By Ruth Franklin
Published January 27, 2025
440 pages

"An essential look at the diarist’s legacy” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A revealing biography of Anne Frank, exploring both her life and the impact of her extraordinary diary

In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929–1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust.

Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary—its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world. Writing alongside Anne rather than over her, Franklin explores the day-to-day perils of the Holocaust in the Netherlands as well as Anne’s ultimate fate, restoring her humanity and agency in all their messiness, heroism, and complexity.

With antisemitism once again in the news, The Many Lives of Anne Frank takes a fresh and timely look at the debates around Anne’s life and work, including the controversial adaptations of the diary, Anne’s evolution as a fictional character, and the ways her story and image have been politically exploited. Franklin reveals how Anne has been understood and misunderstood, both as a person and as an idea, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today’s hyperpolarized world.

By Kenneth Turan
Published February 4, 2025
392 pages

“Illuminating” —Kirkus Reviews

Kenneth Turan brings to life the extraordinary partnership of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg and their role in creating the film industry as we know it

One was a tough junkman’s son, the other a cosseted mama’s boy, but they dreamed the same mighty dream: that the right movies could make a profit and change both the culture and individual lives. Sharing a religion and an evangelical zeal for film, Louis B. Mayer (1884–1957) and Irving Thalberg (1899–1936) were unlikely partners in one of the most significant collaborations in movie history. Over the course of their decade-long relationship, as key players at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and major players in Hollywood, they joined forces in redefining and mastering the template for the film industry.

Mayer, older by more than a dozen years, was the business-minded face of the studio, while Thalberg worked closely with the creative corps, especially writers; together they rarely set a foot wrong. And while Mayer initially viewed Thalberg as the son he never had, the two would go from passionate friends to near enemies before Thalberg’s shocking death at the age of thirty-seven.

In the first joint biography of the two men in fifty years, film critic Kenneth Turan traces their fraught relationship while examining the complicated history of Jewish identity in Hollywood.

By Anthony Julius
Published February 11, 2025
392 pages

“A unique and searching masterpiece” —Rowan Williams

The story of Abraham, the first Jew, portrayed as two lives lived by one person, paralleling the contradictions in Judaism throughout its history

In this new biography of Abraham, Judaism’s foundational figure, Anthony Julius offers an account of the origins of a fundamental struggle within Judaism between skepticism and faith, critique and affirmation, thinking for oneself and thinking under the direction of another. Julius describes Abraham’s life as two separate lives, and as a version of the collective life of the Jewish people.

Abraham’s first life is an early adulthood of questioning the polytheism of his home city of Ur Kasdim until its ruler, Nimrod, condemns him to death and he is rescued, he believes, by a miracle. In his second life, Abraham’s focus is no longer on critique but rather on conversion and on his leadership over his growing household, until God’s command that he sacrifice his son Isaac. This test, the Akedah (or “Binding”), ends with another miracle, as he believes, but as Julius argues, it is also a catastrophe for Abraham. The Akedah represents for him an unsurpassed horizon—and in Jewish life thereafter. This book focuses on Abraham as leader of the first Jewish project, Judaism, and the unresolvable, insurmountable crisis that the Akedah represents—both in his leadership and in Judaism itself.

By Noga Arikha
Published May 13, 2025
280 pages

“A wonderfully three-dimensional portrait” —Adam Kuper

A thought-provoking account of the life and work of Franz Boas and his influential role in shaping modern anthropology

Franz Boas (1858–1942) is widely acknowledged for his pioneering work in the field of cultural anthropology. His rigorous studies of variations across societies were aimed at demonstrating that cultures and peoples were not shaped by biological predispositions. This book traces Boas’s life and intellectual passions from his roots in Germany and his move to the United States in 1884, partly in response to growing antisemitism in Germany, to his work with First Nations communities and his influential role as a teacher, mentor, and engaged activist who inspired an entire generation.

Drawing from Boas’s numerous but rarely read writings, Noga Arikha brings to life the man and the ideas he developed about the complex interplay of mind and culture, biology and history, language and myth. She provides a comprehensive picture of the cultural contexts in which he worked, of his personal and professional relationships, and of his revolutionary approach to fieldwork. He was celebrated in his lifetime for the cultural relativism he developed and the arguments he marshaled against entrenched racialism. But his was a constant battle, and Arikha shows how urgently relevant his voice and legacy have become again today.

By Jane Eisner
Published September 16, 2025
280 pages

“A robust celebration of a legendary musician” —Publishers Weekly

Jane Eisner traces the professional accomplishments and personal challenges of pop icon Carole King, exploring her unique contribution to American music

Carole King’s extraordinary career has defined American popular music for more than half a century. Born in New York City in 1942, she shaped the soundtrack of 1960s teen culture with such songs as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” one of many Brill Building classics she wrote with her first husband, Gerry Goffin. She was a leading figure in the singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s, with dozens of Billboard Hot 100 hits and music awards—her 1971 album Tapestry won a record four Grammys. Yet she struggled to reconcile her fame with her roles as a wife and mother and retreated to the backwoods of Idaho, only to emerge in recent years as a political activist and the subject of the Tony-winning Broadway show Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.

Journalist and author Jane Eisner places King’s life in historical and cultural context, revealing details of her humble beginnings in Jewish Brooklyn, the roots of her musical genius, her four marriages, and her anguish about public life. Drawing on numerous interviews as well as historical and contemporary sources, this book brings to life King’s professional accomplishments, her personal challenges, and her lasting contributions to the great American songbook.

By Steven J. Zipperstein
Published October 14, 2025
368 pages

“A work of literature itself” —Judith Thurman, author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller

A landmark biography of one of our most prominent chroniclers of American life

In this groundbreaking literary biography, Steven J. Zipperstein captures the complex life and astonishing work of Philip Roth (1933–2018), one of America’s most celebrated writers. Born in Newark, New Jersey—where his short stories and books were often set—Roth wrote with ambition and awareness of what was required to produce great literature. No writer was more dedicated to his craft, even as he was rubbing shoulders with the Kennedys and engaging in a spate of famous and infamous romances. And yet, as much as Roth wrote about sex and self, he viewed himself as socially withdrawn, living much like an “unchaste monk” (his words).

Zipperstein explores the unprecedented range of Roth’s work—from “Goodbye, Columbus” and Portnoy’s Complaint to the Pulitzer Prize–winning American Pastoral and The Plot Against America. Drawing on extensive archival materials and over one hundred interviews, including conversations with Roth about his life and work, Zipperstein provides an intimate and insightful look at one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers, placing his work in the context of his obsessions, as well as American Jewishness, freedom, and sexuality.

By Anthony Gottlieb
Published October 21, 2025
232 pages

“Entertaining and beautifully written” —A. C. Grayling

The first biography in more than three decades of the Austrian-born thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century

According to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), philosophy is a “battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” This audacious idea changed the way many of its practitioners saw their subject. In the first biography of Wittgenstein in more than three decades, Anthony Gottlieb evaluates this revolutionary idea, explaining the evolution of Wittgenstein’s thought and his place in the history of philosophy.

Wittgenstein was born into an immensely rich Viennese family but yearned to live a simple life, and he gave away his inheritance. After studying with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge, he wrote his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus while serving in World War I. He then took several positions as a primary-school teacher in rural Austria before returning as a fellow to Cambridge, where a cultlike following developed around him. Wittgenstein worked not only as a philosopher and schoolteacher, but also as an aeronautical engineer in Manchester and as an architect in Vienna.

Gottlieb’s meticulously researched book traces the itinerant and troubled life of Wittgenstein, the development of his influential ideas, and the Viennese intellectual milieu and family background that shaped him.