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On this week’s 51%, WAMC’s Sarah LaDuke learns about everyone’s favorite comfort show, Parks and Recreation, with pop-culture writer and historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. “Parks and Rec” ran on NBC from 2009-2015, capitalizing on the success of The Office and a sense of political optimism following the election of then-President Barack Obama. It brought us Little Sebastian and Galentine’s Day — but it was also always on the verge of cancellation. Keishin Armstrong’s new book, Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show that Lit’rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America, dives into the program’s history and what it means to viewers today.

On this week’s 51%, WAMC’s Sarah LaDuke learns about everyone’s favorite comfort show, Parks and Recreation, with pop-culture writer and historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. “Parks and Rec” ran on NBC from 2009-2015, capitalizing on the success of The Office and a sense of political optimism following the election of then-President Barack Obama. It brought us Little Sebastian and Galentine’s Day — but it was also always on the verge of cancellation. Keishin Armstrong’s new book, Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show that Lit’rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America, dives into the program’s history and what it means to viewers today.

Anne Fadiman is Professor in the Practice of English and Francis Writer-in-Residence at Yale. Her most recent book is “Frog,” an essay collection that Booklist called “a joy to read for the etched-glass precision of [Fadiman’s] language and the warmth of her candor and wit”.

Quaker activist, facilitator, and teacher Eileen Flanagan will discuss her book ‘Common Ground: How the Crisis of the Earth is Saving Us From Our Illusion of Separation’ at Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs tonight at 6 p.m.

The new book ‘The Diversity Principle: The Story of the Transformative Idea’ David Oppenheimer gives a 200-year history of diversity in education, science, and commerce. The debate of diversity upends our current government, education policies, and corporate world, the idea of diversity has never been more important. Oppenheimer also shows how over a 200-year period diversity evolved and how it was adopted in science and commerce.

Genevieve Wheeler Brown is a decorative arts specialist and author of the new book ‘Beyond Blue and White: The Hidden History of Delftware and the Women Behind the Iconic Ceramic.’ She will be in discussion with a New Netherland Institute Director Dr. Deborah Hamer coming up on 4/12 at 2 pm at the Albany Institute of History and Art. They will discuss the women in the Netherlands who made the beautiful ceramics, the woman who brought it to New Netherland and New York, and the 19th Century Collectors who collected and championed it. In addition, selections of blue and white delft objects from the Albany Institute’s collection will be on display as well.

Benjamin Wood has written four very different novels that explore the creative process and relationships between parents and children. His fifth novel, Seascraper, is a vividly imagined, layered, and economical mediation on these themes, and it is full of surprises. From a very atmospheric description of a vanishing way of life, to great suspense, to the hint ultimately of optimism in its final characters. The novel was longlisted for the 2025 Booker prize.

In the new book ‘Son of Nobody,’ Yann Martel offers a compelling dual narrative that is immediately striking and unusual on the page. At once a retelling of the trojan war and a heart wrenching record of modern grief and ambition; Martel’s novel grapples with questions of history and mythology whose stories deserve to be told, how do we make meaning in the face of fate’s random cruelty, and chaos.

Historian Robert Brigham has spent a career studying the Vietnam War, shaping how Americans understand one of the nation’s most complex conflicts. A professor at Vassar College and a leading voice on U.S. foreign policy, Brigham now turns inward with his new book, 'This Is a True War Story: My Improbable History with Vietnam.' The memoir blends scholarship with deeply personal discovery, tracing his journey as an adoptee who learns that his biological father was a renowned Marine combat photographer in Vietnam. As Brigham reconstructs both a family history and a national one, the book explores memory, identity, and the enduring legacy of war - on the battlefield and across generations at home.

Historian Ryan Gingeras has spent years tracing the hidden networks of power that operate just beneath the surface of modern states. A professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and a specialist in late Ottoman and modern Middle Eastern history, his work often explores crime, politics, and the blurred lines between them.His new book, 'Mafia: A Global History,' widens that lens, charting the evolution of organized crime across continents and centuries. It’s a sweeping, deeply researched account of how mafias emerge, adapt, and endure—and what their stories reveal about the world we live in.