books

This week on The Reading Life:  Historian Nigel Hamilton talks about Commander in Chief: FDR’s Battle with Churchill, 1943. Nigel divides his time between Boston and New Orleans. And Susan reviews two historical novels, The Noise of Time, by novelist Julian Barnes, about composer Dimitri Shostakovich, and The Summer Guest, by novelist and translator Alison Anderson, an homage to Anton Chekhov, for beach book reading.

This week on The Reading Life: It's all history, all the time! Patrick Maney, formerly of Tulane, now of Boston College, talks about Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President, and Erin Greenwald of the Historic New Orleans Collection discusses Marc Antoine Caillot and the Company of the Indies in Louisiana: Trade in the French Atlantic World. And Susan offers some debut thrillers -- Under the Harrow, by Flynn Berry, and The Second Girl, by Donald Swinson -- for your beach reading.

This week on The Reading Life:  Rich Cohen, author of The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones. And Susan kicks off beach book season with Terry McMillan's I Almost Forgot about You.

This week on The Reading Life:  Susan Tucker, author of City of Remembering: A History of Genealogy in New Orleans, and Margo Orlando Littell, author of Each Vagabond by Name, along with her publisher, Abram Himelstein, of the University of New Orleans Press.

This week on The Reading Life:  Mystery writer Nevada Barr, author of Boar Island, her 20th novel set in our national parks, and Peter Finney, Jr., who wrote the introduction to a collection of his father's work, The Best of Peter Finney: Legendary New Orleans Sportswriter.

When it comes to traveling, nobody wants to be seen as a tourist anymore. “Authenticity” is valued above all other experiences and because of that, author Michael Murphy has written several books that explain New Orleans’ iconographic culture to outsiders and locals alike. 

This week on The Reading Life: Former Louisiana poet laureate Brenda Marie Osbey, whose new collection is All Souls: Essential Poems, along with James B. Borders IV, author of Marking Time, Making Place: An Essential Chronology of Blacks in New Orleans Since 1718.

This week on The Reading Life: Historian Pamela Tyler explores 200 years of history in her new book, New Orleans Women and the Poydras Home: More Durable than Marble. Also Novelist, short story writer and essayist Ellen Gilchrist talks about hard won wisdom in Things Like the Truth:Out Of My Later Years.

Laurence Copel founded the Lower 9th Ward’s free library and currently operates the city’s only functional book mobile. According to a 2015 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 77 percent of fourth graders in Louisiana are not proficient in reading. Tyler Gillespie has this profile of Copel, whose work is focused on child literacy. She says some children in New Orleans face extreme disadvantages because of limited access to books.

This week on The Reading Life: William Geroux, author of  The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-Boats. And celebrating Jazzfest, we’ll also hear from Michael Murphy, the author of Hear Dat New Orleans: A Guide to the Rich Musical Heritage and Lively Current Scene.