Grant was married to Joan Washington, an acclaimed dialect coach, for 35 years. He writes about their relationship and her death from cancer in the new memoir A Pocketful of Happiness.
Jay Wellons has operated on kids' brains and spinal cords. He writes about the anguish of losing a patient and the exhilaration of saving a life in All That Moves Us. Originally broadcast July 2022.
Cosby's novel All the Sinners Bleed centers on a Black sheriff in a small Southeast Virginia county. The novel was inspired by his own experiences growing up in the shadow of the Confederacy.
"My early '70s New York is dingy and grimy," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author says. Whitehead's sequel to Harlem Shuffle centers on crime at every level, from small-time crooks to Harlem's elite.
A shared love of jazz led author Lesa Cline-Ransome and illustrator James Ransome to discover inventor Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax and the instrument named after him.
Madhur Jaffrey says she never took cooking seriously, and it may be her secret to her success: "I love to eat and when you do, you think of all the possibilities."
A book recounts how precious works of art thousands of years old were taken to safety as Japan began its invasion of China in the 1930s — a part of China's history largely unknown outside Asia.
Author 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.
"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.
Shoes and accessories designed by Aurora James sell for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. In Wildflower, James details how hard it was to get here and the imbalanced economics of high fashion.
Actor Laura Dern and her mother Diane Ladd have always shared a profession. But when Ladd was diagnosed with lung disease, the two started sharing so much more. Their new book is Honey, Baby, Mine.
In their latest book CROWNED: Magical Folk and Fairy Talesfrom the Diaspora, Kahran and Regis Bethencourt retell fairy and folk tales with Black children as the main characters.
The late rapper — who was killed at 25 in 1996 — would have turned 52 this year. Santi Elijah Holley's new book follows the Shakur family tree and their work in the Black Liberation Movement.