Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchDouglas Waller, "The Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner" (Penguin, 2026)
Episode 338
Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it. Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials--his work largely …
4 months, 1 week ago
Zaakir Tameez, "Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation" (Henry Holt, 2025)
Episode 337
A landmark biography of Charles Sumner, the unsung hero of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionis…
4 months, 2 weeks ago
Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King
Caroline Bicks became the first scholar granted extended access by Stephen King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that documen…
4 months, 2 weeks ago
Adam Henig, "Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
When twenty-three-year-old Ron LeFlore played his first organized baseball game, it was in a yard at the State Prison of Southern Michigan where he w…
4 months, 2 weeks ago
From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony
After escaping the Vilna Ghetto and surviving winter in the forest among partisan fighters, Avrom Sutzkever was airlifted to Moscow in 1944. The reno…
4 months, 2 weeks ago
Twelve Lives: Creating Literary Community with Raymond Williams, PhD
From the moment I began working with the New Books Network, my vision was bigger than author interviews. I envisioned my platform one where people co…
4 months, 2 weeks ago
Yanara Friedland, "Thanatographies" (U Alabama Press, 2026)
Yanara Friedland is a writer, translator, and educator born in Berlin. She is the author of Uncountry: A Mythology (2016) winner of the Noemi Press F…
4 months, 3 weeks ago
Myung-jin Han with Nicolas Levi, "I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service" (Independently Published, 2026)
Nicolas Levi is a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous book…
4 months, 3 weeks ago
Audrey Borowski, "Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Described by Voltaire as “perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is often portrayed as a rati…
4 months, 3 weeks ago
Kate Crane, "Whatever Happened to Eddy Crane?: A Memoir and an Investigation" (Hanover Square Press, 2026)
Kate Crane's new memoir, Whatever Happened to Eddy Crane?: A Memoir and an Investigation" (Hanover Square Press, 2026) starts when Crane was in eight…
4 months, 3 weeks ago