All About Books

This week on “All About Books” an interview with History Professor Jim Downs about his research into how modern disease research began and the unsuspected factors that played a role. His book is, “Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine.”

Only a handful of Jews ever managed to escape the Auschwitz concentration camp. Rudolph Vrba was the first in April of 1944. The remarkable story of how Vrba planned and carried it out is told in the book, “The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World” by Jonathan Freeland. It’s reviewed this week on

12-year old Cassandra is unable to save her young brother from a tragic accident and his body is never found. This event rends the family apart and the grown Cassandra sees her missing brother everywhere in the faces of strangers. “The Furrows” by Namwali Serpell is a noel as elegy dealing with memories and grief.

Alice is just one of the swimmers at the indoor pool who has a private, daily routine. When the pool is shut down for repairs, we learn how valuable this comforting routine was in holding off Alice’s encroaching dementia.,“The Swimmers” a novel by Julie Otsuka.

When Ada Calhoun came across research her father had collected 40 years ago in his unfinished quest to write a biography of his friend the poet Frank O’Hara, she resolved to finish it herself. The book Calhoun wrote, “Also a Poet” combines literary history, memoir and an honest appraisal of her complicated relationship with her father.

It’s an office of intelligence operatives that will never be mistaken for James Bond. This is the cynical and grubby world of best-selling author Mick Herron. His latest installment in the Slough House spy series is called “Bad Actors”

It’s a journey back to small town life through memories, with Nebraska-native Bob Wirz (weerz). He's written a love-letter to the state he grew up in, “My Nebraska: Rich Memories of Growing Up in Rural Nebraska Decades Ago”. Join "All About Books" host Pat Leach for a conversation with the author,

Set in the Nebraska Sandhills, “Pickard County Atlas” is a slow-burning thriller of 6 fateful days that begin at a murdered boy's tombstone. "All About Books" host Pat Leach has a review of this debut novel by Nebraska author Chris Harding Thornton.

Ponca tribal member Cliff Taylor wanted to give back to his community. He collected stories told to him by members of his family resulting in the book, “The Memory of Souls". Cliff joins “All About Books” to share his motivation for writing and his thoughts on the books that best describe Nebraska to him.

You’ll find realistic and interesting lives in two new graphic novels introduced by Traci Glass Assistant Library Dir for Lincoln City Libraries. “Ducks: 2 Years in the Oil Sands” by Kate Deaton and “Acting Class” by Nick Drnaso

Combining cultural examination and autobiography, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Margo Jefferson’s new book pursues many threads at once- music, beauty, celebrity. Hear a review of her new book, “Constructing a Nervous System”

Online harassment forces a woman offline for a while. She heads to the place she felt safe as a child- to her late Grandmother’s city of Lincoln, Nebraska. This week’s “All About Books” features an interview with Nebraska author Ladette Randolph, she talks to host Pat Leach about her new novel, “Private Way”

This novel is Charles Dicken’s Victorian epic of grim poverty, cruelty and survival brought to the American rural south. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver is a page turner of a story which follows a resilient boy born into systemic poverty.

Because of extreme weather and drought, landscaping your home with native plants has gone from a niche area of gardening to the sustainable future. Benjamin Vogt, a master gardener and writer here in Nebraska, has just published, “Prairie Up!: an Introduction to Natural Garden Design” It’s a photo-rich guide to reviving plant and wildlife diversity in the neighborhood.

With characters from the past and the distant future, the best-selling novel “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St John Mandel is a work of speculative fiction playful and puzzling.

The Nebraska National Forest at Halsey is the largest hand-planted forest in the Western Hemisphere. UNL Professor of photography Dana Fritz joins Pat Leach to talk about her new book about this unique ecosystem. “Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape” is filled with environmental essays, maps as well as historical and contemporary photographs.

Many of the books suggested by listeners which describe Nebraska best for them have been literature or history. This week Don Macke joins host Pat Leach to suggest titles that offer a sociopolitical description of our state as part of the series, "This is Nebraska - Books That Tell Our Story"

If you’ve wondered why some people find pleasure in sad songs, this week’s program offers some insight. Host Pat Leach talks about the New York Times best-seller, “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole” by Susan Cain.

Take a trip back to Renaissance Italy and into the family at the center of everything. A new novel by best-selling author Maggie O’Farrell offers a fictional take on a teenage girl who married into the d’Medici family- “The Marriage Portrait”

Pat Leach talks with Clark Whitehorn, Senior Editor with the University of Nebraska Press about which books he thinks best describe our state.

More holiday gift suggestions but this time aimed at younger readers. Vicky Wood, Youth Services Coordinator at Lincoln City Libraries brings suggestions for kids of different ages.

The annual Holiday Gift Guide for book lovers airs this week on "All About Books." Special guest Leslie Huerta of "Francie and Finch" book store has suggestions in many categories including: novels, memoirs and history as well as titles for people with an interest in birds, engines or ancient Egypt.

Nebraska journalist, George Ayoub, has written a biography of Omaha World Herald CEO John Gottschalk. Hear an interview with the author about the research and writing of “Confluence: John Gottschalk’s Life or Duty, Service and the Business of News.”

In 1873, a small community in south eastern Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried in the cabin cellar and property of a family of homesteaders, were the remains of countless bodies. The book, “Hell’s Half Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier” traces the mystery that fascinated the nation after the Civil War.

After the Korean War a medical doctor leaves his homeland for rural Minnesota where he works at a hospital living the quiet, American dream for 50 years. Then, a letter arrives from Korea which may expose the lie the doctor’s life was built upon. “The Evening Hero” is a new novel by Marie Myung-Ok Lee.