November 1, 2009 

Annie Lehmann, author of The Accidental Teacher: Life Lessons from My Silent Son

Having severe autism does not stop Annie Lehmann's son Jonah from teaching her some of life's most valuable lessons. The Accidental Teacher, a heartfelt memoir about self-discovery rather than illness, uses insight and humor to weave a tale rich with kitchen-table wisdom. It explains the realities of life with a largely nonverbal son and explores the frustrations and triumphs of the Lehmann family as Jonah grew into a young adult.

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6.38 MB | 9:18 minutes | Read the transcript

October 1, 2009 

Mardi Link, author of Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town

Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town is a gripping account of the mysterious disappearance of a young nun in a northern Michigan town and the national controversy that followed when she turned up dead and buried in the basement of the church.

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8.3 MB | 12:04 minutes | Read the transcript

September 1, 2009 

John Kenneth White, author of Barack Obama's America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family, and Religion Ended the Reagan Era

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency marks a conclusive end to the Reagan era, writes John Kenneth White in Barack Obama's America. Reagan symbolized a 1950s and 1960s America, largely white and suburban, with married couples and kids at home, who attended church more often than not. The demographics, however, have shifted: Marriage is at an all-time low. Cohabitation has increased from a half-million couples in 1960 to more than 5 million in 2000 to even more this year. Gay marriages and civil unions are redefining what it means to be a family. And organized religions are suffering, even as Americans continue to think of themselves as a religious people.

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15.6 MB | 22:43 minutes | Read the transcript

August 1, 2009 

Susan Messer, author of Grand River and Joy

Grand River and Joy, named after a landmark intersection in Detroit, follows Harry Levine through the intersections of his life and the history of his city. It's a work of fiction set in a world that is anything but fictional, a novel about the intersections between races, classes and religions exploding in the long, hot summers of Detroit in the 1960s. Grand River and Joy is a powerful and moving exploration of one of the most difficult chapters of Michigan history.

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9.34 MB | 13:36 minutes | Read the transcript

July 1, 2009 

Greg Nelson, author of M Is for Michigan Football: Celebrating the Tradition of Michigan Football

M Is for Michigan Football explores 26 of the many traditions and highlights of the University of Michigan football program, the winningest in all of college football. The book features eye-popping photos and text about myriad traditions in alphabetical order—from beloved Coach Bo Schembechler (B), the 1969 win over Ohio State (the Game) (G), 1997 national championship (N), to zero—the number of losses suffered by the 1901 Wolverines in their undefeated, untied, and unscored-upon season (Z).

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6.73 MB | 9:48 minutes | Read the transcript

June 1, 2009 

Tom Diaz, author of No Boundaries: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement

No Boundaries is a former journalist's disturbing account of what many consider the "next Mafia"—Latino crime gangs. Like the Mafia, these gangs operate an international network; consider violence a routine matter of business; and defy U.S. law enforcement at every level, from city police departments to federal agencies.

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29.1 MB | 31:53 minutes | Read the transcript

May 1, 2009 

Arnie Bernstein, author of Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing

On the morning of May 18th, 1927, in Bath Michigan, Andrew P. Kehoe's farm caught fire.

At roughly the same time, the north wing of the Bath Consolidated School exploded.

Chaos ensued as those uninjured or killed by the blast worked to clear the rubble and get to the trapped children.

Kehoe pulled up to the devastated scene, and, shortly thereafter, his vehicle, packed with rusty farm equipment and dynamite, exploded, killing him, along with Superintendent Emory Huyck and several others.

At the end of it all, 38 children and six adults, including Kehoe and his wife, were dead.

Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing by Arnie Bernstein is the gripping account of this, America's first, and largest, school mass murder.

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18.9 MB | 20:39 minutes | Read the transcript

April 1, 2009 

John Howland, author of Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz

Ellington Uptown explores a little-discussed yet truly hybrid American musical tradition lost between the canons of authentic jazz and classical music.

John Howland is Assistant Professor of Music at Rutgers University and the cofounder and current editor-in-chief of the journal Jazz Perspectives.

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18.2 MB | 19:53 minutes | Read the transcript

March 10, 2009 

Betty Jean Lifton, author of Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience, Third Edition

The first edition of Betty Jean Lifton's Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience advanced the adoption rights movement in the United States in 1979, challenging many states' policies of maintaining closed birth records. For nearly three decades the book has topped recommended reading lists for those who seek to understand the effects of adoption—including adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents, and their friends and families.

Now in its third edition, author Betty Jean Lifton talks with us about her book. Dr. Lifton is an adoption counselor and adopted person. She has a practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts as well as New York City and does telephone counseling across the country. Visit her website at www.bjlifton.com.

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8.49 MB | 9:16 minutes | Read the transcript

January 20, 2009 

Liza Wieland, author of A Watch of Nightingales

A sharply written piece of fiction, A Watch of Nightingales, the 2008 Michigan Literary Fiction Award winner, combines memories we all have of attending school with hot-button issues ranging from culture clash to school politics to homosexuality.

"Conjuring the entwined lives of teachers and students in two schools (and two generations) on either side of the Atlantic, A Watch of Nightingales stands alongside The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Goodbye, Mr. Chips as a testament to the responsibilities, rewards, and risks of teaching. This is a book of luminous insight and quiet but telling wisdom, about youth and maturity and the bridge of loss and remorse that connects them. Liza Wieland's is a mature and deeply moving vision, conveyed in prose that sings as sure and clear as the birds of her title."
—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl

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5.82 MB | 6:22 minutes | Read the transcript

November 13, 2008 

Karen Chilton, author of Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist, from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC

In a career spanning over four decades, Hazel Scott became known not only for her accomplishments on stage and screen, but for her outspoken advocacy of civil rights. Her relentless crusade on behalf of African Americans, women, and artists made her the target of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy Era, eventually forcing her to join the black expatriate community in Paris. By age twenty-five, Hazel Scott was an international star but, before reaching thirty-five, she considered herself a failure and, plagued by insecurity and depression, twice tried to take her own life. Here, Karen Chilton traces the fascinating arc of this talented and audacious American artist.

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10.4 MB | 11:25 minutes | Read the transcript

October 9, 2008 

Mildred MacGregor, author of World War II Front Line Nurse

Along with so many others who signed up to support the war effort, thirty-year-old Mildred Radawiec left a comfortable job at the University of Michigan Hospital to volunteer as a surgical nurse in the major battle theaters of the war.

Throughout her story—and despite the horrors of the war—Radawiec recounts uplifting tales of heroism and courage, and intersperses the narrative with poignant letters from her family and fiancé.

This stirring personal account will fascinate anyone interested in World War II history and women's too-often-overlooked role in it.

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16.1 MB | 17:36 minutes

September 9, 2008 

Cynthia Baron, co-author of Reframing Screen Performance

Are screen actors just playing themselves? Can film acting be considered "true" acting? Are there ways to describe the acting choices we see in films? These are some of the questions Cynthia Baron and Sharon Carnicke address in their new book, Reframing Screen Performance.

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19.4 MB | 21:14 minutes | Read the transcript

August 8, 2008 

Herbert Gans, author of Imagining America in 2033: How the Country Put Itself Together after Bush

Herbert Gans is one of the most influential and prolific sociologists and social commentators of our time. He is the author of Imagining America in 2033: How the Country Put Itself Together after Bush.

Part utopia, part realism, Imagining America is set mostly in the second and third decades of the century. It offers a set of progressive yet practical guidelines for restoring sanity and intelligence to nearly every aspect of life post-Bush.

In Gans's imagined future, elected officials, policymakers, activists, and citizens have transformed America into a much more humane and effective democracy. The book features three Democratic presidents; the major new domestic, foreign, and social policies their administrations pursue; and the political battles they fight.

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14 MB | 15:07 minutes | Read the transcript

July 9, 2008 

Mardi Link, author of When Evil Came to Good Hart

In the summer of 1968, in a sleepy northern Michigan resort town, a suburban-Detroit family was found shot dead in their cabin. Forty years later, the murders remain unsolved and the case has grown cold.

The search for who killed the Robison family stretched from Michigan to Florida, Alabama, and Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Dozens of investigators took up the case. The murders even inspired a novel.

Yet few have gotten as close to the story as Mardi Link, author of When Evil Came to Good Hart.

Link's page-turning tale collects 40 years of evidence into a riveting true-crime story. She crafts her book around police and court documents as well as statements and interviews, and explores the impact of the case on the community of Good Hart.

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11 MB | 11:43 minutes | Read the transcript

June 9, 2008 

Jim Rossignol, author of This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities

Part personal history, part travel narrative, part philosophical reflection on the meaning of games, This Gaming Life describes Rossignol's encounters with gamers in three unique gaming cities: London, Seoul, and Reykjavik. From his days as a Quake genius in London's increasingly corporate gaming culture, to his encounters with Korea's high stakes, televised professional gaming milieu to his adventures in Iceland, the national home of his ultimate obsession, the idiosyncratic and beguiling Eve Online, Rossignol introduces us to a still-emerging and largely undocumented world of gaming lives.

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13 MB | 22:19 minutes | Read the transcript

May 6, 2008 

Dave Dempsey, author of Great Lakes for Sale: From Whitecaps to Bottlecaps

Renowned environmental writer Dave Dempsey is the author of Great Lakes for Sale: From Whitecaps to Bottlecaps, a must-read book about water, one of the most—perhaps the most—precious natural resources.

This is a book for anyone interested in saving the Great Lakes, a huge fresh-water system that contains about 25 percent of the world's fresh surface water. The book asks—and answers—important questions about the export and diversion of Great Lakes water. Not only does Great Lakes for Sale examine past and present water-diversion practices; it also shows readers what they can do to save this natural resource.

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6 MB | 15:34 minutes | Read the transcript

April 17, 2008

Michael S. Lewis-Beck, co-author of The American Voter Revisited

Recreates the outstanding 1960 classic The American Voter—which was based on the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956—following the same format, theory, and mode of analysis as the original. In this new volume, the authors test the ideas and methods of the original against presidential election surveys from 2000 and 2004. Surprisingly, the contemporary American voter is found to behave politically much like voters of the 1950s.

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7 MB | 18:10 minutes | Read the transcript

March 18, 2008

Michael Musheno and Susan M. Ross, authors of Deployed: How Reservists Bear the Burden of Iraq

The stories of the citizen soldiers of an Army Reserve unit who were among the first wave of reservists mobilized after September 11.

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36 MB | 38:58 minutes | Read the transcript

February 18, 2008

Nancy Goldstein, author of Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist

A richly illustrated biography of a pioneering woman artist and the characters she created.

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36 MB | 38:49 minutes | Read the transcript