This is Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm Pamela Paul.

Can a career of writing about feminism and womanhood prepare you for your father telling you in his 70s that he's become a woman?

Susan Foluti is here to talk about her new memoir in the dark room.

My father had kind of driven a Trojan horse into my political and professional domain and to ignore that would be dishonest.

We know William to come to Sherman as the man who both marched to the sea and burned Atlanta. But a new biography challenges the idea of Sherman as the father of scorched earth combat.

James Lee McDonough is here to talk about his new biography of William to come to Sherman.

In spite of the fact that Sherman's name, of course, still conjures up these images of tremendous destruction. Still, he felt that the Union had to be preserved above all else.

We'll also talk literary news and what we and other people are reading this week. And lastly, we'll hear a word from you, our listeners, about the summer books you've read and have never forgotten.

The New York Times wants to hear your thoughts on podcasts. This one and any others you listen to.

If you've got a few spare minutes, check out our survey online. Go to nytimes.com slash book review survey. And thank you.

Not many people can feel prepared for the news that their father has decided to become a woman. Author Susan Foluti wasn't either, even though she's probably best known for writing about gender and women herself.

You probably know her name as the author of backlash, the undeclared war against American women, which was a huge bestseller when it came out in 1991.

But her new memoir is about one particular man and woman, her father. Susan, thank you so much for being here.

And congratulations.

Thank you.

Tell us what this new book is about because it's very different from your previous books.

Yes, well, it all started 12 years ago when my father, who I had been estranged from for a quarter century, sent me an email saying that at the age of 76, she had flown to Thailand to get sex reaffirming surgery.

And this, he looks to say, was a surprise. On many levels, in particular, because the reason we had been estranged was that my father was, as she herself conceded, pretty aggressive, autocratic.

As she put it, much, oh man, when I was growing up and even violent at times, as I relayed in the book, which was the cost for our strangement.

So after I got that email in 2004, we talked on the phone and my father asked or dared me to write, as she put it, write my story.

So I jumped on a plane to Hungary, which is where just to make things more complicated, my father was living because in 1990, she returned to Hungary, the place where she had grown up.

When she told you your father, when she asked you to write her story, did she think that this would be a book and did you think it would be a book or were you thinking just writing it down?

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