Black Friday Best-Of: Latino Life; 'Paradise Bronx'; Kwame Alexander; Mo Rocca

On this day after Thanksgiving, enjoy some of our favorite recent conversations:

• Ilan Stavans, cultural critic, Latino scholar, and publisher of Restless Book, discusses his cartoon history of Latino life, culture, and politics, Latino USA: A Cartoon History (Basic Books, 2024), now out in paperback and updated for its 25th anniversary.
• Ian Frazier, frequent contributor to The New Yorker and the author of several books, including Great Plains, Travels in Siberia and his latest, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough (FSG, 2024), turns his attention closer to home and shares his exploration of NYC's only mainland borough, the Bronx.
• Kwame Alexander, poet and Emmy-winning producer, author of Why Fathers Cry at Night and editor of This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets (Little, Brown and Company, 2024), talks about the inspiration for, and from, the works collected in his new book.
• Mo Rocca, host of the podcast Mobituaries, a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent, a frequent panelist on NPR’s hit weekly quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and author of Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs (Simon & Schuster, 2024), profiles people whose big achievements cameat the age many of their peers were stepping back.

These interviews were lightly edited for time and clarity; the original web versions are available here:

A Cartoon History of Latino Life, Culture and Politics (Sep 20, 2024)
Ian Frazier's Love Letter to the Bronx (Aug 22, 2024)
Sharing the Poems (Feb 7, 2024)
Mo Rocca's (Really) Late Bloomers (Jun 11, 2024)