Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

It’s Valentine’s Day! To mark the occasion, Big Books and Bold Ideas is dipping into the archives to focus on love — and not just romantic love. This show highlights love of all kinds: familial love, love between friends, even the love of books. We start with Leif Enger, who joined host Kerri Miller in Red Wing last June to talk about his novel, “I Cheerfully Refuse.” Enger’s latest book is dystop...

At what cost revolution? In Fabienne Josaphat’s new novel, “ Kingdom of No Tomorrow ,” 20-year-old Nettie Boileau trades the turmoil of Duvalier’s Haiti for the tumult of 1960s America. Settling with her aunt in Oakland, she is drawn to the social programs spearheaded by the burgeoning Black Panther Party. But her focus on healing and public health is soon subsumed by the revolution and her passio...

Sarah Hoover knows her new memoir, “ The Motherload ,” isn’t flattering. She’s made peace with the fact that “people will judge me on the internet,” as she says on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. She’s telling her story anyway because she believes an honest rendering of modern motherhood is necessary. “In my defense, birth and motherhood did not match up to the narrative I’d been fed, and it...

David Wright Faladé didn’t learn the truth about his lineage until he was 16. That’s when his mother told him that his biological father was a West African student she initially met in post-war Paris, as she grappled with the trauma of her Jewish family surviving the Holocaust. It was a shock to a mixed-race boy growing up in the panhandle of Texas, playing football and drinking Slurpee’s in 1970s...

President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for a second term on Monday, Jan. 20. So this week, Big Books and Bold Ideas asked two historians who’ve written about America’s past to reflect on America’s future and give us a broader view of where we are. They point to eras in our past that predict our present. They also discuss what they’ll be watching for as Trump returns to the Oval Office. G...

Robin Wall Kimmerer embodies an abundance mindset. The naturalist and author sees the world through the lens of her Anishinaabe ancestors, where interdependence is reality, and humans are neither above nor below the natural world. We are just one part, kin to every animal and plant and stream. Her beloved book, “ Braiding Sweetgrass ,” laid out this philosophy. Published in 2013, it enjoyed a gent...

In Nov. 2024, The Atlantic’s cover article rang alarm bells among readers, writers, college professors and parents alike. The article was headlined: The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books . The premise is that many students admitted to elite colleges arrive having read very few books all the way through. “It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading,” says the article. “It’s that they...

Maggie Burkhardt is 81, a deceptively sweet former Wisconsinite who now resides in Egypt at a once-fashionable hotel. She’s landed there somewhat mysteriously, but hotel staff and guests alike are charmed by her eccentric wit — until they find themselves on the receiving end of her “help.” Widowed Maggie believes it is her life’s mission to fix what she perceives as broken. Or as puts it: “I liber...

Charles Bock is honest from the beginning of his new memoir, “ I Will Do Better ”: He never wanted to be a dad. He was much more interested in pursuing his literary dreams than shepherding a child to adulthood. But his wife really wanted a baby. And he didn’t think it would be right to tell her no. “In the book, I say: She wants to be a mom? OK. Let her. I’ll continue with my ambitions. On weekend...

The pandemic shook up the way many of us work. It accelerated change in a system often slow to adapt. But more change is needed, argues journalist Brigid Schulte. Her new book, “ Over Work ,” is centered on the idea that work has not really worked for “far too may people for far too long.” Americans increasingly say they are dissatisfied with their jobs and burned out . It’s a bleak setting for em...

The gut is all the rage these days. Many an influencer has built a platform on how to keep our digestive systems happy, healthy and moving. But humans have long fetishized the gut. Doctors and philosophers have deliberated its influence on our emotional stability. Theologians declared it wicked. Disposing of bodily waste in both sanitary and silent ways is a mark of modernity. Historian Elsa Richa...

If you stopped eating eggs for fear it could raise your cholesterol, or you avoided giving peanuts to your toddler to prevent allergies, or you stayed away from hormone replacement therapy because you were told it could cause breast cancer — you are a victim of what Dr. Marty Makary calls “medical dogma.” Long known as an iconoclast in the medical community, Dr. Makary’s latest book, “ Blind Spots...

When faced with the realities of climate change, marine biologists must hold two competing thoughts simultaneously: The seas are warming, the fish are waning, the corals are bleaching. But that doesn’t mean the global ocean is doomed. After all, this is the planet’s largest ecosystem. It knows how to adapt. The question is really: Will we enable it or hinder it? Helen Scales lives at the balance o...

In his 2019 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, “ The Overstory ,” Richard Powers imagines a world where only a few acres of virgin forest remain on the continent. A group of strangers band together to protect those few remaining trees, and in the process, discover the trees are communicating with each other. Powers’ new novel, “ Playground ,” turns the same eye to the planet’s oceans. As he tells Kerri...

Beloved children’s author Kate DiCamillo published three new books this year: “ Ferris ,” “ Orris and Timble: The Beginning ,” and “ The Hotel Balzaar .” She has two more coming next year — plus 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the book that started it all, “ Because of Winn-Dixie .” She is a prolific writer, a lifelong reader and a delightful human. Which made her the perfect guest to close out...

You might know Katharine Lee Bates wrote the poem that eventually became the song, “America the Beautiful,” after she visited the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado and was overcome by its beauty. But did you know she grew up a precocious youngest child in a family that struggled after the death of her father? And that she was a budding feminist who chafed at menial tasks like sewing and wished for no...

As we approach Election Day, Big Books and Bold Ideas returns to our Americans and Democracy series. Here are some of the question we’re confronting. How nimble and flexible and resilient is our democracy? What is required of Americans to build and support a healthy democracy? Do we still want it? Eboo Patel writes in his book, “ We Need to Build ,” that a fresh manifesto for a new era in America...

It’s a winter night when we first meet Tom Rourke. He’s penning love letters, preening in mirrors, pushing dope, partaking of booze, singing and flirting and fighting. It's just another night in Butte, Montana, for the feckless young Irishman. And no one writes the Irish quite like Kevin Barry. Barry’s new novel, “The Heart in Winter,” is his first set in America. But true to form, it features the...

Louise Erdrich is, without a doubt, a beloved writer. The Minnesota Native American author has won nearly every literary award out there — including a Pulitzer for “ The Night Watchman ” and a National Book Award for “ The Round House ” — and her stories captivate, haunt and delight millions of devoted readers. She can accept the praise. But the title beloved? She’s not into it. That’s just one of...

Novelist Alice Hoffman’s new middle grade book, “When We Flew Away,” imagines Anne Frank’s life before her family was forced into hiding. She joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on stage for Talking Volumes to talk about the emotional arc of re-creating Frank’s too-short life.

Immigration is a hot topic this election year, and many Minnesota communities are asking questions about how to face the challenges and opportunities immigrants bring. That’s why MPR News host Kerri Miller traveled to Worthington for the final Rural Voice town hall of the 2024 season. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Nobles County, where Worthington is located, is Minnesota’s most rapidly divers...

It was a celebration at St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater Tuesday night, as the 25th season of Talking Volumes launched with Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat . She joined host Kerri Miller on stage to talk about the vulnerability inherent in her new book of essays, “ We’re Alone .” They also talked about the challenges facing the Haitian-American community at this moment and how Danticat’s own fam...

Farming is a bedrock industry in Minnesota. While the number of farms has been falling for decades, partly due to consolidation and partly due to crop shifts, Minnesota remains sixth in the nation when it comes to agriculture production. Could rural Minnesota communities also lead the way when it comes to conservation farming? MPR News host Kerri Miller brought that topic to Buck Mills Brewery in...

William Moyers was one of the lucky ones. Sober for decades after years of addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine, he became a model of success and redemption. He started working at the Hazelden Betty Ford, and in 2006, he published a vulnerable memoir, “Broken,” about his journey out of addiction. But then he was prescribed pain killers after some dental work. And he found himself addicted again....

How do we restore trust in civic institutions and nurture a renewed sense of possibility in a shared future? That was the central question animating the Rural Voice community discussion MPR News host Kerri Miller led at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on Thursday. She was joined by political scientist and Minnesota native Brian Klaas , who set the stage by describing the bleak realities of the pol...