Author Chats & Book Recommendations
Authors in blue available for phone chats
Additional recommendations in black
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Hermit Jeffrey H. Ryan When Jim Whyte settled outside the slate mining town of Monson, Maine in 1895, people hardly knew what to make of him. And almost 130 years later, we still don't. A world traveler that spoke six languages fluently, Whyte came to town with sacks full of money and a fierce desire to keep to... |
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Some Rain Must Fall The fifth book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s powerful My Struggle series is written with tremendous force and sincerity. As a nineteen-year-old, Karl Ove moves to Bergen and invests all of himself in his writing. But his efforts get the opposite effect — he wants it so much that he gets... |
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A Year of Living Kindly Donna Cameron Being kind is something most of us do when it’s easy and when it suits us. Being kind when we don’t feel like it, or when all of our buttons are being pushed, is hard. But that’s also when it’s most needed; that’s when it can defuse anger and even violence, when it can restore civility in our personal and... |
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Losing Earth By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change – including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince... |
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Daughter of Neptune Theresa Wisner Travel below decks with the author as she fishes the most perilous seas in the world in search of the love of her father. With courage and grit, she tells the story of addiction and recovery, and coming of age far later than most. Daughter of Neptune powerfully captures the beauty and the... |
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The New Jim Crow Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack... |
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Summary of the Mueller Report Thomas E. Patterson An abridged version of the Mueller Report intended for those who don't have the time to read the 448-page full report. This version, which is a fourth of the length, uses the exact words of the Mueller Report to relate the key findings of the Special Counsel's investigation... |
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Karl Marx As the 19th century unfolded, its inhabitants had to come to terms with an unparalleled range of economic, political, religious and intellectual challenges. Distances shrank, new towns sprang up, and inventions transformed the industrial landscape. In the aftermath of Waterloo, a European... |
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Heart in Dixie Nicholas Bouler A new political novel, for America's new politics. In 1972 a segregationist southern governor ran in the Democratic Presidential primaries, before dropping out of the race. Primaries had been held in 15 states. He had won five. Heart in Dixie is a fictional description of the movement that began... |
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The Fire Next Time At once an evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of racial injustice, this book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters," written on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, exhorting Americans to attack the legacy of racism... |
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Forgotten Ellis Island Lorie Conway "How rare it is to find an absolutely fascinating story that has never been told," wrote noted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin about Forgotten Ellis Island. The book tells the lost story of the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital that saved tens of thousands of lives as immigrants flooded onto Ellis... |
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The Shock of the Anthropocene The Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped into a state unknown for millions of years. How did we get to this point? Refuting... |
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Sinister Summer: Cars, Cruisers, and Close Calls C.A. Hartnell Surf's up! Make the summer scene for friendship, fun, adventure, and mystery that fill the pages of Sinister Summer: Cars, Cruisers, and Close Calls, the second volume in a four book series, The 1950s Adventures of Pete and Carol Ann... |
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This Changes Everything The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core "free market" ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political... |
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The World in a Grain Vince Beiser A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award – The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world—sand—and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other—even more than... |
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Capital in the Twenty-First Century What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But... |
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Louisburg Square A. Dudley Johnson, Jr. How does a woman divorce her husband in a time when only men had the right to "grant divorces?" It’s the Gilded Age and Anna Tattersall has taken her two boys and left her husband who was seen in the embrace of one of her closest friends. She’s now staying with her true love, a wealthy... |
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A Fighting Chance As a child in small-town Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren yearned to go to college and then become an elementary school teacher—an ambitious goal, given her family’s modest means. Early marriage and motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen years later she was a... |
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Above the Ether Eric Barnes A mesmerizing novel of unfolding dystopia amid the effects of climate change in a world very like our own, for readers of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. In this prequel to Eric Barnes's acclaimed cli-fi novel The City Where We Once Lived, six... |
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The Idea of Socialism The idea of socialism has given normative grounding and orientation to the outrage over capitalism for more than 150 years, and yet today it seems to have lost much of its appeal. Despite growing discontent, many would hesitate to invoke socialism when it comes to envisioning life... |
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Prudence in Hollywood Ralph Cissne "I went to the gynecologist last week, which isn't all that unusual except I'm a man. Prudence insisted I go." So begins the title story of this collection exploring the matrix of modern American relationships. From Farewell True Love to Prudence in Hollywood... |
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Between the World and Me In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis... |
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A Year on the Tump Daniel P.T. Thomas Turn onto Chincoteague Road, just past the rockets at the NASA Visitor Center, open the car windows. The road bends to the right and a massive horizon opens up. Breathe in the smell of the marsh. Get ready to be home - for the first time, or forever. A Year on the Tump unveils the seasons of life on... |
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The Loudest Voice in the Room A deeply reported journey inside the secretive world of Fox News and the life of its combative, visionary founder. When Rupert Murdoch enlisted Roger Ailes to launch a cable news network in 1996, American politics and media changed forever. Now, with a... |
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Miracle Man William R. Leibowitz Miracle Man is a psychological thriller that explores extraordinary genius, Big Pharma corruption, CIA machinations, metaphysical forces, and one man's tireless quest at terible cost to validate his life. The victim of an unspeakable crime, an infant rises to become a new type of superhero... |
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The Austin Paradox William R. Leibowitz Having lost his extraordinary intellectual powers in a laboratory explosion that was intended to kill him, Dr. Robert James Austin, the greatest genius in history, whose medical cures saved countless millions, struggles to find meaning in a life that has become devoid of purpose. As he... |
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Alienation The Hegelian-Marxist idea of alienation fell out of favor after the postmetaphysical rejection of humanism and essentialist views of human nature. Jaeggi draws on the Hegelian philosophical tradition, phenomenological analyses grounded in modern conceptions of agency, and recent... |
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Solomon the Accountant Edward M. Krauss A Jewish love story. Solomon the Accountant is set in Toledo, Ohio, in the 1950s. Solomon falls in love with the beautiful, newly widowed Molly. He is painfully aware of her recent loss, yet she becomes the focal point of his life. He hopes that someday - regardless of how long... |
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The Sixth Extinction Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact... |
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A Water Lily Blooms Sylvia S. Mader An attractive young woman lies critically injured and comatose in a hospital bed far from home. Images come and go as she struggles to regain consciousness. Is that a tall, dark man beckoning her from a distance? Will she reach him? Or will her life be cut short, denying her a second chance for... |
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America's War for the Greater Middle East From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Bacevich, one of the... |
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The Pepper Tree Dave Freedland A Southern California landmark primarily known to law enforcement has earned a reputation for crime scenes of the most unspeakable homicides. Infamous serial killers have chosen this location to discard and display their victims as trophies of their horrific deeds. Lieutenant Scott... |
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The Nordic Theory of Everything A Finnish journalist, now a naturalized American citizen, asks Americans to draw on elements of the Nordic way of life to nurture a fairer, happier, more secure, and less stressful society for themselves and their children. Moving to America in 2008, Anu Partanen quickly went... |
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A Story of Bad Edward M. Krauss The relationship between the police and the media has always been a strange one; adding romance creates serious complications. A Story of Bad is the tale of a cop and reporter entering into a controversial romance, where they both try to stay loyal to their employers' rules and ethics, while... |
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Here on Moon Edward M. Krauss Betrayal, divorce, recovery. Here On Moon is the story of Carole, a wife and mother with a successful career who, in her mid-30s, is devastated by her husband Ken's infidelity and humiliated by his refusal to be forgiven. She has no choice but divorce, and we follow her through the... |
