The B&n Podcast

Today on the podcast we're taking a look into the still-young language of coding — and into the people who speak it and use it to build the digital world that is increasingly meshing with our daily lives.  Clive Thompson has been walking the border between high technology and social change for years, in his writing for publications like Wired and the New York Times Magazine, and in his widely insightful 2013 book Smarter than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better.  Now, in Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, Thompson draws on wide-ranging reporting, dozens of interviews, and his own experience trying to use code to solve the headaches of ordinary life. He explores the way in which programming has evolved from its infancy, feeding cards into machines, and created a world with its own deeply-held mores, and its own powerful effects on our culture, economy, and even our politics.  Clive Thompson sat down with us in the studio for a talk about what he discove

Today on the B&N Podcast, we talk with the author of such fascinatingly varied works as Capital, Fragrant Harbor, The Debt to Pleasure and IOU. With The Wall, John Lanchester looks into a startlingly near but radically altered future, one in which a nameless island nation has built a mighty barrier to keep out both would-be immigrants and rising waters. It's a fable of both exploration and warning, one that pushes its readers to join its author in trying to imagine a tomorrow whose conditions may soon be a matter of headlines rather than fiction.  When he sat down with us in the studio, John Lanchester explained how was the first time a book idea had ever grown so directly out of his unconscious mind.

The premise is simple:  what happens when the stars of the anarchic Cartoon Network hit Rick and Morty dive head-on into the world of hit points, armor classes, saving throws, and spell slots?  But here's what isn't simple: the fictional wizardry of award-winning fantasist Patrick Rothfuss. The author of the bestselling Kingkiller Chronicle novels, Rothfuss took on the task of bringing these two beloved universes together with an ambition that can only be described as epic.  He spoke via phone with B&N Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog editor Joel Cunningham about Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons and Dragons — as well as his enduring love for D&D, and how he sold his comics collaborators on pages in iambic pentameter.

Preet Bharara has had an almost unique career — As U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he served one of the nation's most zealous prosecutors fighting public corruption, civil rights violations and terrorism.  Then after leaving that office in 2017, Bharara launched what became a meteorically popular podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet — talking legal, political and cultural issues with a fascinating array of guests and bringing a blend of serene, clarifying rigor and gentle humor to listener questions about the law.   Now he's added bestselling author to his resume with the publication of Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's thoughts on Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law — a book that's not so much a memoir as it is a fascinatingly detailed, wide-ranging reflection on how lessons and stories from the world of the courtroom can shed light on the challenges we face as a nation and a community.  Just before Doing Justice released, Preet Bharara sat down with Barnes & Noble's Miwa Messer for a conve

In this episode of the podcast we talk with the groundbreaking writer Laurie Halse Anderson about her new book, Shout, a blazing work of memoir in free verse. Anderson's 1999 novel Speak brought readers with unforgettable vividness not the life of high school freshman Melinda Sordino after she is raped by another student. Speak went on to be nominated for a national book award; Anderson followed with a series of equally audacious novels for young adults and younger readers, including a set of award-winning historical novels set during the early days of the American republic. Anderson has spent much of the two decades following the publication of Speak traveling and talking with students about the realities of sexual violence, but in 2017, as the #MeToo movement was surfacing a renewed wave of women's stories, Anderson realized that she needed to return to writing directly about her own experiences. The result, she told me when we spoke recently, was a very unusual way to start a new book.

If the bestselling, award-winning novelist Harlan Coben has a secret to enthralling readers, it's that his characters aren't, for the most part globetrotting spies, cops on the edge, elite special forces agents or heroic defense attorneys. Coben creates suspense by putting ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances, situations which take them with appalling and gripping velocity straight from the office, the coffee shop or the classroom into nail-biting, plot-twisting territory. His latest, Run Away, opens with a simple concept: a man in Manhattan's Central Park looks across a clearing a spies, to his astonishment, the daughter who ran away from home. This being Coben, what follows feels both inevitable and absolutely unpredictable. The New Jersey based novelist joined us in the studio to talk about where his stories come from -- and the surprising tale of how he came to be a novelist.

Alex Kotlowitz has made a career out of mapping the lives of those who live in what he has called "the other America," in works like his award-winning 1992 bestseller There Are No Children Here, his documentary film The interrupters, and his wide-ranging reporting for newspapers, magazines and radio.  His revelatory, heartbreaking new book An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago takes up the problem of gun violence with a portrait of a single city over the course of one murder-wracked season.  It probes the nature of the crisis where it tears most persistently into the lives of ordinary Americans placed by poverty and racism into a daily struggle with the aftermath of violence and the fear of more to come. But An American Summer is a tapestry of story – a work about the Chicagoans who opened up their lives and hearts to Kotlowitz; the result is a powerful evocation of grief and endurance, love and loss.  We caught the author in New York, just as An American Summer was being released. He sat down in th

Today we're talking with a novelist who doesn't just get described as "bestselling" and "prolific" – she's a person whose name defines both, and at a scale that very few other writers approach.  Since she began her publishing career with 1973's Going Home, Danielle Steel has published over 170 books and sold over 650 million copies, making her one of the most-read writers of all time.  This unparalleled output has been driven by a writer who works in a suitably legendary fashion – late into the night, on her vintage typewriter.  Danielle Steel's latest novel is Silent Night, the story of a child actor and a professional woman brought together by a sudden tragedy.  With a setting informed by the careful research that is one of Steel's trademarks, it's a story about an unexpected bond with echoes of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan.  Danielle Steel agreed to spend a few minutes away from her work to talk with us, and even though it was actually the middle of the afternoon when we reached her on the phone, it fe

Our guest this week is the bestselling novelist Lisa See, whose works include Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, and the classic memoir On Gold Mountain-- works that cross oceans and eons to tell the stories of female friendships and family bonds.  Set on a small island off the coast of Korea, See's new novel    The Island of Sea Women is the latest selection of the Barnes & Noble Book Club. In its pages, See follows the lives of two young women through the Japanese occupation, two wars, and the arrival of the dramatic changes of the modern era.  Like all of her books, it's tailor-made to spark conversation, and so we were delighted to have Lisa See on the podcast to talk with Miwa Messer about the inspiration behind The Island of Sea Women.  

In this episode we're featuring a crossover with our sibling podcast the B&N YA Podcast as we welcome debut novelist Gita Trelease, whose sparking new novel Enchantée has critics and readers buzzing alike. Trelease weaves a suitably enchanting adventure of 18th-century France that journeys from the gutters of Paris to the gilded halls of Versailles, on the eve of Revolution. Gifted with a magical talent, Trelease's heroine Camille transforms herself from hungry child of the streets to a glamorous aristocrat -- and that change is only the beginning in Trelease's gloriously original blend of history and fantasy. The author joins B&N's Miwa Messer to talk about how she built the glittering world of this beguiling novel.

"I'd become a nameless ghost."  Today on the B&N Podcast, our guest is Stephanie Land, the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive.  In this riveting debut, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection for Spring 2019, Land chronicles her journey across the invisible line that separates "middle class" from "working poor" in America; the world of exhaustion, neglect and invisibility experienced on the other side; and how she nurtured her own dreams for her writing and for her daughter as she navigated a world of uncertain employment, byzantine bureaucracy, and the constant threat of the wolf at the door.  The result is an electric read that stands next to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Matthew Desmond's Evicted with its deeply personal view of the everyday struggles of millions.  In this episode, Stephanie Land talks with Miwa Messer about how she turned her experience into this poignant true story.

Today on the B&N Podcast we're talking about a place where business, family, and an iconic New York City institution meet.  Our guest is Julie Gaines, the co-founder of the groundbreaking store Fish's Eddy — where vintage plates, bowls and cups salvaged from a vanishing America find a new life in the kitchens and dining rooms of New Yorkers . She joined us to talk about her new book Minding the Store: A Big Story about a Small Business.  It's a story about putting your dreams into action, about what happens when you take a completely original idea and make it a reality.  It's also about what happens when you can't extricate your family life from your business, for better or for worse.  True to her nature, Julie Gaines put a family member to work in creating this unique book, which takes the form of a Graphic Memoir charmingly illustrated by her son Ben Lenovitz.  When she joined us in the studio, we started by talking about a subject that the author may know better than anybody: the surprising appeal of

In September 1993 actor Gary Sinise, fresh off of the triumph of directing his film adaptation of Of Mice Men, was being fitted for a long-haired wig to shoot scenes as the disabled veteran Lt. Dan Taylor in the movie Forrest Gump. The film’s runaway success, both at the box office and the Academy Awards of course brought Sinise acclaim as a performer, but he found that when he visited veteran’s groups they naturally identified him with the inspiring figure of the wounded Marine officer.   Less than ten years later, in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, Sinise cast around for a way to connect to and contribute to the sacrifices of US fighters on the front lines — and the journey into a thoroughgoing commitment to the work of supporting veterans and active duty service people is the through line of Sinise's brand new memoir Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service.  He sat down with us on the eve of publication to talk about the path from founding Chicago’s Legendary Steppenwolf Theater Company to hi

When the Jamaican writer Marlon James announced his intention to follow his Man Booker Prize-winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings with — in his words — an “African Game of Thrones” the excitement in the book world was nothing short of electric.  Now the first volume in a planned series has arrived, and what James has produced is nothing short of a brave new world of fantasy. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is an exuberantly original recasting of African myth and magic in which a band of questionable characters are brought together on a mission that will take them across a landscape littered with foes, monsters, seduction and shattering discovery. It's an adventure that's magical not just in the details of sorcery and shapeshifting, but in the wildly original world, both timeless and particular, in which Marlon James sets his characters loose.  He joined Bill Tipper in the studio to talk about daylight vampires, ancient sexuality, and what he had to learn to create a fantasy world with African roots.

On today's episode of the B&N Podcast, Tara Conklin joins us to talk about her brand-new novel The Last Romantics. It's a sweeping epic of an American family, in which the bonds between four siblings, forged in one idyllic summer, will be tested in a way that makes plain the power of the stories they tell one another. The Last Romantics is the latest selection of the Barnes & Noble Book Club, and to talk about her novel and its inspiration, author Tara Conklin spoke with Barnes & Noble's Miwa Messer. 

On this episode we're joined by Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief for Random House on the occasion of his new book Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.  If your memories of 8th grade English class have left you with nightmares about diagramming sentences and getting your book reports marked up with gallons of red pen, the witty, the approachable and entertaining voice with which Dreyer writes about English is just what you need to start recovery from that experience.   Dreyer guides us through the thickets of easily confused words, myths about grammar and the controversies over how and when to use – or not use – one more comma.  And as anyone who follows him on Twitter knows, there's no more humane mentor for a journey through the sometimes labyrinthine twists and turns of our language.  When Dreyer sat down with us in the studio, we asked him first to talk about what made him decide to change seats from editor to writer.

The year was 1983, and the director of marketing for a Seattle-based coffee roasting company was visiting Milan, Italy for the first time.  It was there that Brooklyn-born entrepreneur Howard Schultz says he fell in love with the bold flavors of espresso and caffe latte, and the lively, theatrical culture of Italian cafes. That journey became the inspiration behind the eventual transformation of Starbucks, as helmed by Schultz, into a multibillion dollar company with stores worldwide – and the addition to the American vocabulary of the Italian words "grande" and "venti.”  Schultz’s new book, From the Ground Up, weaves that story among others that go back to his rough-and-tumble youth in Brooklyn housing projects, his fraught relationship with his father and his mother's own special role in setting him on the path to becoming one of the most influential figures in American business.  But Schultz is also using his book and accompanying book tour to advocate his view of our political situation, and to explore t

Today on the podcast, we look at the myths and the realities of Native American life, as seen through David Treuer's fascinating, eloquent, deeply researched and groundbreaking new book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee. Treuer looks at the stories we're offered about the nature of Native American life in the era after the closing of the frontier, and argues that we have accepted a poetic and misleading story of tragedy and defeat in place of a much more complex reality – a story that includes injustice, suffering and loss, but also endurance, ingenuity, and the living presence of Native America as part of the modern U.S.A. He draws on history, journalism, and his own stories from his family and community to create an unclassifiable, illuminating book.  David Treuer joins us in the studio to talk about why this project meant so much to him.

With her 2015 novel Eileen, the writer Ottessa Moshfegh married brooding suspense and dark humor in a story that drew readers into the heart of a disturbingly arresting mystery.  That book was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. 2018 brought Moshfegh’s critically acclaimed, bestselling novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, in which the story of a young woman's unorthodox plan for self-care is the occasion for a surprising, brilliantly funny look at our anxious new century.  Moshfegh joined us in this episode on the occasion of a new paperback edition of her first book, an award-winning novella titled McGlue, after the Massachusetts-born century sailor. His troubled story, Moshfegh says, came to her almost immediately when she stumbled upon a headline in a 19th century newspaper in a library archive.  In this episode, she talks about the sources of her fiction and how late nights watching comedians on television may be one source for her razor-sharp sense of humor. 

Most people know Hedy Lamarr as one of the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, billed by MGM as "the most beautiful woman in the world."  What many people don't know is that the Austrian émigré was also a brilliant scientist and inventor who worked to develop radio technologies to help defeat the Axis powers in World War II – and that her innovations have been incorporated into many devices familiar to us today.  Marie Benedict's new novel The Only Woman in the Room is a bold new re-imagining of this fascinating figure, and it's the Barnes & Noble Book Club selection for January 2019.  In this episode, Marie Benedict joins Miwa Messer for a discussion of Lamarr's extraordinary true story, and how she crafts her fiction out of the lives of women often left out of the history books.