American Afterlife, NSA Reform, Share Some Books

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Looking for some new books to read? Rob Ferrett and Veronica Rueckert talk to the executive director of To The Best Of Our Knowledge about some of the top books he’s encountered lately. They talk to an author about mourning and funeral traditions in modern America and discuss the news.

Featured in this Show

  • 'TTBOOK' Producer Offers Must-Read Book List For Spring

    At Wisconsin Public Radio, producer Steve Paulson is a turbo-charged, book-reading machine.

    In his day job as executive producer of WPR’s national program, “To the Best of Our Knowledge,” Paulson works his way through a lot of books — new, and sometimes old — to bring the best writing and biggest ideas to the radio.

    This spring, Paulson has three big books on his mind, titles that have it within their power to make readers laugh, cry and think.

    Paulson’s first book pick is from longtime Madison resident, Lorrie Moore, who taught for years in the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She recently left to accept a new position at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

    Widely considered the most prominent short-story writer of her generation, Moore has kept fans waiting 15 years for her latest collection of stories, called “Bark.”

    “This is a literary event,” Paulson said of the book’s release.

    The stories in “Bark” mostly deal with middle-aged characters and tend toward the bittersweet. And the writing, Paulson said, is signature Moore.

    “It’s a combination of funny and awful. She manages to bring humor to anxiety and misery. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” he said, “and that is what makes Lorrie Moore such a great writer.”

    Another new book on Paulson’s must-read list is “My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgaard. The Norweigan writer has taken Scandinavia and Europe by storm and is being hailed as a modern Proust, according to Paulson.

    “It’s basically his life story,” said Paulson, who calls the books a phenomenon for their runaway popularity.

    Knausgaard’s six-volume work is being billed as fiction, but it’s extremely autobiographical — as Paulson points out, “warts and all.”

    Two of six have been published in the U.S. with a third on the way. The books are controversial, both for their unflinching and at times, unflattering portrayal of Knausgaard’s family, but also for their title, a deliberately provocative reference to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

    Paulson veers toward science for his final pick, “About Time,” by astrophysicist Adam Frank. Frank writes about the Big Bang, and the march of time that rippled out from that first cosmic klang.

    From the medieval invention of hours to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, Paulson said, “Adam’s Frank’s point is that our theories of cosmology are very much tied in to our ideas about time.”

    For the reader, Paulson said the book raises interesting questions about the constant sweep of the universal clock.

  • A Look At Grief And Mourning In Modern America

    From memorial photography to green burials, a writer explores mourning, grief, and funeral traditions in modern America.

  • Obama Calls To End NSA Bulk Data Collection

    President Obama’s administration is proposing to end the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection program and revise the way it collects telephone data. A guest explains what the implications of the change would be, if passed by Congress.

  • Book Share With TTBOOK's Steve Paulson

    In need of a good read? Steve Paulson, executive producer of WPR’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge” joins us to share some of his latest best reads.

Episode Credits

  • Rob Ferrett Host
  • Veronica Rueckert Host
  • Chris Malina Producer
  • Cynthia Schuster Producer
  • Kate Sweeney Guest
  • Donald Downs Guest
  • Veronica Rueckert Interviewer