Joe Donahue

"The Bill of Obligations: Ten Habits of Good Citizens" is a bold call for change. New York Times bestselling author Richard Haass argues that the very idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded. The Bill of Rights is at the center of our Constitution, yet our most intractable conflicts often emerge from contrasting views as to what our rights ought to be.

Famous for defending the Chicago Seven and his involvement at Attica and Wounded Knee, attorney William Kunstler had an outsize personality and a tremendous appetite for life. In the play “Kunstler,” tensions flare when he arrives on a college campus to give a seminar. The brilliant young law student assigned to introduce him objects to his appearance and is determined to confront him. “Kunstler” will run at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs, New York February 3-5.

Trey Gowdy is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Doesn’t Hurt to Ask and co-author of Unified, with Senator Tim Scott. He’s the host of Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy on Fox News and The Trey Gowdy Podcast. Gowdy served as a four-term congressman from South Carolina. Before running for Congress, he served as a federal prosecutor in his home state and a district attorney in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties. His new book is "Start, Stay, or Leave: The Art of Decision Making."

In "Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It," CNN senior legal analyst and nationally bestselling author Elie Honig explores America’s two-tier justice system, explaining how the rich, the famous, and the powerful— including, most notoriously, Donald Trump—manipulate the legal system to escape justice and get away with vast misdeeds.

Prize-winning journalists Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau have spent two years interviewing more than 130 people comprising a broad cross section of lives touched by New York City’s Rikers Island prison complex. The portrait that emerges calls into question the very nature of justice in America. The new book is "Rikers: An Oral History."

Drew Broussard and James Conrad from The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, NY join us with this week's Book Picks.

On January 6, 2021, insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol, an act of domestic terror without parallel in American history, designed to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. In a resolution six months later, the House of Representatives called it "one of the darkest days of our democracy," and established a special committee to investigate how and why the attack happened.Celadon Books, in collaboration with The New Yorker, presents the committee's final report, the definitive account of January 6th and what led up to it, based on more than a year of investigation by nine members of Congress and committee staff, with a preface by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and an epilogue by Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a member of the committee.

Steve Sheinkin's, Bomb, was a Newbery honor and National Book Awards finalist. It is now a graphic novel, illustrated by Nick Bertozzi. The Bomb Graphic Novel is an adaptation of the award-winning nonfiction book, which tells the fascinating and frightening true story behind the atomic bomb. Steve Sheinkin and Nick Bertozzi will be at Northshire Saratoga tonight at 6 p.m. for a talk and signing about Bomb: The Graphic Novel.

In the midst of all the coverage of January 6th you may have heard one of the insurrectionists' slogans mentioned through the reporting: "Remember Waco". With the 30th anniversary of the historic siege at Waco approaching next month, it is clear that the message and radicalization that would result in a 51-day-standoff in 1993 is alarmingly relevant today.

Ana Reyes has an MFA from Louisiana State University. Her work has appeared in Bodega, Pear Noir, The New Delta Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles where she teaches creative writing to older adults at Santa Monica College. "The House in the Pines" is her first novel.