<b>A filmmaker’s dramatic rise and fall</b> Oscar Micheaux was an innovator and a revolutionary force as a filmmaker, entrepreneur and novelist, unquestionably black America’s first multimedia champion. But as Patrick Milligan’s exceptional new biography <b>Oscar Micheaux</b> shows, he was also a complex, driven figure whose ambition sometimes clouded his judgment, and whose objectives were so epic he was fated to fail in a society that during his lifetime neither acknowledged his greatness nor respected his achievements. Yet Micheaux wrote, produced and directed 40 feature-length films in every genre from musicals to Westerns, romances, gangster sagas and comedies during an amazing run from 1919 to 1948.

Micheaux considered himself a cinematic propagandist, and his productions an antidote to the horrendous images Hollywood was presenting where blacks were consigned to roles depicting them exclusively as servants, sexually crazed hoods or lazy bums. He had no limits regarding concept and saw absolutely nothing odd or unconventional about including interracial romances in films, examining color issues within the black community or spotlighting cruelty and injustice that occurred among everyday people.

But as Micheaux steadily built his film empire, he regularly encountered controversy and difficulty. Milligan details accusations of preference toward lighter-skinned performers and reveals that the celebrated director engaged in one case of plagiarism that had tragic consequences. Still, he also was responsible for numerous landmark feats, among them writing, producing and directing <i>The Homesteader</i> in 1919, not only filling all three roles on a production two years before Charlie Chaplin did the same thing to much larger fanfare, but also becoming the first African-American to do so; and later releasing <i>The Exile</i>, the first full-length African-American talking film, in 1931.

Milligan leaves no source untapped in his comprehensive account, using unpublished letters and financial records, among other things, to trace Micheaux’s life, fully documenting his spectacular rise and subsequent sad fall (he died in poverty in 1951). Though he was honored with the Director’s Guild of America Golden Jubilee Special Award in 1986 and a year later given a star on Hollywood Boulevard, Micheaux’s remarkable contributions remain unknown to even many hardcore film buffs. Fortunately, Milligan’s seminal work at least begins the process of getting him the attention and respect he deserves.

<i>Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville</i> City Paper <i>and other publications.</i>

<b>A writer’s life, layer by layer</b> Although this book is too chronologically ordered to be called stream-of-consciousness, German author Gunter Grass does ping-pong freely along the linear time scale as one remembered image, sound or smell incites another. His is less a conventional biography than a series of glimpses into the thought processes of an evolving artist. Translated into English by Michael Henry Heim, <b>Peeling the Onion</b> covers Grass’ life from his pre-World War II childhood in Danzig to his move to Paris in 1956, where he began writing <i>The Tin Drum</i>.

Grass explains his limitations (and displays his generally droll style) thusly: Having grown up in a family that was expelled from house and home, in contrast to writers of my generation who grew up in one place . . . and are therefore in full possession of their school records and juvenilia, and having ipso facto no concrete evidence of my early years, I can call only the most questionable of witnesses to the stand: Lady Memory, a capricious creature prone to migraines and reputed to smile at the highest bidder. The son of a small-time grocer, Grass recalls that even as a child, he felt a genteel contempt for his family’s petit bourgeois ways; however, he earned his spending money by collecting overdue bills for his father. His mercantile canniness would later serve him well at an American prisoner of war camp and as he searched to find his own place in Germany’s postwar economy.

In recounting his life, Grass shifts fluidly (and sometimes maddeningly) between first and third person. And he can be a bit coy: My new marching orders made it clear where the recruit with my name was to undergo basic training: on a drill ground of the Waffen SS, as a Panzer gunner, somewhere far off in the Bohemian Woods. Inducted near the end of the war, he saw relatively little combat but quite enough to disabuse him of any lingering romantic or nationalistic notions. (And enough to lead to considerable discussion of his previous silence on the subject when the book was published in Germany last summer.) Threaded through Grass’ narrative are visceral accounts of his coming to terms with his three great appetites food, sex and art. He also repeatedly cites specific situations and characters that later found their way into his fiction (for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1999). For most of this book, Grass is simply another wartime survivor searching for an identity. But as his artistic vision takes form and draws him into the company of kindred seekers, one can sense the excitement of a new generation on the move.

<i>Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.</i>

Dearest Reader, It is my sincerest hope you will not consider me a shameful gossip if I whisper to you in these brief lines some of the subjects elucidated in Janet Gleeson’s Privilege and Scandal: The Remarkable Life of Harriet Spencer, Sister of Georgiana. Many secrets, hitherto buried between the lines of Harriet’s many letters (both to her and from her), are forthrightly revealed in Gleeson’s edifying, yet thoroughly beguiling biography of this vivacious, attractive and intelligent woman. Harriet Spencer, (who became Countess of Bessborough and is a feisty ancestor of the famed, though ill-fated, Princess Di) turned heads and raised eyebrows in 18th-century Britain by embroiling herself (a married woman!) in many peccadilloes regarding her participation in politics, gambling and illicit amours. The salacious details of that which I can only hint at here her lifelong involvement with a younger man, the painful particulars of her dalliance with playwright Richard Sheridan and how she managed to keep secret the birth of two of her six children are to be discovered in Gleeson’s detailed accounting.

But remember, dear reader, that a lady’s reputation in the Regency era is everything, and that such a lady a dynamic and influential figure of the Whig aristocracy, who braved social condemnation by giving voice to the reasoning of her acute mind, who was ever a faithful sister and friend, and who was such a loving and devoted mother, that, upon hearing her son was wounded in the Battle of Waterloo, raced alone across war-torn Europe to be at his side to such a one should every courtesy of confidence be given. Therefore, lest my words insinuate more than they illuminate, I pray you, burn my letter, and buy the book! Linda Stankard, your faithful correspondent, writes from Nanuet, New York.

In this year’s winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography, Applegate takes a fascinating look at the life of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, brother of the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. An energetic Congregationalist clergyman and outspoken abolitionist, Beecher achieved renown during the mid-1800s, when his Plymouth Church in Brooklyn drew people from all over the country. He was a charismatic speaker, a powerful writer and one of the first public personalities in America who could rightly be termed a celebrity. His perception of God as a merciful rather than an unforgiving figure was a new and welcome view, as was his overall take on Christianity, which he believed could serve as a path to happiness and forgiveness. Well-connected socially, he appreciated books, music, art and although he was married the company of women. When well-known feminist Victoria Woodhull publicly accused Beecher of committing adultery with a member of his church, her claims made national headlines. A trial ensued that absorbed America’s attention almost as much as the Civil War. How Beecher fared after the scandal makes for a gripping historical tale. Readers with an interest in American history will relish Applegate’s well-written, engaging narrative.

15 Stars is more than just a clever book title. It represents the collective careers of three five-star generals: Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower. These three military giants led the United States to victory in World War II and helped shape the world following the war. Not since the immense fame of Grant, Sherman and Lee at the close of the Civil War have three generals become such household names, writes Stanley Weintraub, an accomplished author of more than 50 histories and biographies, many with military themes.

But while these generals were contemporaries, they were a study in contrasts. MacArthur was urbane and egotistical. Marshall exuded quiet confidence. Eisenhower was modest and unassuming. And their relationships to each other were complex. Colleagues, and on occasion competitors, they leapfrogged each other, sometimes stonewalled each other, even supported and protected each other, throughout their celebrated careers, Weintraub writes.

And each accomplished great things: MacArthur conquered the Pacific Theater; Marshall brought order to postwar Europe; Eisenhower was the architect of D-Day. But only one, Eisenhower, would achieve the greatest prize: the presidency. In the public mind they appeared, in turn, as glamour, integrity, and competence, Weintraub writes. But for the twists of circumstance, all three rather than one might have occupied the White House. 15 Stars chronicles those circumstances, from the start of World War II to the height of the Cold War. It is a well-researched book that thoroughly examines the lives of three American military icons. The material is complicated, but Weintraub’s easy writing makes it understandable and engaging. The book reads like a literary narrative, beginning with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and ending in the twilight of each man’s life. It is a worthy choice for the bookshelf of any reader who loves military history or historical nonfiction. John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

<b>Rampersad’s detailed look at the once-invisible man</b> Ralph Ellison’s incomparable 1952 novel <i>Invisible Man</i> was a 20th-century masterpiece that personalized racism’s moral, political and social impact in such remarkable fashion it simultaneously enhanced and restricted the rest of his life. Acclaimed author Arnold Rampersad’s (<i>The Life of Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson</i>) extensive new volume <b>Ralph Ellison</b> details Ellison’s embrace of and problems with celebrity status, his philosophical shift from radical communism to democratic universalism and his ongoing battle to craft a suitable follow-up to <i>Invisible Man</i>. Rampersad’s biography not only documents Ellison’s background, influences and evolutionary development, but offers a comprehensive look into his motivation and psyche. Readers encounter a complex individual who championed America’s ideals and celebrated its potential when others around him, even close friends and colleagues, focused on the nation’s ugly failures and mistreatment of its citizens. Rampersad’s findings and analysis prove informative, fascinating, sometimes disturbing and consistently compelling.

He cites isolation and poverty as driving factors in Ellison’s makeup. Growing up in Oklahoma and losing his father at a young age led Ellison to seek solace and advice from sometimes dubious authority figures, while being poor and frequently abandoned generated a continual desire to be part of some entity or structure. The often bizarre incidents he experienced at the Tuskegee Institute and during his early years in the New York of the ’30s were dramatized in <i>Invisible Man</i>. We also see his experience with class conflicts, the lure of (and later his disappointment in) the Communist Party and most importantly the realization that many white Americans he encountered not only didn’t view him as an equal, but even failed to acknowledge his existence. Still, Ellison’s brilliance as a writer and striking, charismatic personality, coupled with <i>Invisible Man</i>’s stunning success, soon changed things. Suddenly he was socializing with Robert Penn Warren and Saul Bellow, equated with Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, and sought out by academics and writers everywhere.

Yet none of these situations made Ellison completely comfortable, nor enabled him to overcome the periodic writers’ block that plagued him in his later years. Rampersad chronicles the increasing alienation Ellison felt regarding the rise of nationalist and militant sentiments within both the black arts world and community, particularly the notions that America was fundamentally flawed and African-American culture stood separate and apart from everything else in the country. There were some painful incidents during the ’60s and ’70s, among them ugly denunciations of Ellison’s work and comments from students and writers angered by what they deemed his detachment from the Civil Rights movement. But none of that dimmed Ellison’s love of writing and literature, or his passion for music and other arts, and it didn’t alter his faith in the goodness he felt was inherent in America as a whole.

Aided by full access to Ellison’s papers, Arnold Rampersad has penned a definitive work that not only illuminates important questions about race, class and values, but also shows how Ellison’s approach to them profoundly influenced everything else in his life.

<i>Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville</i> City Paper <i>and other publications.</i>

<b>Restoring Burr’s tarnished image</b> What the generally educated know about Aaron Burr: He fatally wounded Founding Father Alexander Hamilton in a duel. After that, Burr (1756-1836) is usually dismissed as one of the darker characters in the early years of the republic. In <b>Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr</b>, historian Nancy Isenberg attempts to clarify the man and his life, to provide perspective on oft-published prejudices, and to examine Burr’s reputation in the important contextual light of politics. In rectifying prior shoddy research and addressing the infelicities of popular biography, Isenberg gives us a fuller-bodied Burr. The controversies remain to some degree, but their root causes are more clearly defined, and iBurr emerges as a fairly typical man of his time.

The New Jersey-born Burr was of notable stock: He was the grandson of the famous theologian Jonathan Edwards, and he graduated from Princeton, where his father had been president. Burr served as a colonel in the Continental Army, made a name for himself in New York politics, and in 1800 was elected vice president under Thomas Jefferson. What happened with Hamilton in 1804 was the culmination of years of professional and personal sniping, and by any objective assessment, was as much Hamilton’s fault as Burr’s.

Burr left office a tarnished man, embarked on various bank deals and real estate speculations, explored the West, was later tried for treason (and acquitted) under bogus circumstances, traveled to Europe and eventually returned to America, where he spent his later years doing legal work for women and children. (Burr was perhaps America’s first family lawyer.) Financial problems and exaggerations about his womanizing contributed over time to increased negative perceptions of Burr and, when combined with the Hamilton affair, sealed his fate as a blackguard in the American consciousness. Isenberg effectively broadens our view of history, providing some keen insights into the highly contentious post-revolutionary period and establishing Burr’s legitimate role within it, as patriot and statesman.

British author Sara Wheeler sets a daunting task for herself in her latest book, Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton to wrest her subject from the enduring portrait created by his longtime lover Karen Blixen in Out of Africa (not to mention Robert Redford’s cinematic portrayal). Wheeler succeeds, at least to some extent, presenting an in-depth profile of the legendary denizen of British East Africa (now Kenya) while also capturing the essence of life in the colony during the first quarter of the 20th century, contrasting and reflecting the world as depicted by Blixen.

Intriguingly aloof, devastatingly charming, equally comfortable facing down charging game, discussing literature or enjoying fine wine (which he always seemed to have on hand), Denys Finch Hatton seems the perfect embodiment of the age of gentleman explorers. Nineteenth-century explorers had brought Africa into the drawing room, Wheeler writes, and after their Eton and Oxford educations, scions of wealthy families traipsed out to the latest colonial hotspot seeking adventure or as social and tax changes left the aristocracy short on capital renewed fortunes. Finch Hatton followed family protocol in doing both, falling in love with Africa on his first visit in 1910, at the age of 23. Before finding his life’s work as a hunter and pilot, he tried his hand at dairy farming and became a decorated officer during the African campaign in the First World War.

Though we think of Finch Hatton as the consummate expatriate, he in fact returned to England often and always managed to be in the middle of things. He attended the coronation of King George V during one visit and went to parties with the Prince of Wales (the future Duke of Windsor), who he would later lead on safari, during another. He saw performances by Josephine Baker in Paris and Nijinsky in London. He befriended Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy’s son) en route to Mesopotamia.

Naturally, many Finch Hatton associates familiar to readers of Blixen’s works also figure in Too Close to the Sun: Berkeley Cole, Lord Delamere and Bror Blixen (Karen’s husband). Aviatrix Beryl Markham is also in the book. For most of us, however, the most fascinating member of Finch Hatton’s circle is Karen Blixen herself. Tania [Blixen] was part of Denys’s deepening contact with Kenya, and her lyrical response to the landscape and the people attracted him, Wheeler writes of their intense, yet fragile relationship.

In her introduction, Wheeler says she started out disliking Blixen, but made peace with her over the course of her research and travels. It is a result of those travels that Wheeler is able to set scenes so wonderfully a talent she shares with Blixen whether she’s describing the atmosphere of Finch Hatton’s favorite childhood home, a war-weary London or striking Kenyan sunsets. Putting her subject into context is an important aspect of Too Close to the Sun, because though he always lived life on his own terms, part of the allure of Finch Hatton will always be the intersection of time and place.

MiChelle Jones made a pilgrimage to Rung-stedlund, Karen Blixen’s family home near Copenhagen, in 2001.

Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman’s War Against the Nazis is a detailed record of Hitler’s command, written between 1945 and 1946 by Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, a Polish-Catholic aristocrat with an indomitable will and a formidable intellect. In a memoir written in no-nonsense, reportorial style, this art professor tells of her activities and imprisonment for what the Nazis called her troublesome interference with the Reich’s rule of terror.

With her wealth and connections, the countess could have escaped to Switzerland at the occupation’s outset. But, an ardent patriot and dedicated teacher, she vowed to remain and continue her everyday life as well as to join the underground, all the while working to provide food and support to those in Nazi jails and prisons. Her head-on dealings with the SS and Gestapo, especially a perilous exchange with Nazi henchman Hans Kruger (in which he reveals a mass murder of Polish professors), land her in the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp. There, she bolsters the women inmates (especially the rabbits, women subjected to medical experimentation) with nursing care and her extra rations of food. She also offers them sustenance for the spirit lectures on art and history that lift their vision beyond the high prison walls.

Lanckoronska spent five years in captivity before her release, brought about by the intervention of Carl Burckhardt, head of the International Red Cross. She lived out her days in exile in Rome, working to tell the truths of war and celebrate Polish culture. Her almost dispassionate telling of the suffering she witnessed makes for heartbreaking, often horrifying reading, but this is reading we must do, especially in our own troubling times.

The notebooks and artwork of Holocaust victim Petr Ginz lay undiscovered in an old house in Prague for 60 years. In 2003, after the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia, it came to light that Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon had carried with him a drawing ( Moon Landscape ) by young Petr an act intended to commemorate the Holocaust victims. Not long after a man came forward wishing to sell some old writings and drawings all by Petr Ginz.

Edited by Ginz’s sister, Chava Pressburger, The Diary of Petr Ginz, 1941-1942 is the record of a Jewish schoolboy’s daily life in Prague while it is under Nazi control. Fourteen-year-old Petr, an irrepressible prodigy who excelled in painting, drawing and writing, kept a straightforward, calm record of his days, including his schooling, family life, and the personal indignities and work (cleaning typewriters) forced upon him and his family by Hitler’s edicts. Embellished with his wry poetry and his stark, intense linocuts and drawings, the diary entries are short, many no more than a few sentences, but they reveal volumes about the Nazis’ draconian methods: Tuesday, March 3, 1942: In the afternoon in town. There are ordinances everywhere saying that it is not allowed to wash Jewish laundry. As the strictures placed upon the Jews became tighter, there was an escalation of transports, moving the Jewish populace to the ghetto of Thereisienstadt before transfer to Nazi death camps in occupied Poland. Petr’s diary ends in August 1942, two months before he was separated forever from his family and sent to Thereisienstadt, where he would live (and start a secret rebel newspaper), work and tirelessly study for two years. At the end of that time 16-year-old Petr was taken to Auschwitz and exterminated one of many lives prematurely ended, but a voice not fully stilled. Of Petr’s determination to bear witness, novelist Jonathan Safran Foer writes in the book’s introduction, Surrounded by death, and facing his own, Petr put words on paper. Given his unprecedented situation, his words were unprecedented. He was creating new language. He was creating life.

Poor Millard Fillmore. He’s been a running gag for years. Among the crop of generally undistinguished mid-19th-century presidents who served between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, Fillmore is often considered, if not the worst, then certainly the most colorless, of all chief executives. George Pendle’s new book, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President, only adds to Fillmore’s perceptual woes. In this lampoon of formal presidential biographies, Pendle claims to have been spurred on by the discovery in Africa of never-before-seen Fillmore journals, including letters and napkin doodles. (Did paper napkins exist in 1850? Did doodling?) Pendle hits all the general chronological marks of Fillmore’s life, but he fabricates the particulars in wildly imaginative fashion, complete with copious, addlepated footnotes that affirm the book’s comic intent.

Good ol’ Millard: He puts in an appearance at the Alamo (but dressed in drag, thus avoiding all those murderous Mexicans); he duels with Old Hickory (it never really happened); he proves to be an unheralded inventor (no way); and he also attends Ford’s Theatre with Honest Abe as a bonneted stand-in for the First Lady (and picks up John Wilkes Booth’s derringer and hands it back to the assassin).

To the very end, Pendle’s Fillmore is a figure of whimsy, on the day of his death having great difficulty doing his favorite animal impersonations, being forced to confine himself to cows and sheep. The Remarkable Millard Fillmore is esoteric stuff, but recommended highly for history buffs or those steeped in Fillmoriana (an ever-growing precious few).

Edith Wharton is perhaps best known for translating social history into fiction as she did in two of her most widely read novels, The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, becoming the first woman to do so. Her most popular book, Ethan Frome, a departure for her, was published in 1911. Growing up in New York in a well-to-do family during the Gilded Age, Wharton was an avid reader of important nonfiction works and a close observer of the elegant life and dramatic social change of that era. Despite an unhappy marriage and a difficult relationship with her mother and brothers, Wharton created a distinctive and sometimes extravagant life for herself, mostly abroad.

That story unfolds in Hermione Lee’s magnificent new biography Edith Wharton. Lee, Oxford’s first female Goldsmith’s Professor of English Literature and author of a highly acclaimed biography of Virginia Woolf, says Wharton was passionately interested in France, England, and Italy, but could never be done with the subject of America and Americans. In her richly detailed study, Lee shows how Wharton developed into an extremely ambitious author, publishing at least one book every year between 1897 and her death in 1937. Apart from her writing, Wharton was interested in fine homes and gardens, travel and friendships. Her circle of friends and acquaintances included Henry James, art critic Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark and Theodore Roosevelt.

Lee discusses what she calls the two essential underpinnings of [Wharton’s] life, money and servants. Of particular interest is Wharton’s work in establishing and supporting charities to assist in the war effort in France during World War I. Lee’s portrait also reveals some of Wharton’s less attractive characteristics, such as snobbery, racism, anti-Semitism and anti-feminism, which she says were commonplace among upper-class Anglo-Americans of the era.

This authoritative book, sensitive and thorough, is surely the definitive biography of Edith Wharton. Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Henry Hungerford died in 1834, unmarried, without children and without notable accomplishment. But his death was extraordinary good luck for the United States, because it led to the creation of the Smithsonian Institution. Hungerford was the nephew and heir of an odd rich man who lived more than half his life under the name James Macie, but changed it at age 35 to James Smithson. Smithson, who died in 1829, left his fortune to Hungerford, but made the U.S. his secondary legatee if Hungerford died without issue. The U.S., the will said, was to use the money to create a Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. Smithson, an Englishman who never visited this country, has always seemed a shadowy figure, in large part because most of his papers were destroyed in a fire at the Smithsonian in 1865. But author Heather Ewing, an architectural historian who has worked for the Smithsonian, has risen to the biographical challenge in The Lost World of James Smithson. She has exhumed letters, diaries, bank records and government documents throughout Europe and the U.S. that add up to a clear picture of our cultural benefactor.

Smithson, it turns out, was a fascinating person, albeit quirky and frustrated. He was a politically progressive amateur chemist and geologist, who traveled widely, amassed a significant geological collection and befriended the scientific pioneers of his age. Although well-regarded in scientific circles, Smithson was insecure because of his background as the illegitimate son of a well-born widow and the illustrious Duke of Northumberland. The name James Macie was his mother’s pretense that he was the son of her late husband; he changed it to Smithson, the duke’s surname, immediately after his mother’s death.

Childless and aware that his scientific work was of only middling importance, Smithson wanted to be remembered as something more than his parents’ mistake. Hence the Smithsonian will. Of course, his name is now world-famous. Ewing’s psychologically sensitive book gives us the man behind the name. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.