Host Diana Korte speaks with writer and Iraq War veteran Kevin Powers.  Author of 5 books, his first title, “The Yellow Birds,” is considered a landmark work of American fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

His newest title, CHILDREN OF THE WILD, is a love story of three people written against the background of rural Virginia, WW1 battle scenes and the 1918 pandemic.

As the book begins, it's 1917 In Ewer’s Rock, Virginia. Roy Young is restless, eager to leave this isolated rural valley for university and return with the technical knowledge to modernize his family’s farm and bring them properly into the twentieth century.

Samantha Hatton, the minister’s daughter and Roy’s best friend since childhood, knows that both Roy and the town expect them to marry. But Samantha, a daring and ambitious young woman, hungers for more.

Above them on the mountain, tending to a lost herd of cattle, is silent Ennis Duke, the mysterious wild boy whose arrival in the valley will upend Ewer’s Rock’s understanding of itself and its place in the world. 

Host Diana Korte speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley, author of 34 books. Her newest title, “LIDIE. The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton,” follows two young women fleeing a divided America in 1857.  

When Lidie’s niece Annie becomes an actress at the local theater in Quincy IL, and is offered an opportunity to perform in England, she decides to run away. But travel is dangerous for a young, unmarried woman, so Lidie, armed with her pistol and her wit, goes with her.   

Host Diana Korte speaks with historian and University of Georgia professor Daniel Rood, author of 2 books. His newest title is “IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT HOUSE. A History of the Plantation in America.” 

In a narrative that sweeps across 400 years of American history, Rood reveals that the plantation did not die after the Civil War. It metastasized.  

From the advent of sharecropping in the late 19th century to the rise of cotton in mid-20th century California to today’s chicken processing plants which sit on the same land once occupied by plantations and staffed largely by migrant workers, the plantation has cast a long shadow over American life.  

Dan Rood specializes in the history of Atlantic slavery and its intersections with the histories of technology, agriculture, and capitalism.

Host Diana Korte speaks with science writer Helen Pearson, author of 2 books and editor for England’s prestigious Nature Journal. Her newest title is, “BEYOND BELIEF: How Evidence Shows What Really Works.”  

In an age of alternative facts, today more people around the globe are using scientific evidence to figure out what works in health and medicine, government, business, as well as conservation, schools and parenting.

This wasn’t always the case.  For many years, most medical advice was based on doctors’ opinions and conventional wisdom, not solid science.

Pearson describes how evidence-based medicine swept the world in the 1990s and how the idea that evidence should guide decisions is quietly transforming a host of other fields as well.

Host Diana Korte speaks with historian Craig Fehrman whose newest title, THIS VAST ENTERPRISE, is a major revisionist history of the Lewis and Clark years-long expedition that began in 1804.  

Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson who fought bitter Congressional unrest to get the funding for it, this group of 45 or so traveled up the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. 

Each chapter moves to a different person’s point of view, showcasing the many characters beyond the two leaders who flesh out the story of this expedition.  

Among the many research innovations the author brings to this book are lost documents, Native perspectives, and oral history passed down over centuries.

Host Diana Korte speaks with Marie Benedict, known for her suspenseful historical fiction, about her 10th book, DAUGHTER OF EGYPT, a story of two ambitious women who lived centuries apart. 

In the 1920s, British archeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle  (the real life Downton Abbey) made headlines around the world with the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun—also known as King Tut.  But behind it all stood Lady Evelyn Herbert—daughter of Lord Carnarvon who made the momentous find possible. 

Nearly 3,000 years earlier, another woman defied the expectations of her time: Hatshepsut, Egypt’s lost pharaoh. Trained by her father, her reign was bold and visionary but nearly erased from history.  

Host Diana Korte speaks with Harry Reis whose newest title is "HOW TO FEEL LOVED. The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most."

We can be loved and still not feel loved. Many people believe that if they behave the right way, say the right things, or make themselves more lovable, they will feel more loved. Turns out it doesn’t work that way.

In this exceptional book the authors, a relationship expert (Reis) and a happiness researcher (Lyubomirsky), present a hopeful science-backed shift in how to think about love.

As they say, don’t change yourself—change the conversation.

Host Diana Korte speaks with New York Times bestselling author Caroline Paul, author of 8 books. Her newest title is “WHY FLY. Seeking Awe, Healing, and Our True Selves in the Sky.” 

She’s been drawn to flying since she was twenty and learned to fly a single-engine plane for the first time. In her thirties, she moved to a paraglider, in her forties, a motorized hang glider. Now in her fifties, she flies an experimental gyrocopter.

  Alongside her own experiences over decades of flight, WHY FLY explores the history, art, and science of aeronautics and the deep impact of flying on others. Arranged according to the five stages of a flight (Preflight, Taxi, Take-off, Flight, and Landing), WHY FLY shows the ways our society has been reaching for flight for centuries.  

Host Diana Korte speaks with author Alia Hanna Habib this week whose debut book is “TAKE IT FROM ME, An Agent's Guide to Building a Nonfiction Writing Career from Scratch.”

She’s the agent behind some of today’s most successful authors and has written a narrative guide geared specifically to the needs of aspiring and working nonfiction writers. She demystifies the world of publishing and offers a practical roadmap to getting your book published. 

I wish this volume had been available to me back when I was writing non-fiction titles.  If selling a non-fiction book is on your wish list and you didn’t know where in the world to begin, this could be the book for you.  

Alia Hanna Habib is a Vice President and literary agent at The Gernert Company, where she represents MacArthur Fellows, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, National Book Award finalists, and numerous New York Times bestselling authors.  

Host Diana Korte spoke with Ex-Evangelical Josiah Hesse this week about his fourth book, “ON FIRE FOR GOD. Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right—A Personal History.”

When asked why he wrote this book, Colorado-based Hesse said “I was tired of hearing my colleagues in journalism express their bafflement as to why working-class evangelicals would support a man like Donald Trump. Evangelicals make up a third of our country, and yet most journalists and editors know nothing about them.”  

“I have yet to encounter any books (about evangelicals) written by someone whose family were desperately poor and susceptible to the con of prosperity gospel or multilevel marketing, who experienced the kinetic rush of a Pentecostal church service, or were taught creationist science in a rural Christian school.”