©Nina Subin
Books by Jane Kamensky
Jane Kamensky is Professor of History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is a historian of early America, the Atlantic world, and the age of revolutions, with particular interests in the histories of family, culture, and everyday life. She is the author of several historical works including the novel Blindspot, co-authored with Jill Lepore. Her most recent book is A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley.
“She was from a fairly conventional background, but from the moment she left home she threw herself into art. She went to art school—this was the late 1960s New York, so there was a lot going on. Then, like many people did at that point in their lives in that era, she got in a car with three other women and drove to San Francisco, hit it right at the moment where things were really blowing up there. She enrolled in art classes, experimented with a lot of drugs, had a lot of sexual partners, lived in a commune—lived, in some ways, a fairly ragged life—and found she could make money working in sexually explicit films. I personally got a lot out of this book, because Candida Royalle and I were almost the same age. Kamensky does a great job resurrecting the tumult of the times we grew up in. I really, really loved that. But it was sad to have to watch her as she waged some painful personal battles.” Read more...
The Best Biographies: The 2025 NBCC Shortlist
Mary Ann Gwinn, Journalist
Interviews with Jane Kamensky
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1
The Journal of John Winthrop
by John Winthrop -
2
Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North
by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton -
3
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
by J. Anthony Lukas -
4
Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri -
5
Mapping Boston
by Alex Krieger and David Cobb (editors)
The best books on Boston, recommended by Jane Kamensky
The best books on Boston, recommended by Jane Kamensky
The idea of Boston as “a place of revolutionary fervour because liberty is somehow baked into its bones” is loaded with a “very heavy dose of self-mythologizing,” says American historian Jane Kamensky. Here, the Harvard professor lifts the veil on this quintessential New England city and recommends five books for understanding its history
Interviews where books by Jane Kamensky were recommended
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1
Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below
by Jane Kamensky -
2
Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar
by Cynthia Carr -
3
Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
by Jean Strouse -
4
Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People
by Tiya Miles -
5
The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker
by Amy Reading
The Best Biographies: The 2025 NBCC Shortlist, recommended by Mary Ann Gwinn
The Best Biographies: The 2025 NBCC Shortlist, recommended by Mary Ann Gwinn
We always look forward to the shortlists for the National Book Critics Awards, on the basis that literary critics are probably the best read people out there. Here, we asked the garlanded critic Mary Ann Gwinn to talk us through the five biographies highlighted in 2025.
