, so there’s a definite vibe to these selections.

What I’m Watching

BritBox recently debuted Season 10 of Shetland, and I’m eagerly keeping up with all the episodes. Perez has moved on, but his replacement, Ruth Calder, has great chemistry with Alison “Tosh” McIntosh. I’m already looking forward to Season 11.

On PBS, there’s a new season of All Creatures Great and Small and a new mystery series called Bookish. And Paramount+ launched Starfleet Academy, the latest addition to the Star Trek universe, and it’s okay so far.

I keep meaning to watch the final episode of Stranger Things on Netflix but haven’t been in the right mood yet. I find Young Sheldon and Mom (neither of which I watched on network t.v.) reliably good, and I revisit The West Wing and The Closer from time to time.

What Else I’m Doing

Daily exercising (a portable elliptical machine is essential during winter), sewing (very sporadically lately), thrifting (one of my favorite pastimes that sometimes is related to what I’m sewing), bowling (once a week as extra exercise that’s also a fun outing).

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading. Hope you check back next week to see what kind of progress I’ve made.

My 2025 Reading, Part Two: Nonfiction

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This may be a first for my annual list of nonfiction favorites, but it’s certainly not surprising. All fifteen of the books listed below, plus a bonus title, were written by women. And all fifteen are about women. Unusual and a bit surprising: I read several memoirs.

In my last post I mentioned that I sometimes forget to log my books on Goodreads, which makes tallying up a year’s worth of reading inexact. I’m leading the 2025 list with my most embarrassing omission from last year because I can’t bear for everyone not to know that it’s one of my favorite works of nonfiction. The rest are listed roughly in the order in which I read them.

1. The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany by Pamela D. Toler. This is an excellent and much needed biography of Sigrid Schultz, the Chicago Tribune’s bureau chief and foreign correspondent in Central Europe who warned about the dangers of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. The book received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and it was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’s 2024 Book Prize in Biography.

2. The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America by Stephanie Gorton. A first-rate dual biography of two of the most important birth control activists in United States history. Sanger’s name is the more familiar of the two, but Gorton convincingly demonstrates that Dennett deserves just as much attention. I’ve long been a huge fan of Dennett so was particularly pleased to see her in the limelight. And she’s the subject of an Ogden Nash poem, probably the only verse I know by heart.

I for one
Think the country would be better run,
If Mary Ware Dennett
Explained things to the Senate.

3. The Many Lives of Anne Frank by Ruth Franklin. I first read The Diary of a Young Girl in a grade school English class. Over the years, I’ve read the expanded versions as well as books about Frank, her family, and the people who made the Secret Annex possible. Franklin combines a well-written biography of Anne Frank with investigations into the various forms of the diary, the ways in which it has been dramatized for stage and screen, and how Frank has become a fictional character in the works of other authors. Fascinating all the way through.

4. Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund by Caitlin McGurk. This biography wins Best Title of the Year, at least as far as me and my list are concerned. Who wouldn’t want to hear that story? And McGurk has done a marvelous job of situating artist Shermund in her proper place in the history of American illustrators and cartoonists. I was especially intrigued with Shermund’s work for The New Yorker during its early years, when Jane Grant was still around. The two women probably had a lot in common.

5. After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart by Megan Marshall. These essays, by a genius biographer, blend memoir with craft advice. It’s all beautifully written and inspiring.

6. Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder. Wow, wow, wow. An insightful, incisive biography of Eileen O’Shaughnessy, who married George Orwell. Funder shows exactly what O’Shaughnessy contributed to the artistic success of Orwell and explores how and why she was pretty much written out of the biographies of the author. The book has made a huge impact on how I view Jane Grant.

7. Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction by Andrea Barrett. I adore Barrett’s fiction, and I loved her take on novelists’ use of history in their (and her own) work. Beautiful.

8. The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir by Martha S. Jones. Jones is a brilliant historian, and she has deployed her formidable skills to answer a personal question for herself: “Who do you think you are?” Her search takes her through her family’s history, which included enslavement, as she grapples with the meaning of color in the lives of her ancestors—and herself.  

9. The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir by Sarah Kendzior. A family memoir of a different kind, Kendzior looks at politics and society in America, past and present, through road trips she takes with her family during the pandemic years. I admired the gorgeous writing, the strong sense of place, and the whiffs of nostalgia infused with a bit of hopefulness.

10. Marion Greenwood: Portrait and Self-Portrait—A Biography by Joanne B. Mulcahy. This biography focuses on all the things I’m drawn to in this genre: a once well-known woman, incredibly smart and talented, whose political beliefs led her to live an unconventional life, who somehow disappears from history. Greenwood, a devotee of social realism, painted some of the most stunning murals and portraits in the first half of the twentieth century. Mulcahy, with her usual elegant prose, reminds us why it’s still important to know about her.

11. Birding to Change the World: A Memoir by Trish O’Kane. Originally an investigative journalist, O’Kane switched careers after Hurricane Katrina upended her life. She developed an interest in birds, enrolled in an environmental studies Ph.D. program, and embarked on a social justice campaign to save a local park from over-development. O’Kane’s passion and dedication shine through—for her academic work and love of learning, her community and its people, and the many species of birds she encounters.

12. Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange by Katie Goh. Goh traces the history of the orange as she untangles the strands of her multi-cultural heritage. She travels from Ireland to China and Malaysia to connect with far flung family members, seeking answers about her identity. The orange, with its own complicated history, gives her grounding and perspective. I liked this unique approach to memoir.

13. The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West by Martha A. Sandweiss. The presence of a Native American girl, Sophie Mousseau, in an 1868 photograph taken at Fort Laramie is Sandweiss’s jumping off point for this meticulous work of history about post-Civil War America and westward expansion. It’s a densely packed story, and Sandweiss’s other real-life characters, including photographer Alexander Gardner and Union general William S. Harney, occupy much of the narrative. But Mousseau is a constant, almost haunting presence, at the heart of the story.

14. Sisters of Influence: A Biography of Zina, Amy, and Rose Fay by Andrea Friederici Ross. During the Victorian era, known for its constraints on women’s behavior, these three sisters pushed at the boundaries of those expectations to make names for themselves in music, writing, and domestic reform. It’s an absorbing family biography, and Ross calmly and ably juggles all the different personalities.

15. Joyride: A Memoir by Susan Orlean. I’m a fan of Orlean but not a super fan. I haven’t read everything she’s written but I liked The Library Book and many of her articles. Reading this memoir provides the sense of exhilaration portrayed on the book’s cover. I was fascinated by how Orlean carved out a career as a writer and enjoyed the snippets of her personal life that she included.

Bonus book:

How to Write a Bestseller: An Insider’s Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction for General Audiences by Tilar J. Mazzeo. A former academic who has written bestsellers, and Mazzeo provides practical advice to narrative nonfiction writers, especially those who want to move away from scholarly writing. It’s one of the most helpful how-to writing books I’ve read in a long time.

And one final kind of quirky thing about my 2025 reading. In a previous post I wrote about how much I liked Debby Applegate’s Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, but had to stop reading it because it invaded too much of my head space while I was drafting my book about Jane Grant. Well, that happened again. This time I set aside The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon, Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s latest book. It’s terrific, but Shapiro’s voice is so strong that the book is now sitting on the shelf next to Madam, where they will stay until I’m much further along with Jane. (At least I didn’t put them in the freezer, which was Joey Tribianni’s solution to troublesome books.)

To all of you who made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope you encounter loads of good books in 2026 that take you on your own joyride.