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The Book Show Each week on The Book Show, host Joe Donahue interviews authors about their books, their lives and their craft. It is a celebration of both reading and writers. As the son of a librarian, Joe has been part of the book world since childhood. His first job was as a library assistant, during college he was a clerk at an independent book store and for the past 25 years he has been interviewing authors about their books on the radio. He is also the host of The Roundtable on WAMC/Northeast Public Radio, a 3-hour general interest talk show. Notable authors he has interviewed include: Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, John Updike, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Anne Rice, Philip Roth, E.L Doctorow, Richard Russo, David Sedaris and Maya Angelou. He has won several awards for his interviews, including honors from the Associated Press, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the New York State Association of Broadcasters, The Headliners, The National Press Club and the Scripps-Howard Foundation. E-mail The Book Show. Recent and upcoming shows: Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,228 - week of January 30 Margot Livesey - Livesey, who grew up in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught at a private school for boys, has released her seventh novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy. The book echoes some of Livesey's experiences. Gemma, orphaned young, is sent to a boarding school where she is both servant and student. As a young adult, she takes a job as an au pair on the Orkney Islands in a story that pays homage to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,227 - week of January 23 Stewart O'Nan - O'Nan's thirteenth novel, The Odds, is an original, bittersweet snapshot, like his celebrated Last Night at the Lobster. It's Valentine's weekend, and Art and Marion Fowler flee their Cleveland suburb for Niagara Falls, desperate to recoup their losses. Jobless, with their home approaching foreclosure and their marriage on the brink of collapse, Art and Marion liquidate their savings account and book a bridal suite at the Falls' ritziest casino for a second honeymoon. While they sight see like tourists during the day, at night they risk it all at the roulette wheel to fix their finances—and save their marriage. The book is a tender yet honest exploration of faith, forgiveness and last chances. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,226 - week of January 16 William Gibson - Since his 1984 debut novel Neuromancer, in which he coined the term "cyberspace" and envisioned the Internet before it was a pervasive reality, William Gibson has long been recognized as a literary pioneer with an eye for technological movements and social change. His most recent New York Times-bestselling trilogy, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History, earned international acclaim as "the god of speculative fiction" (New York Magazine.) Gibson has always had the keen ability to spot our technological and cultural trajectory in both his fiction and nonfiction and grants readers a privileged view into the mind of the writer whose thinking has shaped not only a generation of writers, but our entire culture. Gibson's first collection of nonfiction, Distrust that Particular Flavor, includes essays and articles published over the course 30 years in publications as varied as Wired, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and the Observer. Taken together, these pieces offer perspective into the very ideas that are part his novels: the future, technology, history and connectivity. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,225 - week of January 9 Sara Paretsky - Thirty years ago, mystery writer Sara Paretsky published her first novel starring intrepid Chicago P.I. V.I. Warshawski. Her latest in the popular series is: Breakdown. The plot mixes the mania for vampire and supernatural novels, especially among tweens, tabloid journalism, xenophobia and dirty politics. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,224 - week of January 2 Amy Waldman - Ten years after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, former NY Times journalist and first-time novelist Amy Waldman has imagined an alternative history to the selection process for the 9/11 Memorial in NYC. The Submission tells the story of what happens when a Muslin Architect wins the design competition. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,223 - week of December 26 Sebastian Barry - Barry is a Costa Prize winner and 2-time Man Booker Prize shortlist nominee. He is a prolific poet and playwright and the author of five novels, including The Secret Scripture, Annie Dunne and A Long Long Way. His latest is On Canaan's Side - the story of 20th century America though the span of one woman's lifetime, Lilly Dunne. NOTE- REPEAT of Book Show originally aired during the week of September 5, 2011. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,222 - week of December 19 David Pietrusza - Called one "of the best historians in the United States" and "the undisputed champion of chronicling American Presidential campaigns," David Pietrusza has produced a number of critically-acclaimed works concerning 20th century American history. In his new book, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America. Pietrusza goes beyond the famed "Dewey defeats Truman" headline to reveal backstage events and to place in context a down-to-the-wire donnybrook fought against the background of an erupting Cold War, the Berlin Airlift, and the birth of Israel, a post-war America facing exploding storms over civil rights, and domestic communism. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,221 - week of December 12 Tom Perrotta - In Perrotta's new novel, The Leftovers, he asks the question: What if a Rapture-like event actually happened and millions of people around the globe simply vanished in one quick unexplained moment? Perrotta is the author of The Abstinence Teacher, Little Children, Joe College, and Election. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,220 - week of December 5 Colson Whitehead - Whitehead won a following with stories that explore a world that's both familiar and a little skewed - or a lot. His new book, Zone One, is, Whitehead says, "about a guy just trying to make it to the next day without being killed. So it's about New Yorkers." Zone One is the story of the human survivors who are clearing the undead from Lower Manhattan. They bag and remove the zombies, which they call skels, hoping the island can be re-inhabited. Colson Whitehead is the author of the novels Sag Harbor; The Intuitionist, and John Henry Days - which won the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,219 - week of November 28 Umberto Eco - Umberto Eco is an accomplished medieval scholar and author who is best known for his bestselling novel, The Name of the Rose. Now comes his latest, The Prague Cemetery, already a bestselling novel in 40 other countries around the world. This story is based on monstrous and mysterious events of the 19th century including death of Ippolito Nievo, the forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Dreyfus affair and more. In the world Eco creates, conspiracies abound and one man finds himself in the middle of it all. It is a pleasure to welcome Umberto Eco to the Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,218 - week of November 21 Hillary Jordan - "When she woke, she was red," begins Hillary Jordan's novel of a woman who has lost not only her place in society, but her faith as well. Hannah Payne has been sentenced to monochroming for the crime of abortion. It is the tale told in When She Woke by the author of Mudbound. Hillary Jordan joins us on this week's Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,217 - week of November 14 Chuck Klosterman - Klosterman is a culture guru – whose new novel is The Visible Man - which explores the consequence of culture, the influence of media, the complexity of voyeurism, and the existential contradiction of normalcy. We welcome Chuck Klosterman to this week's Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,216 - week of November 7 Jeffrey Eugenides - It's been nearly a decade since Jeffrey Eugenides released his Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling novel Middlesex. The writer – also known for his debut novel, The Virgin Suicides – has just released his highly anticipated new novel - The Marriage Plot. We will welcome Jeffrey Eugenidies to talk about it on this week's Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,215 - week of October 31 Jonathan Franzen - Franzen, one of America's most famous and feted literary novelists, is the author of the 2001 international best-selling novel The Corrections, which won the National Book Award, and last year's literary blockbuster Freedom. He joins us this week on The Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,214 - week of October 24 Ruth Rendell - Baroness Ruth Rendell has written an astounding 59 novels. All are reason to rejoice, but her 60th, The Vault, starring Reginald Wexford, is simply brilliant. The now retired Chief Inspector Wexford is called upon to aid the police in an investigation that hasthem stumped. Ruth Rendell joins us on this week's Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,213 - week of October 17 Tom Piazza - From Bob Dylan to Norman Mailer to Gustave Flaubert, from the Mississippi Delta to his adopted home of New Orleans, Tom Piazza covers a lot of ground as a writer on music and culture. His new book is Devil Sent the Rain and will join us on this week's Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,212 - week of October 10 Lisa Grunwald - In Grunwald's new novel, The Irresistible Henry House, we meet Henry whose early years were spent as a "practice baby" at a university for mothers in training. The novel is the story of Henry and the many women who enter his life over the course of three of the most compelling decades in American History. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,211 - week of October 3 William Kennedy - Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and celebrated author of books set in Albany NY is the author of the new novel, Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes. The book is a tale of revolutionary intrigue, heroic journalism, crooked politicians, drug-running gangsters, Albany race riots, and the improbable rise of Fidel Castro. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,210 - week of September 26 Terry Brooks - Writer Terry Brooks has spun epic fantasy tales for more than 30 years. His groundbreaking The Sword of Shannara became a runaway best-seller in 1977 and was the first fantasy paperback to appear on the New York Times bestseller list. The Measure of the Magic, is his newest book in the Legends of Shannara series. In the book, the magic that has kept the survivors of the great wars safe for 500 years has vanished and lives are at risk unless two young magic wielders can save them. On this week's Book Show, I speak with Terry Brooks about his strategy for writing thousands of years of history. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,209 - week of September 19 Ernest Cline - Ready Player One is the debut novel by screenwriter Ernest Cline. It is an exhilarating, unpredictable trip for retro pop culture junkies. Ready Player One follows Wade Watts through the virtual reality world, the OASIS, and on a quest to uncover and unlock the secrets buried deep inside a Willy Wonkian adventure. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,208 - week of September 12 Amy Waldman - Ten years after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, former NY Times journalist and first-time novelist Amy Waldman has imagined an alternative history to the selection process for the 9/11 Memorial in NYC. The Submission tells the story of what happens when a Muslin Architect wins the design competition. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,207 - week of September 5 Sebastian Barry - Barry is a Costa Prize winner and 2-time Man Booker Prize shortlist nominee. He is a prolific poet and playwright and the author of five novels, including The Secret Scripture, Annie Dunne and A Long Long Way. His latest is On Canaan's Side - the story of 20th century America though the span of one woman's lifetime, Lilly Dunne. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,206 - week of August 29 Margaret Morganroth Gullette - In her book Agewise, Margaret Morganroth Gullette discusses the last remaining bigotry in America, against aging. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,205 - week of August 22 Charles C. Mann - Mann follows up his book 1491 with a new book, 1493 about how Columbus's entry into the Americas changed it ecologically and globally. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,204 - week of August 15 Roland Merullo - Merullo's latest novel, The Talk-Funny Girl, shows a teenage girl who suffers abuse but finds redemption in work as a stonemason. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,203 - week of August 8 Keith Donohue - Based on women from different periods of American history, in Keith Donohue's novel Centuries of June lets each woman tell her story of love and loss in the bathroom of a young architect. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,202 - week of August 1 Steve Stern - Stern's fabulist novel The Frozen Rabbi opens when a 15-year-old boy finds a 19th-century Eastern European rabbi in the bottom of his family's basement freezer. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,201 - week of July 25 Donald E. Pease - Theodor Geisel changed children's literature when he began writing and illustrating books under the pen name of Dr. Seuss. His outlandish rhyming tales captured the imaginations of children and adults around the world. We'll talk with Donald E. Pease, author of Theodor SEUSS Geisel. This is a repeat broadcast of a Book Show first aired during the week of Oct. 4, 2010. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,200 - week of July 18 Arthur Phillips Phillips creates not only a faux "memoir", but a complete Shakespeare play in his novel The Tragedy of Arthur. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,199 - week of July 11 Wendy McClure McClure, enamored of the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, goes in search of the real places in the novels in her book The Wilder Life. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,198 - week of July 4 Roy Blount, Jr. Humorist and writer Roy Blount, Jr. talks about his latest book Alphabetter Juice, or, The Joy of Text. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,197 - week of June 27 Jennifer Egan Egan recently won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for her latest novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,196 - week of June 20 Sue Miller Miller has followed up her bestseller The Senator's Wife with a new novel. The Lake Shore Limited circles around a play based on loss and love. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,195 - week of June 13 Adam Goodheart Goodheart's book 1861 examines the first year of the Civil War in the 150th anniversary of that event. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,194 - week of June 6 Alexandra Styron Styron talks about her book Reading My Father, a memoir about her father William Styron, the author of Sophie's Choice. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,193 - week of May 30 Jean Thompson Thompson's novel The Year We Left Home looks at an Iowa family over a period of thirty years. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,192 - week of May 23 Meg WolitzerIn Wolitzer's latest novel, The Uncoupling, a high school production of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata mysteriously leads women to lose interest in their partners. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,191 - week of May 16 Mark OvendenThe colorful new book Railway Maps of the World uses text and over 500 illustrations to describe the histories of dozens of railways here and abroad. This week Gretchen speaks with author Mark Ovenden. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,190 - week of May 9 Daisy Hay In the group biography Young Romantics, Daisy Hay shows the entanglements and friendships of the Romantic poets Shelley, Byron, and Keats. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,189 - week of May 2 Mary Gordon -Acclaimed author Mary Gordon's novel The Love of My Youth brings together in Rome two people who had been lovers in their youth. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,188 - week of April 25 Victoria Brown - Brown's novel Minding Ben explores the life of the West Indian nanny in New York, by an author who herself lived that experience. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,187 - week of April 18 Stanley Fish - Academic and cultural critic Stanley Fish looks at the building blocks of good writing in his new book How to Write a Sentence. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,186 - week of April 11 Colm Toibin - Toibin, bestselling author of the novels The Master and Brooklyn, talks about his new short story collection The Empty Family, about love, loss, and being far from home.. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,185 - week of April 4 Sarah Vowell - Vowell, known for her wry looks at American history and her commentaries on This American Life, presents the collision of values that ensued when American missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1819 in her new book Unfamiliar Fishes. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,184 - week of March 28 James Hynes - In his latest novel, Next, James Hynes sends a middle-aged man from Michigan on a secret job interview in Austin, Texas. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,183 - week of March 21 Mat Johnson - Novelist Mat Johnson takes a new look at Edgar Allen Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, in his new novel Pym, about adventure in Antarctica. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,182 - week of March 14 Karen Tei Yamashita - Karen Tei Yamashita's novel I Hotel, about San Francisco's turbulent Chinatown in the late 1960s and 70s, was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award." Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,181 - week of March 7 Sherry Turkle - In her book Alone Together, MIT professor Sherry Turkle looks at the ways that technology has changed our fundamental human relationships. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,180 - week of February 28 Cathleen Schine - Schine's novel The Three Weissmans of Westport retells Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. When their stepfather ditches his wife of 40 years, her middle-aged daughters move in a ramshackle beach cottage with her. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,179 - week of February 21 Gordon Campbell - This year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James edition of the Bible. Gordon Campbell discusses the remarkable translation in his book Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,178 - week of February 14 Deborah Harkness - Professor Deborah Harkness unexpectedly became a novelist as she began to write about witches, daemons and vampires in Oxford. Her compelling novel A Discovery of Witches is the first of a trilogy. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,177 - week of February 7 Joan Schenkar - Patricia Highsmith was a "noir" writer, best known today for her works Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Joan Schenkar talks about the writer's complicated life in her new biography, The Talented Miss Highsmith. Listen to Recent Book Shows