Books

Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower — depicting a dystopian U.S. in 2024 — was published 30 years ago. Toshi Reagon's new musical retelling explores the web of past, present and future.

"My father was not a good person, but he was a great character," Sedaris says. The humorist reflected on his late father in the memoir Happy-Go-Lucky. Originally broadcast May 31, 2022.

"We won't heal until we make sense of the crack epidemic," Donovan X. Ramsey says. His book, When Crack Was King, examines the drug's destructive path through the Black community.

New York Times journalist Jeff Goodell warns a new climate regime is coming: "We don't really know what we're heading into and how chaotic this can get." His new book is The Heat Will Kill You First.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Hull grew up in the rural interior of Central Florida during the 1960s and '70s. Her memoir evokes a land of perfect citrus, and the cruel costs of its harvest.