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The Osprey hailed by Roger Tory Peterson as the symbol of the New England Coast, all but vanished during the 1950s and 60s because of the ravages of DDT. In the next few decades, however, the birds returned, slowly at first and then in a rush. Now writing with passion, humor, and reverence for the natural world, David Gessner interweaves the stories of the nesting Osprey pairs he observed with his own readjustment to life on the windblown, beautiful, and increasingly developed landscape he knew as a child. The book is a season of flight and wonder. The name of the book is “Return of the Osprey: A season of Flight and Wonder.” It is 25 years old and has a very special 25th edition out.

What do a barracks from British troops in the Falkland War, a floating jail of the Bronx, and temporary housing for VWF workers in Germany have in common? Well according to our next guest, Ian Kumekawa, they have all inhabited one Swedish barge built in 1979. Now, the barge has so many names, the author calls it “The Vessel.” The book is called “Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, former White House Press Secretary to the Biden & Harris Administration, shares why Americans have stepped beyond party lines to embrace life as independents in her new book “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.”

Samsun Knight is a writer, graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a Truman Capote Fellow. His new novel “Likeness” is intimate, riveting, and raw.On a summer evening in the 1990s Ann learns that one of her husband’s lovers is expecting his child, only a few weeks after finding out she too is pregnant. Meanwhile Sandy, the lover, works to find her own path forward through her surprise pregnancy searching through diaries, grocery lists, and séances with the dead she tries to remember just enough of her original sense of direction to make her own way home. Based on his own up brining in a polyamorous family the book speaks to Samsun’s complicated family with his parents in an open marriage. Also, to those of us who grew up with multiple parents and half or step siblings.

Robert Kaplan for three decades reported on foreign affairs for “The Atlantic,” he was a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, and the Chief of Naval Operations Executive panel. "Foreign Policy" twice named him ‘one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers.’ He is the author of 23 books. The latest is “Wasteland: A World in Permanent Crisis.”

There may be no poet more integral to the American identity are more widely known among Americans than Robert Frost. Yet, his life and the extent of his influence are unfamiliar or misunderstood by many. In the new book “Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry” Adam Plunkett challenges previous biographers’ interpretations of Frost’s life and work breaking away from what he sees as “clichés” to construct an original portrait of the poet.

Imagine being shown a two-frame storyboard depicting in the first drawing a white police officer having shot a black man holding a cellphone. In the second frame the officer tells his supervisor that he saw a gun and that he was sure that he fired on a white person if they had made the same threatening gesture. Then you are asked to make a judgement call; “Does this story involve racism?” This is the approach sociologist Betsy Leondar-Wright and Jessi Streib take in their book “Is It Racist? Is It Sexist?: Why Red and Blue White People Disagree, and How to Decide in the Gray Areas.” They bring the proceeding scenario and others like it to over 120 white Americans of different political stripes, genders, regions, and economic classes.

Eli Zuzovsky is the author of “Mazeltov,” a debut novel. It is a book about a boy who confronts queer lust, shame, the threat of war, and the plague of family on the day he becomes a man. It all takes place in a banquet hall in the onset of war where Adam’s bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe.

The new book “Suspended by No String,” by Peter Himmelman, is a collection of essays, personal narratives, and poetical reflections for readers of all spiritual stripes, those who are devout and those who are unsure of what to believe, and those who may not be religious in a traditional sense.

Megan Marshall, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography, has long been revered for her narrative skills and deep insights into historical figures. In her new book “After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart” she takes those skills to her own art and life.