Journalist David Denby in Defense of the Western Canon

Critic Maureen Corrigan gives us her recommendations for books for the gift-giving season.

David Denby is a staff writer and film critic for The New Yorker. His new book, American Sucker, is a memoir about his brief obsession with the stock market — during the height of irrational exuberance in 2000-2001. It started with his wife's announcement that she was leaving him. Denby began an attempt to make $1 million so that he could buy out his wife's share of their New York apartment. (This interview continues into the second half of the show).

In his 2019 book "Catch And Kill," journalist Ronan Farrow documented a pattern in which Lauer pursued women on staff at NBC over the course of decades. One of those women was Brooke Nevils, who was in her late 20s and working with former "Today" show co-anchor Meredith Vieira on NBC's coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. According to her account, first reported by Farrow, one night after drinks with colleagues at a hotel bar, she went to Lauer's room. There, she says, he sexually assaulted her, an allegation Lauer denies.