In a narrative arching across the centuries, James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare's 400-year-old tragedies and comedies in making sense of so many of these issues,on which theAmerican identity has turned. Reflecting on how Shakespeare has been invoked—and at times weaponized—at pivotal moments in our past, Shapiro takes us from President John Quincy Adams's disgust with Desdemona's interracial marriage to Othello,to Abraham Lincoln's and his assassin John Wilkes Booth's competing obsessions with the plays, up through the fraught debates over marriage and same-sex love at the heart of thecelebrated adaptationsKiss Me,KateandShakespeare in Love.His narrative culminates in the 2017 controversy over the staging ofJulius Caesarin Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated. This in a sense is Shapiro's sequel to 1599, but there's nothing jaded in the performance; few serious academics marshal their research so elegantly, and few synthesis literary and historical elements to such powerful effect' Andrew Motion, TLS

a b c McCrum, Robert (5 June 2005). "To hold a mirror up to his nature". The Observer . Retrieved 30 April 2023. In this case, what Shapiro does is create a biography about one of the greatest writers who ever lived, about whom we know almost nothing. And he does that without ever cheating, by actually marshalling this huge amount of evidence to uncover not the life of the person, but the life of a mind.” A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro". Publishers Weekly. 2005-07-18 . Retrieved 2023-07-03. The winner was announced by chair of judges Jason Cowley, at a ceremony hosted at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh on 27th April. The one-off award marks the 25th anniversary of The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction by crowning the best work of non-fiction from the last 25 years. James Shapiro's 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear (Faber) brings to dazzling life the world from which sprang the best crop of new plays in theatre history. ' Nicholas Hytner, ObserverThe book is really a wonderfully deft interweaving of historical and cultural context, physical and social description, the politics and economics of Shakespeare’s work as a professional actor and co-owner of the Globe theatre.” -- Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times Graham, Nicholas (2014-01-01). "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599". Library Journal . Retrieved 2023-07-03. Shapiro unearths little-known but remarkably rich material on Shakespeare's reception in the United States—from the early 1800s to the present—to illustrate the ways in which Shakespeare has served as a sort of Rorschach test: Everyone, from Abraham Lincoln to John Wilkes Booth, sees what they want in the Bard. In the process they inadvertently reveal their inner selves and cleavages—racism, xenophobia, and class conflict—which remain all too familiar today. The stories are remarkable"—Erika Frye , Fortune Shakespeare in a Divided America' finds Shapiro at his best: engaging, precise in detail, and always willing to look beneath the skin of the matter at hand." --Tim Smith-Laing, The Daily Telegraph In Shapiro as in Huang, so-called barbarians threaten the empire's edges. Shapiro exposes the "incoherence and neglect" of Elizabethan policy in Ireland and the disastrous consequences of the Queen's "muddled and half-hearted strategies" for dealing with the Earl of Tyrone's insurgency. Ireland casts a long shadow over 1599. The year begins with the death of Edmund Spenser, only a few weeks after he returned to London from the destruction of his Irish estate. At his burial in Westminster Abbey, his hearse was carried by poets -Shakespeare perhaps among them - and afterwards their "mournful elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, [were] thrown into the tomb".

In 1599, perhaps the decisive year in Shakespeare's life, art and politics collided to an extraordinary degree. The Tudor state had to crush an Irish rebellion and see off another armada threat from Spain. And, if you happened to be in London, there was an annus mirabilis in the playhouses. Shakespeare in a Divided America. New York: Penguin Press; London: Faber & Faber; March, 2020. ISBN 0525522298One of the 'Best Books of the Year' (Publishers Weekly; The Observer; The Kansas City Star; The Sunday Star Times (NZ);The Financial Times, The Providence Journal; and the Times Literary Supplement) Shapiro has received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Huntington Library, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for his publications and academic activities. He has written for numerous periodicals, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Book Review, the Financial Times, and The Daily Telegraph. In 2006, he was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow as well as a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Authors: 'A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare', NPR radio program Talk of the Nation, October 18, 2005 (audio stream file and excerpt from the first chapter).

In 1599, Shakespeare completed Henry V, wrote Julius Caesar and As You Like It, and produced the first draft of Hamlet. In his book, Shapiro, who is professor of English at Columbia University, looks at how the political and social context of the time influenced the work. Shapiro's rich portrait of 1606 is every bit as compelling as his excellent 1599, handling huge amounts of research with a winningly light touch.' Claire Lowdon, Sunday Times Shapiro won the 2006 Samuel Johnson Prize as well as the 2006 Theatre Book Prize for his work 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, which Robert Nye described as "powerful" in Literary Review, set apart by Shapiro's precise and engrossing commentary on the sea-change in Shakespeare's language during the year 1599. [2] [3] In 2023, the book won the Baillie Gifford Prize's "Winner of Winners" award. [4] [5]More than any other Shakespeare biographer, Shapiro emphasises the importance of such revisions. The hero of 1599 is famous for "reworking rather than inventing stories". Shakespeare did not write; he re-wrote. Shapiro's account of Shakespeare's revisions of his own text of Hamlet is complex and interesting. Shapiro’s book is… authoritative, lucid and devastatingly funny, and its brief concluding statement of the case for Shakespeare is masterly.” (John Carey, Sunday Times) There is fascinating new research in Contested Will, whereby Shapiro aims his question - why did they believe this ridiculous conspiracy theory? - at a number of distinguished anti-Stratfordians. In every case, his answer is psychologically intriguing and entirely convincing." (Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph) Shapiro reconstructs seven 'defining moments in America's history' in which Shakespeare's writings played a significant part…He does so with his characteristic blend of acuity, assiduousness and unflaggingly narrative prose…. Shakespeare in a Divided Americahas many virtues. It affirms a story with which we are not fully familiar about Shakespeare holding up a mirror to the socio-political dynamics of American history; it will probably win plaudits and prizes alike, and will fly off the shelves in an election year "—Rhodri Lewis, TLS His next work is called Playbook, and will focus on America’s Federal Theatre Project of the 1930s, a progressive attempt to bring drama to mass audiences that was targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Then, as now, and as in the 16th century, theatre is powerful, and Shapiro intends to do everything he can to defend it.