Booktalk with Diana Korte

At age 84 Madeleine Albright passed away last year. She was the first woman US Secretary of State, US Ambassador to the United Nations, and author of numerous books including PRAGUE WINTER. 

  She came to the US with her family as a political refugee, a daughter of a diplomat, and spent her teen years in Colorado. She spoke of the indispensable role of international diplomacy as the world often faces multiple crises. Like now.

In our last conversation in 2012 about her book, “Prague Winter,” she reminisces about her early days in Czechoslovakia. She goes on to describe a family secret that she didn’t discover until she was age 59 and with characteristic candor, details some of the political predicaments that were occurring a decade ago and somehow still seem familiar today.  

Taras Grescoe, author of  “THE LOST SUPPER”, his eighth book, explores an understanding that is quickly spreading among chefs, food producers, and scientists: that the key to sustainable eating lies not in looking forward, but in looking back to the foods—many of them forgotten or on the verge of extinction—that have sustained us through our half-million year existence as a species.

Grescoe is a widely read commentator on the interplay of food, travel, and the environment. His journalism has been published in many newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and National Geographic. 

 Tune in for details about the insects that fueled the diet of the Aztecs, the value of farmhouse cheese, and how to start your own journey to the food varieties of the past.  

Craig Johnson, author of a Wyoming mystery series featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire is back with his 19th in the series, THE LONGMIRE DEFENSE.  This long running string of books is not only a bestseller in the book world, but continues as a popular TV show, Longmire, on Netflix despite being cancelled some years ago.  

This new novel takes readers deep into the heart of the Wyoming countryside where Sheriff Longmire is called to a crime scene like few others that he has seen. This crime and the old rifle that is found at the site bring up issues that go back to his grandfather Lloyd Longmire’s time in Wyoming. And the revelations he learns about Lloyd offer clues and motives for Walt’s investigation. 

Tune in for what's up with the tv show, where Johnson gets his book ideas, and what's coming next.

In 2018 former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, author of BLOWBACK: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump wrote an anonymous opinion piece in The New York Times from inside the Trump administration. He revealed publicly what Trump’s cabinet was saying privately: the president was dangerously unfit for office. 

He unmasked himself 2 years later to urge Americans to vote against Trump in 2020 and launched the largest alliance of ex-officials in United States history to take down the president who appointed them.

In the world of national security — the world Taylor comes from — there’s a term to describe the unintended consequences of our actions, of failing to see what’s around the corner if we make the wrong choice: BLOWBACK.

Tune in for why Trump’s supporters are so loyal, what is the worst part of being a political target, and what only citizens can do to keep the US a strong democracy.     

James McBride’s newest book is THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.

As the story begins, it’s 1972. Workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania are digging the foundations for a new development, and the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. 

When the truth is finally revealed about what happened and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community— heaven and earth— that sustain us.

James McBride is an award-winning writer, musician, and screenwriter, the author of eight books, and brother to 11 siblings. His landmark memoir, The Color of Water, published in 1996, has sold millions of copies.  Considered an American classic, it is read in schools and universities across the US.

“I Have Something to Tell You” by Chasten Buttigieg is the young adult adaptation of his candid bestselling memoir about growing up gay in his small Midwestern town. 

This version is completely rewritten with new stories, including resources for readers, parents, and teachers. It focuses on the author’s young years and his coming of age story. He also explores the support systems he’s built and describes ways readers can build their own.

He is on a 30+ stop nationwide in-person tour, including places where anti-LGBTQ legislation and book bans are on the rise. 

Listen in as he describes the most common comments he hears on the road and explains the differences between questions he’s asked at events depending on whether he’s in a red, purple or blue state.   

Chasten Buttigieg is the husband of Pete, a former Democratic presidential candidate, and dad to Penelope and Gus.

Jake Tapper regularly interviews world leaders and other newsmakers, but he also brings his knowledge of politics and the past to his political thrillers that are historically accurate. 

“All The Demons Are Here” is set in 1977. The story revolves around a brother and sister, Ike and Lucy Marder, son and daughter of U.S. Senator Charlie Marder and Margaret Marder, a well-known zoologist. Ike is a U.S. Marine war hero, but AWOL when we meet him, while Lucy is an up and coming journalist at a Washington, DC tabloid. 

Jake Tapper is the chief DC anchor and chief Washington correspondent for CNN; he hosts the weekday show The Lead with Jake Tapper and cohosts the Sunday public-affairs show State of the Union. 

Tune in to discover Jake’s earliest memories of politics, his opinion of tv news coverage after decades in the business, and how many issues of the 1970s repeat themselves today.

The latest historical novel, LADY TAN'S CIRCLE OF WOMEN, from writer Lisa See who is the author of 12 books, is inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China whose remedies are still used today some 500 years later.

According to Confucius who was influential at the time, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family in the late 1400s in China was raised by her grandparents to be a doctor. 

Tune in to hear how Lisa discovered Tan Yunxian, details about the thousand-year tradition of foot binding in China, and why red-haired-and-freckled Lisa See writes books about Chinese women and their friendships. 

Gloria Steinem, author of My Life on the Road, had an itinerant childhood. Based in New York City, she is now 89 and has never stopped traveling.

When she was a young girl, her father would pack the family in the car every fall and drive across country searching for adventure and trying to make a living. The seeds were planted: Gloria realized that growing up didn’t have to mean settling down.

And so began a lifetime of travel, of activism and leadership, of listening to people whose voices and ideas would inspire change and revolution.

“When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel. Taking to the road—by which I mean letting the road take you—changed who I thought I was.”  This interview originally aired October 21, 2016.

Silvia Pettem’s “In Search of the Blonde Tigress,"  dips into the world of sensationalized Chicago newspaper headlines in the 1930s that claimed Eleanor was not only “the blonde tigress,” but also “the most dangerous woman alive.” 

But a closer look at her life shows that she was an otherwise ordinary woman who got caught up in a Chicago crime spree, then was convicted as an accomplice to murder, and sent to prison for 199 years. She escaped seven years later and managed to live out her life as America’s longest-running female fugitive.

Pettem’s research led to police and prison records, court transcripts, and her theory of where the grave of the “blonde tigress” is today.

Listeners might be familiar with some of her other 20 plus books including the recently revised "Someone’s Daughter—In Search Of Justice For Jane Doe," which is also now part of a documentary series available on Hulu.