The Book Case

The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Important and Vulnerable Profession by Alexandra Robbins takes us inside the classroom to show us the daily lives of teachers as they fight against incredible odds to educate our young. An eye-opening, and at times shocking look at the American Education system and its inadequacies. Robbins asks the reader to forget all of their preconceived notions of te...

Henry Grabar is a writer for Slate, the online magazine, and he has written “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.” Now you probably are thinking, “I’ve never read a book about parking. A whole book? Come on.” Well, we thought the same thing but we were intrigued. So we read it and were engrossed. It is fascinating! It is funny! And it tells you so much about a subject on which we all ha...

Dave Barry's sense of humor should be on display at the Smithsonian; it is truly one America's great treasures. His latest novel, Swamp Story, is set in the back woods of the Florida Everglades. That's all we are going to tell you, because the plot is so wonderfully wild, you wouldn't believe us anyway. Join us while Dave makes us laugh, and then stick around for our conversation with Mitchell Kap...

Brendan Slocumb is a renaissance man who writes his novels with a mission in mind. A violin virtuoso, music teacher, clarinetist AND oboist, he is also a best selling author who writes brilliantly about the world of music. His books could be classed as mysteries but they also bring into stark, painful relief the still largely white and privileged world of classical music. He reminds his readers th...

If you aren't seeing the world through the eyes of J. Ryan Stradal's fiction, you are missing out on something truly special. He writes largely about the Midwest, specifically the state of Minnesota as well as food and drink. That may sound limiting, but his talent is without limit and he fills his pages with themes of family and shared humanity. His newest is Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper...

Charles Frazier comes across as a writer in love with America. Beyond the rolling plains and purple mountains majesty, he loves the stories of average Americans in extraordinary times and it comes across in everything he writes. His latest novel, The Trackers, is the most modern novel he has ever written and it takes place 100 years ago. His writing captures the optimism of the American ideal, and...

Has the United States ever had a female president? An easy question to answer. Has it ever had an ‘acting’ female President? Harder to answer. Check out Rebecca Boggs Roberts' very readable biography of Edith Wilson, Woodrow Wilson’s second wife, and make up your own mind. The book is Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson. Following her husband’s stroke i...

This week, we turn to non-fiction and events in a decade of U.S. history that is unknown to most Americans. The 1920’s were known for remarkable social change. In the wake of World War I, there was cultural exuberance, the first real skyscrapers, jazz age, flappers, the Charleston, and also prohibition. There was also a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, and surprising to many, it came in the north....

Harlan Coben is as successful a mystery writer as we have in the country today. He is probably known best for his page-turner plots. In his more than 35 books published to date he keeps you guessing throughout. I Will Find You is his latest - just out. And it’s a bit of a departure for Coben as he will tell you - a little more than half way through the book you find out who the bad guys are. That’...

Quite a few of you have written us that you would be interested in hearing from a book editor, so we went out and find one of the best. Beverly Horowitz, Senior Vice President of Delacorte Press which is a division of Random House, joins us for a fascinating talk about what she does and how she does it. She has been editing for decades and recently has taken to adapting popular and important non f...

It's Oscar Week! A week we’ll always love… even if we haven’t seen the all the movies. Our guest this week is Michael Schulman, author of Oscar Wars, a definitive bio of the awards ceremony and the organization that created it. From the catfights of Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland to the slap heard round the world, this book has it all. Halle Berry, Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, John Wayne,...

This week, The Book Case welcomes journalist Alex Prud’homme! His new book Dinner with the President explores the long history of food and American diplomacy. Did you know that the purchase of Pearl Harbor came about because of the first official state dinner ever? Did you know that many believe our involvement in WWII was predicated on a king and hot dog? These are all great stories and this book...

Five years ago Rebecca Makkai was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award. Now, in what is a treat for readers, Rebecca Makkai has just released a brand new novel, “I Have Some Questions for You”. It is a marvelously plotted mystery/novel about a podcaster, Bodie Kane, who returns to her prep school to teach a mini-course. One of her students wants to reinvestigate, with a podc...

Amity Gaige is our featured author this week - her latest book is Sea Wife. But when we say latest - it’s been out for almost three years. With apologies, we just discovered it. Shame on us. It’s a book about a couple struggling with marital problems who decide (well the husband decides) to buy a sailboat and head for open waters. His wife isn’t crazy about the idea of sailing around the world so...

Julie Otsuka doesn't just write, she crafts. Trained as a painter, Otsuka took up writing as her second career, and man oh man are we lucky she did. Her latest, The Swimmers, is just coming out in paperback and it is one of the most lyrical rich character portraits we have read. Julie joins us to talk about her unique style, and to tell us how she has kept each one of her novels to less than 200 p...

Stuart Gibbs is a man who loves his audience and his audience loves him. He has written six series of books for kids and all them offer a glimpse into the glee that Stuart Gibbs takes in the stories he tells. Whether it’s blowing up whales, going to a secretly run CIA training school for kids or a knight who never meant to become one, Stuart Gibbs takes real pleasure in entertaining his readers. O...

Ayana Gray doesn't just write books, she creates worlds. At 29 years old, she is already one of the best selling YA authors on the market (yes, it's ok to be jealous). Her series, which became Beasts of Prey and the more recently released Beasts of Ruin, presents a lush Pan-African fantasy world that will suck you in and won't let go. As page turners with mature themes, these books are the perfect...

You may have noticed that most weeks in our ‘rapid fire’ questions to featured authors, we ask if they have a favorite author. Little secret: Sometimes we are looking for ideas. A few weeks ago, John Irving told us he would read anything John Boyne has written just because Boyne wrote it. So we got busy reading John Boyne. It turns out he has a new book released just this past November, All the Br...

This week it is David Sedaris part two - or David Sedaris redux. We loved our conversation with him and as we said last week, were we to limit the conversation to just one podcast, we’d have to cut out some of the good stuff. This week David talks about his empathy for those who come to hear him speak or who ask him to sign a book, his love for reading appearances, how he tries out new material on...

David Sedaris is our guest this week and next. Our conversation with him was so delightful and insightful that we could find no way to edit our conversation to just one podcast without leaving out too much of the “good stuff’. David is unique. He writes marvelous essays of observation about modern life drawing much of his material from audiences who come to listen to him read and with whom he spen...

It might seem a bit presumptuous to write a three volume autobiography about the first 29 years of your life, wouldn’t you think? But Esmerelda Santiago lived an almost unbelievable first thirty years and writes in such a personal fashion, that reading her story makes you feel as if you’re in the company of a good friend speaking just to you. The first volume, When I was Puerto Rican tells the sto...

After you’ve bought Sister Sally the alpaca sweater, brother Billy his baseball bat, Mom her mixer and Dad his golf ball retriever, what small presents should you add? A book, of course! Everyone appreciates the thought that goes into giving just the right book. So have no fear, Kate and Charlie are here with what will be our annual “just the right book for everyone’s End-of-year book list.” If yo...

The book is Demon Copperhead , the author is Barbara Kingsolver. That should be enough said. If you read it and don’t come away thinking it is the best book you’ve read this year, it will be among the best. Her book is a prodigious feat on many levels. It is beautifully written. It gives you a sense of a part of America often ignored. It has wonderful characters. It is funny, and she writes it as...

Nelson DeMille - to meet him you’d think of him as the prototypical grandfatherly guy, mild-of-manner with a gentle soul. And you’d be right. It would be most unlikely that you’d also spot him as a guy who has written dozens of murder mysteries, spy novels and thrillers that have gained him a devoted audience. He has devised lots of ways to bump off his characters. You must watch out for those gra...

Let’s do the math. A human’s average life span: 80 years. Years after Similac and Gerbers: say 75 years. At approximately 1000 meals per year, that’s a lifetime of 75,000 meals. What if you had a different recipe for every one of those 75,000 meals? Celia Sack does. She is one of the owners of Omnivore Books in San Francisco. They sell nothing but cookbooks and books about food and drink. You don’...