Books

This segment originally aired on August 10, 2009

This conversation originally aired on September 8, 2009.

Could marijuana be the nation's new cash crop? Doug Fine, an investigative journalist and NPR contributor, gives the economic argument for legalization in "Too High To Fail: Cannabis and The New Green Revolution."

Our relationship with the great whale, how Americans young and old respond to Melville's great American novel, with George Cotkin, author of "Dive Deeper: Journeys with Moby Dick," an entertaining guide to Ishmael's journey; Meg Guroff, a Hopkins grad who created a web site with an annotated Moby Dick to help readers; and Hollis Robbins, professor of humanities at Hopkins and the Peabody Institute who has taught the novel in a Peabody seminar.

Tim Wise, an author and lecturer on racism, looks at racial politics across the American landscape -- from the presidential campaign to the rise of the Tea Party to battles over immigration. Wise is the author of six books, most recently, "Dear White America, Letter to a New Minority."

Longtime Baltimore Sun columnist Rob Kasper, author of "Baltimore Beer: A Satisfying History of Charm City Brewing," traces the sudsy story from the days when alehouses lined the Jones Falls to the stories behind the current crop of local brewers who are fermenting a craft brew revival. With special guest: Beer consumer, aficionado and beer-can collector Joe "Turkey Joe" Trabert. Originally aired 06/29/12.

Renowned grammar guru Mignon Fogarty is back to share tips from her latest book, "Grammar Girl's 101 Troublesome Words You'll Master In No Time." Fogarty guides us through words with double meanings and hard-to-remember spellings, words and phrases that have tripped up even native speakers and convinced many that English is one of the world's most difficult languages. Originally aired 07/09/12.

The extraordinary tale of a journey deep into the darkest parts of the Upper Amazon -- the vast Javari Valley Indigenous Land, 33,000 square miles of dense forest -- to track one of the planet’s last uncontacted indigenous tribes. With Scott Wallace, author of “The Unconquered.” Originally aired 07/25/12.

Whether the “war on women” is a fabrication of election year politics, scholar and activist Beth Richie says the threat of real violence to black women in the U.S. has never been more serious. And, with the partisan divide over the recent renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, she says legal, social, political and economic policies are to blame. Richie is author of “Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation.” Originally aired 07/25/12.

MSNBC host and Nation writer Chris Hayes argues that since the 1960s, the country's meritocracy has embraced the growing economic inequality that has placed them near the very top, spawning a new American elite -- one that becomes corrupt to preserve its status. In “Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy,” Hayes warns of a crisis of authority that engulfs not just our politics but our day-to-day lives.Originally aired 07/19/12.