Just The Right Book With Roxanne Coady

From colonial times when qualities valued for sought-after wives were that she should be civil and up to fifty, to proposed legislation in 1915 that would have made it illegal for a woman over forty-four to wear cosmetics for the purpose of making a false impression, to today when we celebrate Ruth Bader Ginsburg lifting weights and issuing wise Supreme Court decisions, we are reminded that the stature of older women has been a roller coaster rides over U.S. history. These tidbits are a smidgen are what we learn in Gail Collins’s new book, No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History, out now from Little, Brown.

A graduate of Wesleyan University, BECK DOREY-STEIN worked as a White House stenographer from 2012 to 2017. Previously she worked as a high school English teacher in Hightstown, New Jersey, Washington, DC, and Seoul, South Korea. This is her first book.

Has confidence in our universities eroded? Is the price for making people feel included making universities inhospitable to controversial ideas? Have we become too politically correct or not politically correct enough? And, most critically, have our colleges become political institutions rather than institutions that are creating lifelong learners that are willing to engage in honest debate and equipped to effectively navigate in a heterogenous world? In his new book, Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses Michael Roth answers these questions and more. His book presents a much-needed template for honest conversations and he grounds these provocative topics in reality versus hype, and characterizes a path forward for our universities to fulfill their mission of developing self-awareness, subtlety of thought, and openness to the possibility of learning from others.

Stephen Schwarzman, with his cofounder Pete Peterson, built Blackstone into the largest private equity firm in the world, with over half a trillion dollars under management. Yet at the beginning, that success did not seem inevitable. In 1985, they sent out almost five hundred letters to potential investors and received two responses. Two years later, they closed an eight-hundred million fund, and they closed it on the eve on the largest one-day percentage drop in stock market history. Along the way, Steve Schwarzman became one of the sought-after advisors to business, governments, and leaders around the world as well as an incredibly active philanthropists in China, England, and the United States. In this episode of Just the Right Book with Roxanne Coady, Schwarzman joins Roxanne Coady to discuss his new book, What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence, out now from Avid Reader Press. This episode is sponsored by Amistad Books and the upcoming novel Africaville by Jeffrey Colvin, a stunning debut ins

This week, Roxanne Coady and two members of the RJ Julia Booksellers staff, COO Lori Fazio and head book buyer Andrew Brennan, share their picks of the holiday season, including The Boy, the Mold, the Fox, and the Horse, The Martini Cocktail, Jubilee, The Complete Goal Manual, and much more. Listen and find the perfect gift for everyone on your list this holiday season!

How does memory create power? How do you define freedom, and how does the emotional savagery of selling and separating members of a family destroy and define a human being? And, most powerfully, in the midst of trauma and loss, how does one find courage and how does love survive? These ideas and more are explored in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ first novel, The Water Dancer. In partnership with RJ Julia Booksellers, this event was recorded live at the Shubert Theater in New Haven, Connecticut.

THE BOOK OF GUTSY WOMEN: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience is the first book that Secretary Clinton and Chelsea have written together, and they are excited to welcome readers into a conversation they began having when Chelsea was a little girl. Join them as they discuss the women throughout history who have had the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done. Inspired by women whose tenacity blazed the trail, the two global leaders lay out a vision for how these stories of persistence can galvanize women and men, boys and girls around the world. There’s Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate activist whose Asperger’s syndrome has shaped her advocacy. Civil rights activist Dorothy Height, LGBTQ trailblazer Edie Windsor, and swimmer Diana Nyad, who each kept pushing forward, no matter what. Writers like Rachel Carson and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, historian Mary Beard, who used wit to open doors that were once closed, and activists like Harriet Tubman and Malala Yousaf

Adrienne Brodeur began her career in publishing as the co-founder, along with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, of the fiction magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, which won the National Magazine Award for Best Fiction three times and launched the careers of many writers. She was a book editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for many years and, currently, she is the Executive Director of Aspen Words, a program of the Aspen Institute. She has published essays in the New York Times. She splits her time between Cambridge and Cape Cod with her husband and children.

Mo Rocca is a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, host of The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, and host and creator of the Cooking Channel’s My Grandmother’s Ravioli, in which he learned to cook from grandmothers and grandfathers across the country. He’s also a frequent panelist on NPR’s hit weekly quiz show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Rocca spent four seasons as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He began his career in TV as a writer and producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award–winning PBS children’s series Wishbone. As an actor, Mo starred on Broadway in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Rocca is the author of All the Presidents’ Pets, a historical novel about White House pets and their role in presidential decision-making.

Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain. She writes for the New York Post. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times, Scientific American Magazine, Glamour, Psychology Today, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

Tim O'Brien received the 1979 National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times Book of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing in 2013.

Steve Luxenberg is the author of Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation and the critically acclaimed Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret. During his thirty years as a Washington Post senior editor, he has overseen reporting that has earned numerous national honors, including two Pulitzer Prizes. Separate won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.  This episode was recorded live at RJ Julia Booksellers.

Gina Rippon is Honorary Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston Brain Centre at Aston University in Birmingham, England. Her research involves the use of state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate developmental disorders such as autism. In 2015 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association for her contributions to the public communication of science. Rippon is part of the European Union Gender Equality Network, belongs to WISE and ScienceGrrl, and is a member of Robert Peston’s Speakers for Schools program and the Inspiring the Future initiative. She lives in the United Kingdom.

James B. Stewart is the author of Heart of a Soldier, the bestsellers Blind Eye and Blood Sport, and the blockbuster Den of Thieves. He is currently a columnist for the New York Times and a professor at Columbia Journalism School, and in 1988 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the stock market crash and insider trading.

Tatiana Schlossberg is a journalist writing about climate change and the environment. She previously reported on those subjects for the Science and Climate sections of the New York Times, where she also worked on the Metro desk. Her work has also appeared in the Atlantic, Bloomberg View, the Record (Bergen County), and the Vineyard Gazette. She lives in New York. This episode was recorded live at RJ Julia in Madison, CT. Also, Dan Sheehan of Bookmarks stops by to discuss the best reviewed books this month, including: Quichotte by Salman Rushdie Ducks, Newburyport byLucyEllman Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom Fentanyl, Inc. by Ben Westhoff

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which is being adapted as a television series with Eva Longoria. In addition to her clinical practice, she writes The Atlantic‘s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column and contributes regularly to The New York Times. She is on the Advisory Council for Bring Change to Mind and has appeared in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The CBS Early Show, CNN, and NPR’s “Fresh Air.” 

Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972, she moved with her family to a farm in southern Africa. She lived in Africa until her mid-twenties. In 1994, she moved to Wyoming. Fuller is the author of several memoirs including Travel Light, Move Fast, Leaving Before the Rains Come, and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness. On this week's episode, the memoirist discusses her latest book, her childhood in Rhodesia and the blatant racism that permeated her early life, and the death of her son.

How do we respond to the immensity of suffering that confronts us and overwhelms us without losing our compassion or sanity? This week, Roxanne Coady sits down with Tim Desmond to discuss his book, How to Stay Human in a F*cked-Up World: Mindfulness Practices for Real Life. Tim Desmond is a psychotherapist, student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, and author of Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy. He has dedicated his life to creating peace and compassion in the world through meditation, psychotherapy, conflict resolution and nonviolent social change.

JAYSON GREENE is a contributing writer and former senior editor at Pitchfork. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vulture, and GQ, among other publications. Once More We Saw Stars is his first book. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

JENNY ODELL is an artist and writer who teaches at Stanford, has been an artist-in-residence at places like the San Francisco dump, Facebook, the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department, and has exhibited her art all over the world. She lives in Oakland. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy is her first book.