Booktalk with Diana Korte

Host Diana Korte speaks with US Senator Tim Kaine from VA and former Democratic vice-presidential candidate. He is the author of a new memoir-- Walk, Ride, Paddle that describes a bit of history along with adventures and misadventures on the road including too many bear encounters.  In 2019, he commemorated both his sixtieth birthday and his twenty-fifth year in public office by exploring Virginia's trails, bike tracks, and waterways. During weekends and in Senate recess weeks, Kaine—over a period of several years—hiked the 559 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Biked 321 miles along the Virginia Blue Ridge and canoed 348 miles on the James River.

He’s been a Virginia mayor, governor, and US senator and now a bonafide outdoorsy politician.

Host Diana Korte speaks with Don Winslow, bestselling author of CITY IN RUINS, the last book in a trilogy featuring crime boss Danny Ryan.

The lesson for him is as hard as it is true: sometimes you must become what you hate to protect what you love.  

Now a billionaire gambling mogul, he builds an empire of glittering mega-hotels and casinos along the Las Vegas Strip. Battles of money, influence, and bribery soon follow.  

After 26 books this is Winslow’s last book as he’s taking his talents to a new patriotic pursuit.

But his books and numerous movies made from them live on. Austin Butler, in his first starring role since his Oscar nominated turn as Elvis Presley, will star as crime boss Danny Ryan in “City On Fire,” an earlier book in this trilogy. 

Host Diana Korte speaks with Manal al-Sharif, author of DARING TO DRIVE, who grew up in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.

In her teens she was a religious radical, by her twenties she was a college-educated computer security engineer. Then she lived for a while in Boston, learned to drive and became a women’s rights advocate.

Back home she was the first Saudi woman who defied the ban on driving and immediately put the video on YouTube. And, yes, she was arrested.

This interview originally aired June 23, 2017. One year later the Saudi government made it legal for women to drive. Yet several years later, the number of women who have licenses to drive is only a few percent. 

Never one to shy away from controversial topics, Joyce Carol Oates’ “The Sacrifice” is based on the story of Tawana Brawley of upstate New York who made headlines in the late 1980s with allegations of kidnapping and rape that were later proven false.

When we spoke about this book in 2015, JCO was already the author of more than 100 books—novels, short story collections, a memoir, children’s books, poetry, plays, even a libretto for an opera.  

Host Diana Korte speaks with New Mexico-based Michael Benanav, a photo-journalist known for searching out and living with nomadic tribes and bringing their compelling stories and images back from distant places.

 In “Himalaya Bound: One Family’s Quest to Save Their Animals–And an Ancient Way of Life” he travels to northern India to journey with the Van Gujjars, a tribe of forest-dwelling nomadic water buffalo herders during their annual spring migration into the Himalayas.

In a book laced with stories of tribal cultures from India to Yellowstone, from Jordan to Kenya, Benanav deftly wends through the controversial terrain where Western ways of protecting the environment clash with indigenous understandings of nature.

Tracy Clark is an award-winning author of 6 crime novels including the Cass Raines Chicago Mystery series.  FALL is her newest book and second in the Detective Harriett Foster thriller series.  

In this page-turner of a book, the Chicago PD is on high alert when two city aldermen are found dead: one by apparent suicide, one brutally stabbed in his office, and both with thirty dimes left on their bodies—a betrayer’s payment. With no other clues, the question is, Who else has a debt to pay?

Detective Harriet Foster is on the case before the killer can strike again. But even with the help of her partner, Detective Vera Li, and the rest of their team, Harriet has little to go on and a lot at risk. There’s no telling who the killer’s next target is or how many will come next.  

TUNE IN for why Tracy Clark writes crime novels, what she likes best about Harriett Foster. and her advice for new writers. 

Host Diana Korte speaks with R. David Edmunds, author of 12 books about Native Americans. His newest title is “VOICES IN THE DRUM that features 9 stories about these people spanning hundreds of years of history. 

Times and places range from Mound City, AL as it existed a century or so before Columbus to what it was like for a job-hunting family in the 1950s to move from a reservation in the Dakotas to Denver CO.

TUNE IN for misconceptions non-Natives have about Indians, what it takes to be counted as a member of a tribe, and who are the unsung heroes in Native American history.  

Host Diana Korte speaks with Douglas Preston, author of "THE LOST TOMB." Some of the stories in this book have taken him from the haunted country of Italy and the largest tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings to the booby-trapped Money Pit on Oak Island in Nova Scotia and a cannibal site in the American Southwest.

Listeners might be familiar with some of his other 40 books including "Lost City of the Monkey God" and his co-authored fiction series featuring FBI special agent Pendergast.

TUNE IN for, what he found when he was the first to enter an Egyptian burial chamber that had been sealed for millennia, why many of his books include archeologists, and his one piece of advice for would be writers that might be quite difficult to accomplish.

Cary Elwes, who was then age 23, played the dashing character known as Westley in this cult movie classic. He talked about the behind-the-scenes making of the movie in his book, “As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride” when we spoke in 2014.

The continued unexpected popularity of this happy movie made 36 years ago didn’t begin until ten years after it was released, thanks to the new VHS and cable tv then and the streaming internet today. 

Tune in for the name of Cary Elwes’s favorite fan, his biggest challenge—the inconceivable one—in making the movie, and what it took to create that great sword fight.  

Today I spoke with the James Beard Award-winning  Fuchsia Dunlop about her 7th book, “Invitation To A Banquet. The Story of Chinese Food.”  

Based in London, she speaks, reads, and writes Chinese and has traveled, often writing down recipes, for 30 years all around China.

Rather than another cookbook, “Invitation to a Banquet” is an exploration of the history, techniques, and philosophies of Chinese cuisine. She presents this through a "menu" of thirty dishes from different parts of the country including Mapo tofu, drunken crabs and stir-fried greens. 

TUNE IN for what many non-Chinese people most misunderstand about Chinese food along with a glimpse into Fuchsia Dunlop’s adventures as the first westerner to train at the influential Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in mainland China. 

Author of more than a dozen books, historian Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War” details the perilous ocean crossing the European pilgrims made.  Imagine the struggle of moving 2 mph for 3,000 miles over two months. 

Yes, the Native American Wampanoags shared bounty with the Pilgrims at that first tense Thanksgiving, but unlike what many of us learned in grade school, it was an overwhelmingly Native affair.  As for the menu, probably yes to turkeys, ducks and venison but no to cranberry sauce and pumpkin pies. The author describes these and many other new facts about this epic time in American history.    

This Booktalk program dates back to 2007.

Host Diana Korte speaks with Alexander McCall Smith, the author of more than 100 books sold around the world in 40 languages. This includes the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels, plus other series and stand-alone books.  

His newest title in this cozy series, the 24th, is From a Far and Lovely Country featuring Mma Precious Ramotswe and her world of familiar characters. 

In this latest installment two cases compete for Mma Ramotswe's attention—and she may need to call in back up. But no worries, there’s always time for red bush tea and fruitcake. 

Tune in for just how many hours a day Scotsman McCall Smith spends writing his 5 books a year, why the series takes place in Botswana, and what happens when Assistant Detective Charlie gets his first case.    

Taras Grescoe, author of  “THE LOST SUPPER”, his eighth book, explores an understanding that is quickly spreading among chefs, food producers, and scientists: that the key to sustainable eating lies not in looking forward, but in looking back to the foods—many of them forgotten or on the verge of extinction—that have sustained us through our half-million year existence as a species.

Grescoe is a widely read commentator on the interplay of food, travel, and the environment. His journalism has been published in many newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and National Geographic. 

 Tune in for details about the insects that fueled the diet of the Aztecs, the value of farmhouse cheese, and how to start your own journey to the food varieties of the past.  

Craig Johnson, author of a Wyoming mystery series featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire is back with his 19th in the series, THE LONGMIRE DEFENSE.  This long running string of books is not only a bestseller in the book world, but continues as a popular TV show, Longmire, on Netflix despite being cancelled some years ago.  

This new novel takes readers deep into the heart of the Wyoming countryside where Sheriff Longmire is called to a crime scene like few others that he has seen. This crime and the old rifle that is found at the site bring up issues that go back to his grandfather Lloyd Longmire’s time in Wyoming. And the revelations he learns about Lloyd offer clues and motives for Walt’s investigation. 

Tune in for what's up with the tv show, where Johnson gets his book ideas, and what's coming next.

In 2018 former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, author of BLOWBACK: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump wrote an anonymous opinion piece in The New York Times from inside the Trump administration. He revealed publicly what Trump’s cabinet was saying privately: the president was dangerously unfit for office. 

He unmasked himself 2 years later to urge Americans to vote against Trump in 2020 and launched the largest alliance of ex-officials in United States history to take down the president who appointed them.

In the world of national security — the world Taylor comes from — there’s a term to describe the unintended consequences of our actions, of failing to see what’s around the corner if we make the wrong choice: BLOWBACK.

Tune in for why Trump’s supporters are so loyal, what is the worst part of being a political target, and what only citizens can do to keep the US a strong democracy.     

James McBride’s newest book is THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.

As the story begins, it’s 1972. Workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania are digging the foundations for a new development, and the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. 

When the truth is finally revealed about what happened and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community— heaven and earth— that sustain us.

James McBride is an award-winning writer, musician, and screenwriter, the author of eight books, and brother to 11 siblings. His landmark memoir, The Color of Water, published in 1996, has sold millions of copies.  Considered an American classic, it is read in schools and universities across the US.

“I Have Something to Tell You” by Chasten Buttigieg is the young adult adaptation of his candid bestselling memoir about growing up gay in his small Midwestern town. 

This version is completely rewritten with new stories, including resources for readers, parents, and teachers. It focuses on the author’s young years and his coming of age story. He also explores the support systems he’s built and describes ways readers can build their own.

He is on a 30+ stop nationwide in-person tour, including places where anti-LGBTQ legislation and book bans are on the rise. 

Listen in as he describes the most common comments he hears on the road and explains the differences between questions he’s asked at events depending on whether he’s in a red, purple or blue state.   

Chasten Buttigieg is the husband of Pete, a former Democratic presidential candidate, and dad to Penelope and Gus.

Jake Tapper regularly interviews world leaders and other newsmakers, but he also brings his knowledge of politics and the past to his political thrillers that are historically accurate. 

“All The Demons Are Here” is set in 1977. The story revolves around a brother and sister, Ike and Lucy Marder, son and daughter of U.S. Senator Charlie Marder and Margaret Marder, a well-known zoologist. Ike is a U.S. Marine war hero, but AWOL when we meet him, while Lucy is an up and coming journalist at a Washington, DC tabloid. 

Jake Tapper is the chief DC anchor and chief Washington correspondent for CNN; he hosts the weekday show The Lead with Jake Tapper and cohosts the Sunday public-affairs show State of the Union. 

Tune in to discover Jake’s earliest memories of politics, his opinion of tv news coverage after decades in the business, and how many issues of the 1970s repeat themselves today.

The latest historical novel, LADY TAN'S CIRCLE OF WOMEN, from writer Lisa See who is the author of 12 books, is inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China whose remedies are still used today some 500 years later.

According to Confucius who was influential at the time, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family in the late 1400s in China was raised by her grandparents to be a doctor. 

Tune in to hear how Lisa discovered Tan Yunxian, details about the thousand-year tradition of foot binding in China, and why red-haired-and-freckled Lisa See writes books about Chinese women and their friendships. 

Gloria Steinem, author of My Life on the Road, had an itinerant childhood. Based in New York City, she is now 89 and has never stopped traveling.

When she was a young girl, her father would pack the family in the car every fall and drive across country searching for adventure and trying to make a living. The seeds were planted: Gloria realized that growing up didn’t have to mean settling down.

And so began a lifetime of travel, of activism and leadership, of listening to people whose voices and ideas would inspire change and revolution.

“When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel. Taking to the road—by which I mean letting the road take you—changed who I thought I was.”  This interview originally aired October 21, 2016.

Silvia Pettem’s “In Search of the Blonde Tigress,"  dips into the world of sensationalized Chicago newspaper headlines in the 1930s that claimed Eleanor was not only “the blonde tigress,” but also “the most dangerous woman alive.” 

But a closer look at her life shows that she was an otherwise ordinary woman who got caught up in a Chicago crime spree, then was convicted as an accomplice to murder, and sent to prison for 199 years. She escaped seven years later and managed to live out her life as America’s longest-running female fugitive.

Pettem’s research led to police and prison records, court transcripts, and her theory of where the grave of the “blonde tigress” is today.

Listeners might be familiar with some of her other 20 plus books including the recently revised "Someone’s Daughter—In Search Of Justice For Jane Doe," which is also now part of a documentary series available on Hulu.  

Award-winning African ecologist Paula Kahumbu, author of SECRETS OF THE ELEPHANTS, is one of the world’s preeminent advocates for elephant conservation and the fight against illegal poaching of elephants for the ivory trade. 

Her gorgeous co-authored National Geographic coffee table book is a companion to the TV series of the same name.

As big as a bus and weighing up to 11 tons, elephants have fascinated us for centuries. But only recently have scientists been able to observe their innermost workings as individuals, families, and herds.

Kahumbu describes how she became committed to elephants, how they communicate with each other in ways unknown until recently, and which one of the four types of these animals is in grave peril. 

The always fun Lisa Scottoline is back with her 37th novel, LOYALTY, a historical novel about the beginnings of the Mafia on the island of Sicily in the 1800’s. 

Readers will be transported to the dramatic and ruggedly beautiful island of Sicily, the jewel of the Mediterranean, where lush lemon groves and mouth-watering cuisine contrast with a turbulent history of colonization and corruption.   

Tune in for Italian American former lawyer/law professor Scottoline explaining what’s missing from the movie The Godfather, why law and justice are often not the same thing, and why in some families loyalty is everything. 

She has an amazing 30 million books in print and has been published in 35 countries.  

Inspired by a 25-year-old New York Times article about World War II evacuated English children revisiting their U.S. foster homes as adults, Laura Spence-Ash tells her own well researched story, ⁠BEYOND THAT, THE SEA.

The book follows the lives of two families over three decades. Their lives become intertwined when Beatrix, the eleven-year-old daughter of the English family, is sent to live with an American family during the height of the London Blitz.

Bea’s story begins as German bombs fall over London in 1940, and her working-class parents Millie and Reginald Thompson make an impossible choice: they decide to send her to the United States for safety.  When she arrives in Boston, she meets her new family, Nancy and Ethan Gregory and their two sons with whom she'll live for five years.

In Marc Schultz's THE GOOD LIFE, what makes for a happy life, a fulfilling life? A good life?

The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and overall healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life.

For over eight decades, this study has tracked the same individuals and their families, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements—from brain scans to blood work—with the goal of discovering what really makes for happiness and a good life.

Elaine Weiss's THE WOMAN’S HOUR: The Great Fight to Win the Vote tells the true story of the suffragettes—women in the face of enormous opposition who fought for and won American women's right to vote in 1920, a long 131 years after American men cast their first ballots.

As the book opens up, it's that fateful summer. After 70 years of a long fought campaign for equal citizenship for 27 million women, one of the pivotal political battles in United States history is unfolding in Nashville, Tennessee.  The women's suffrage movement needed just one more state to ratify the 19th Amendment, and it all came down to this state.  In the state legislature that summer, Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment by one vote in August, 1920. 

Weiss reveals what it took for activists to win this crucial battle and how close they came to losing.  Woman’s Hour is more than just a vivid work of history, it is an inspiration for everyone who continues the fight for justice and equal rights today.

Jennifer Herrera’s debut thriller and first in a series is THE HUNTER.

After reckless behavior costs NYPD detective Leigh O’Donnell her job and her marriage, she returns with her four-year-old daughter to her beautiful hometown of Copper Falls, Ohio in this richly atmospheric novel.

Three men in town have drowned in what Leigh suspects to be a triple homicide. She hopes that by finding out who killed them, she just might get her life back on course. 

Tune in for her explanation of why fictional murder victims are usually women, yet statistics say 80% of homicide victims are men. 

Jennifer Herrera is a former philosophy grad student turned literary agent (her day job), whose first task in the publishing world was ghost writing.

Artist and singer Melissa Newman, one of the 5 daughters of actor Paul Newman who died in 2008, spoke with me about her dad’s posthumous memoir, “PAUL NEWMAN, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man.”

It was compiled from interviews he gave to a close friend, and it sheds light on the self-doubt of the seemingly cool and calm Hollywood legend who was a deeply private man living an intensely public life.

His major film roles (out of 65 movies) include 3 of my favorites Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting. He was also a race car driver starting at age 47.  He won several national championships and took home the prize at his last race behind the wheel of a 700-horsepower Corvette when he was in his 80s.

A leading philanthropist of the 20th century, Newman raised and donated nearly $1 billion to many charities. He had six children and was married to Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward for fifty years.

LONGPATH by futurist Ari Wallach is about a mindset that looks at a future where new ways aren’t quite here yet and the old ways don’t work anymore.

Drawing on history, theology, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and social technologies, Wallach teaches readers to strengthen their ability to look ahead, relieve reactions to stressful events, increase capacity for cooperation, and even boost creativity.

Founder of a company that’s worked with CNN, Volkswagen Global, and The UN Refugee Agency among many others, in our conversation Wallach also describes the future trend he didn’t see coming.

In Ted Conover’s 7th book, CHEAP LAND COLORADO, he introduces us to the off-gridders and their families who live in an isolated part of southern Colorado’s enormous San Luis Valley.

In our conversation today Ted talks about why these folks seek out this difficult life, how they manage the bitter high-altitude winters, and the skills homeowners learn when there are no city services or utilities. 

Ted has ridden the rails with hoboes, crossed the border with Mexican immigrants, and butchered beef in a meat-packing plant in Nebraska. His day job is teaching at New York University. He's also the author of six other books and numerous articles published in The New Yorker, Harper’s and The Atlantic, among many others. Perhaps his best-known book is “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing,” an account of his ten months spent working as a corrections officer at New York’s Sing Sing Prison.

Christopher McDougall's Running with Sherman introduces us to the McDougall family and their menagerie--donkeys, rams, chickens, fainting goats--who all live on a small farm in rural Pennsylvania.

This book is part scientific exploration of the lost art of connecting with animals, part vivid telling of what life’s like in the southern part of Amish country, part radical rehabilitation story, part deep dive into the crazy sport that is burro racing (and the insane training required to run 15 miles with a donkey in tow in Colorado’s high altitude), and part road trip that cuts through the best of Americana.

Along the way impossibly, improbably, Sherman who starts out as a rescue donkey in this story learns to run.

This conversation with Chris McDougall took place several years ago. His newest book, Born to Run 2: The Ultimate Training Guide, will be released in December 2022. 

Delia Owens, the co-author of three nonfiction books on African research and wildlife, published her debut novel, “Where the Crawdads Sing,” in 2018, the year when this interview took place.  Since then this book has sold in the millions, attracted literary prizes, and has been made into a movie.  

Where the Crawdads Sing is a mystery, a love story, and a courtroom drama, but it is primarily about self-reliance and survival.  This nature-infused story features Kya, a young woman who was abandoned as a child in the remote coastal marshes of North Carolina and who learns to live by herself.  In our conversation Delia also talks about her research life in Africa studying wildlife and how that experience affects her today. 

"I learned from a book that crawdads don't really sing, but the important thing is that I learned from my mother that if you go deep enough into the wilderness, you'll hear them anyway."  Delia Owens

Private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner Joe Pike are back on the case in RACING THE LIGHT by Robert Crais whose thrillers have been translated into 42 languages.

In Bob's 23rd novel, Adele Schumacher isn't a typical worried mom. When she hires Elvis to find her missing son, a controversial podcaster named Josh Shoe, she brings a bag filled with cash, bizarre tales of government conspiracies, and a squad of professional bodyguards.

Finding Josh should be simple, but Elvis quickly learns he isn't alone in the hunt. Then mix in super-secret security tech, corrupt politicians, vicious business cartels, and of course, humor and suspense.

RIVER OF THE GODS by historian Candice Millard is her fourth book. Known for her meticulously researched work, her newest book is an adventure tale full of danger that takes place in unchartered territory in Africa in the mid-1800s.

For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery.  In 1854 Richard Burton and John Speke were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for England.

Finding the source of the Nile took years and would not have been possible for these Englishmen without the guidance, expertise and local knowledge of Sidi Mubarak Bombay, a former slave.

Richard Osman is an author, a well-known television personality and comedian in the UK. His newest book is The Bullet That Missed  in the popular “Thursday Murder Club” series that has already sold in the millions.

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim are adventurous 70somethings who live at the Coopers Chase Retirement Village in rural England and are the crime solvers in these light-hearted, clever mysteries. In the latest installment they solve murders, take on an ex-KGB colonel, and a murderous money launderer. Tv hosts and the local cops show up, too. 

Trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned.  

Patricia Schultz of “1000 Places to See Before You Die” fame has authored a different kind of book this time.

“WHY WE TRAVEL: 100 Reasons to Get Up and Go” pairs beautiful color photos with pearls of wisdom, lists, and essential travel tips and focuses not on where or when to travel, but on how travel enriches us and why we choose to travel.

She told me why packing tips are a whole lot more than what you put in your suitcase, what the first thing is she does when visiting a new city, and why an assignment to cover “The Game of Thrones” in Northern Ireland was so challenging. 

Kimberly Garza’s debut novel, “The Last Karankawas” explores modern, diverse south Texas.  She takes readers to the salty aired streets of Galveston where a tight-knit community of Mexican and Filipino American families live on the Texas coast.

When word spreads of an approaching storm named Hurricane Ike in 2008, each Galveston resident is forced to decide: abandon their hard-won home and flee inland, or board up the windows and hunker down.

Born in Galveston and raised in Uvalde, Kimberly is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

An American retired judge of the Superior Court of California, LaDoris Hazzard Cordell was also the first black female judge in the northern part of the state.

Her memoir, "HER HONOR, My Life on the Bench...What Works, What’s Broken, and How to Change It,"  is a robust and colorful collection of stories from 20 years as a judge.

In her courthouse she rotated through various specialties—family and probate courts, criminal jury trials and traffic court, to name just a few.

She uses real cases to highlight how judges make difficult decisions, all the while facing outside pressures from the media, law enforcement, and the friends and families of the people involved.

With INVISIBLE STORM Jason Kander has written the book he himself needed in his darkest moments of PTSD. After Afghanistan, his day job was politics as a rising star in the Democratic party, first in his native Missouri and then running for national office. But that stopped when symptoms became too great.

It’s the best book I’ve read about PTSD—what it is, what it feels like, what to do about it, how it affects families (through the words of his wife Diana), and how it interplays with a life of politics. 

Today, Jason Kander works with national veterans groups.

Ryan Busse, author of “GUNFIGHT. My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America” is a proud gun owner, sportsman, environmentalist, and conservationist and a former firearms executive who’s written an insider’s view of the radicalization of the US gun industry.

Busse explains how and when the US gun culture changed, that culture’s alliance with political factions in the US and abroad, and the most essential thing that we can do to change it.

Today, Busse is a policy advisor for gun control advocate and former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot and severely wounded during an assassination attempt.

Colorado-based Mark Lee Gardner’s ninth book, THE EARTH IS ALL THAT LASTS, is a dual biography of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the two most legendary and consequential American Indian leaders. The author's research features new primary sources, including diaries.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and their warriors crushed Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana and led Sioux resistance in the fierce final chapter of the “Indian Wars.”

This 1876 epic battle was the Sioux's greatest victory, but it was also the beginning of the end for their treasured sacred way of life.

David Gergen knows a thing or two about how leaders are made. He's been a White House adviser to four presidents (Nixon, Ford, Reagan & Clinton) of different parties, CNN senior political analyst, and founder of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School.

In Hearts Touched with Fire. How Great Leaders Are Made he presents his ideas about leadership using numerous examples from the past and present.

He traces the journeys of historic icons like Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, as well as contemporary game changers like Greta Thunberg, the Parkland students, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

It’s time, he says, to pass the torch to younger leaders.

Bill McKibben is an educator, environmental activist and author of more than a dozen books.  His newest title is a memoir, “The Flag, The Cross and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What The Hell Happened.” 

He is a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized twenty thousand rallies around the world in every country except North Korea. His new project, organizing people over age sixty for progressive change, is called Third Act.

OVERBOARD by crime writer Sara Paretsky is her 21st book in her series about her legendary detective, V.I. Warshawski.

As this book begins V.I. is on her way home from an all-night surveillance job in Chicago and is led by her dogs on a mad chase that ends when they discover a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan.

Credited with transforming the mystery category of books with the creation of her female private eye 40 years ago, Paretsky's books featuring V.I. Warshawski are international best sellers in 30 countries. She’s also the founder of Sisters in Crime and recipient of numerous awards around the world.

She’s advocated for women and the underserved for decades and works closely with literacy and reproductive rights groups.

Colorado-based Paul Holes, author of UNMASKED, specializes in cold case and serial predator crimes. He began his career in the Contra Costa County (CA) Sheriff's and District Attorney's Offices in California's Bay Area.

He led the team that found the Golden State Killer, the most notorious and cunning serial predator in U.S. history who hid in plain sight for more than 40 years.  

His memoir of investigating America’s toughest cold cases and the rewards and toll of a life solving crime also includes details of Laci Peterson’s murder and the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard.

He continues his work today applying innovative technology, including genetic genealogy, which was the key to identifying the Golden State Killer.

After dozens of travel guidebooks under his belt, Brandon Presser’s newest title is THE FAR LAND: 200 Years of Murder, Mania, And Mutiny In The South Pacific.

The mutiny on the British navy vessel HMS Bounty occurred in the South Pacific in 1789 when Fletcher Christian and his followers seized the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh. 

In 1808, an American merchant ship happened upon an uncharted island in the area and unwittingly solved the biggest nautical mystery of the era. They found the whereabouts of the Bounty’s band of fugitives who, after seizing their vessel, had disappeared into the night with their Tahitian companions.

Seven or so generations later, the island’s past still looms over its 48 residents-- descendants of the original mutineers, marooned like modern castaways. Today only a rusty cargo ship connects Pitcairn with the rest of the world a few times a year.

In WAYS & MEANS. Lincoln and his Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War, author Roger Lowenstein not only spells out how each side in very different ways paid for the war, but reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. 

Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

In our conversation he also describes the several ways that Mr. Putin in his invasion of Ukraine today are similar to what the Confederacy did more than 150 years ago.

Lowenstein is the author of 7 books, Including "America's Bank" and "Origins of the Crash." He reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, and his work appears in numerous other financial publications.