Club Book

John Moe is one of Minnesota’s best-known radio and podcast personalities. The reporter and talk show host first cut his teeth in the Seattle radio market, before bringing his unique wit to the North Star State. He is best known for his work as a senior reporter and host of American Public Media enterprises including Weekend America, Marketplace Tech Report, and the uproarious radio variety show Wits. His podcasting projects include The Hilarious World of Depression, a show in which Moe set out to dispel societal stigma around and entrenched stereotypes about clinical depression. Celebrity guests have included chef Andrew Zimmern, authors John Green and Jenny Lawson, and actors Wil Wheaton and Jameela Jamil. In 2020, Moe published a book under the same title. In The Hilarious World of Depression, Moe shares all he knows about the illness – from personal experience, extensive research, and years of interviews. In a glowing review, Booklist asserts that “Moe is exactly the right person to give an attentive, irreverent voice to those suffering with depression.”

The post Club Book Episode 113 John Moe first appeared on Club Book.

Lauren Fox is an acknowledged master of the family novel. Readers enjoyed their first taste of her achingly funny take on marriage, friendship, and domesticity in Still Life with Husband (2007) – a literary debut that The New York Times heralded as “the arrival of an immensely gifted writer.” Fox’s follow-ups, Friends Like Us (2012) and Days of Awe (2015), justified the praise. Her latest, out February 2, is Send for Me. In this time-jumping work of historical fiction, a woman discovers a cache of old letters from her Jewish grandmother that sheds light on her family’s struggles and fate during the rise of Nazism in Germany. Booklist touts Send for Me as “a thoughtful, character-driven exploration of the unbreakable bonds of motherhood, [which] deftly moves between generations as Fox illuminates the ways that choices echo through the lives of those who come after.” Send for Me is also semi-autobiographical in nature, inspired by heirlooms letters held by her own family.

The post Club Book Episode 112 Lauren Fox first appeared on Club Book.

Eduardo Porter is an economics reporter for The New York Times. His distinguished career in journalism has taken him to Mexico City, São Paulo, Tokyo, and many points in between. He currently co-hosts The Pie, a podcast on pandemic economics sponsored by the University of Chicago, which explores the financial and social ramifications of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Porter is also the author of The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do (2011), a revealing look at the cost-benefit analyses that underpin each and every human behavior. His latest book is American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise. In a sterling review, Booklist says that “with a scintillating rhythm and pointed language, Porter exposes all the ways in which racism has infected everything from unions to welfare to education and immigration policy. American Poison is a work for our times.” It will be reissued in paperback on February 9.

The post Club Book Episode 111 Eduardo Porter first appeared on Club Book.

Megha Majumdar is the author behind A Burning, one of the most anticipated and best reviewed fiction debuts of 2020. Set in modern-day India, this propulsive narratives hinges around three characters on the margins of society: Jivan, a Muslim girl living in the slums of Kolkata (Calcutta); Lovely, a member of India’s intersex hijra community; and PT Sir, an opportunistic gym teacher turned right-wing politician. Although fiction, “A Burning quickly dismantles the ordinary skepticism that attends the reading of made-up stories” (New Yorker), and “offers a powerful corrective to the political narratives that have dominated in contemporary India” (Time). Majumdar is herself a native of Kolkata. She moved to the United States to attend school at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University. She is currently an associate editor at literary magazine and independent publisher Catapult. A Burning has won several honors since its June launch, including being picked up by NBC’s “Today” as the summer’s #ReadWithJenna pick.

The post Club Book Episode 110 Megha Majumdar first appeared on Club Book.

David Treuer is a member of the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe, and one of the foremost chroniclers of the rich and diverse Native American experience – past and present. His writing straddles the barrier between fiction and nonfiction. Treuer’s four novels to date, including award-winning debut Little (1995) and book club favorite Prudence (2015), “mount a challenge to the whole idea of Indian identity as depicted by both Native and white writers” (New York Times). His first major foray into nonfiction, Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life, garnered national attention and won the Minnesota Book Award in 2013. His follow up, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, earned the author his third Minnesota Book Award and put him in heated contention for the National Book Award. A masterfully crafted mélange of journalism, memoir, and historical research, Treuer’s latest showcases “the Native struggle to preserve their tribes and cultures, using resourcefulness and reinvention in the face of overwhelming opposition” (BookPage).

The post Club Book Episode 109 David Treuer first appeared on Club Book.

Moroccan American novelist Laila Lalami uses fiction as a vehicle to showcase “overlooked” North African stories and experiences. Notable examples include her 2014 breakout The Moor’s Account, which reconstructs the journeys of the New World’s first explorer of color. It won the American Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Lalami’s follow-up, The Other Americans, centers around the mysterious death of a Moroccan immigrant in California. Equal parts family drama, murder mystery, and love story, The Other Americans was singled out by media as varied as the BBC and BuzzFeed as one of the most anticipated releases of 2019. Lalami’s new release, Conditional Citizens, is something of a departure. In this deeply personal exposé, the author uses her own unlikely immigration story as an entrée for explore the hot-button question: What does it mean to be American? One reviewer noted: “Probing, unflinching and fiercely intelligent, Conditional Citizens is a must-read for all of those who have stared, stunned, at the shifting terrain of our political landscape and wondered how we got here.”

The post Club Book Episode 108 Laila Lalami first appeared on Club Book.

Acclaimed journalist and climate advocate Dahr Jamail is the author of The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption. Part travelogue and part research exposé, The End of Ice offers a sobering look at the “geographic front lines” – areas of the planet that are most immediately and visibly impacted by global warming. Front-line reporting is Jamail’s forte. He cut his teeth as a wartime correspondent in Iraq, as one of only a handful of so-called unembedded reporters to travel without military escort and report out for Western audiences after the 2003 invasion by American-led forces. In 2007, the Nader Trust for the Community Interest bestowed Jamail with the prestigious Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, which “recognizes individuals who take a public stance to advocate truth and justice, at some personal risk.” Jamail’s pivot to climate issues stemmed from his personal passion for mountaineering, which affords “a stronger connection to nature…. something that Jamail says many people living in urban areas have lost or left behind” (Smithsonian).

The post Club Book Episode 107 Dahr Jamail first appeared on Club Book.

Nancy Pearl is America’s Librarian. As the head of the Washington Center for the Book, she pioneered the groundbreaking “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book” series in the late 1990s. The Library of Congress now estimates that upwards of 400 “community read” programs take place every year, and each owes a debt to Pearl’s replicable template. Nancy Pearl is also an acknowledged expert in readers advisory, both within librarianship and outside of the field. Her bestselling, multi-installment Book Lust series is a testament to her uncanny ability to recommend a book “for every mood, moment and reason” – to paraphrase the subtitle. Library Journal named Pearl the Librarian of the Year in 2011. In a still more singular honor, she is also the inspiration and image behind the popular librarian action figure from Archie McPhee. Pearl’s newest release, The Writer’s Library, is an edited anthology showcasing how favorite books altered the lives of 23 chart-topping authors – including luminaries like Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Amor Towles.

The post Club Book Episode 106 Nancy Pearl first appeared on Club Book.

Morgan Jerkins is the New York Times bestselling memoirist behind the popular 2018 essay collection This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America. Her anticipated follow-up, Wandering in Strange Lands, hit shelves August 4. Subtitled ‘A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots,’ Jerkins’ sophomore book is at once deeply personal and nationwide in its scope. Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as the Great Migration. In so doing, many became disconnected from their proud roots. As a means of rediscovering those national stories, Jerkins traced her own ancestors’ circuitous journey across the country – from Georgia and South Carolina, to Louisiana and Oklahoma, and all the way to California. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly lauded: “Jerkins’s careful research and revelatory conversations with historians, activists, and genealogists result in a disturbing yet ultimately empowering chronicle of the African-American experience.”

The post Club Book Episode 105 Morgan Jerkins first appeared on Club Book.

Brad Taylor is the pen behind the New York Times bestselling Pike Logan series. Now spanning fourteen installments, Taylor’s high-octane thrillers center around “the Taskforce” – a highly trained covert ops team answerable only to a select few at the highest rungs of government. Protagonist Pike Logan first burst onto the scene in 2011’s One Rough Man, which earned Taylor glowing comparisons to established heavyweights like Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy, and Brad Thor. Reviewers praised the believability of Taylor’s storylines and settings; and that authenticity has been hard won. Taylor served more than two decades in the U.S. Army, in both the Infantry and Special Forces divisions, including a stint with the clandestine Delta Force. His talents are on full display in Hunter Killer. Logan’s latest adventure finds the elite Taskforce, often the hunters, in the unfamiliar role of the hunted. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a surefire hit for those who like contemporary foreign affairs spiced heavily with page-turning action.”

The post Club Book Episode 104 Brad Taylor first appeared on Club Book.