Books

Tonya Mosley interviews Harvard professor NAMWALI SERPELL. Her new book, On Morrison, is a close reading of Toni Morrison's entire body of work, eleven novels, the criticism, plays, and poetry

Tonya mosley interviews two men deeply impacted by the violence on either side of the Israeli Palestinian conflict who still believe peace is possible. MAOZ INON (mah-OHZ EE-nohn) is an Israeli entrepreneur whose parents were among the 12-hundred killed by Hamas in October of 2023, the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. AZIZ ABU SARAH (ah-ZEEZ ah-BOO SAH-rah) is a Palestinian peacebuilder. When AZIZ was only 9, his brother was arrested and tortured in an Israeli military prison and subsequently died from his injuries.

Jazz historian KEVIN WHITEHEAD reviews two new jazz biographies: Speakeasies to Symphonies: The Jazz Genius of James P. Johnson by Scott E. Brown; and Cosmic: Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane by Andy Beta.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Nancy Foley’s debut novel I am Agatha.

Rock critic KEN TUCKER reviews a new biography about Bob Dylan, featuring the most recent 30 years of his career: After the Flood, by Robert Polito.

John Powers reviewed "Stay Alive" by Ian Buruma.

Maureen Corrigan reviewed The Keeper

Josh Owens' book is "The Madness of Believing: A Memoir From Inside Alex Jones's Conspiracy Machine."

ward winning British author FRANCIS SPUFFORD. His books have won the Costa Book Award, The Ondaatje Prize and have been long listed for the Booker Prize.They include Cahokia Jazz - a 1920’s noir crime novel set in an alternate American history where a sovereign majority indigenous nation-state thrives in the middle of the United States, and Golden HIll a novel set in 18th century New York. Spufford’s new novel, called Nonesuch, takes place in London during the war as the city must try to survive the Blitz - the 8-month bombing campaign led by the Nazis that killed over 40,00 British.

Before the captivity narrative about a Mexican woman abducted by the Apache in the mid-1800s; before the storyline about Geronimo's surrender; before the torrent of details about the life and peoples on the borderlands between present-day Mexico and the U.S.; there's this first sentence:

In the beginning, things appear. Writing is a defiant gesture we’ve long since gotten used to: where there was nothing, somebody put something, and now everybody sees it. For example, the prairie.