Just the Right Book with Roxanne Coady

Anne Bogel is the author of Reading People and I'd Rather Be Reading and creator of the blog Modern Mrs Darcy and the podcasts What Should I Read Next? and One Great Book. Bogel's popular book lists and reading guides have established her as a tastemaker among readers, authors, and publishers. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Today's episode is brought to you by Then the Fish Swallowed Him by Amir Ahmadi Aarian, out now from HarperVia.

Over a forty-year span of working forty hours a week, which most of us will do, we will spend eighty-thousand hours in what poll after poll shows that almost seventy percent of the employed are disengaged. Globally, almost 85 percent are unhappy and unhappy with work likely means unhappy with life. Is this the way it has to be? It is work. Well, the answer is delightfully an unequivocal no.  Bill Burnett is the executive director of the Stanford Design Program, and was a product leader for Apple's groundbreaking PowerBook business. He directs the undergraduate and graduate program in design at Stanford. Dave Evans is the co-director of the Stanford Life Design Lab, and a cofounder of Electronic Arts, one of the world's largest interactive entertainment companies. He holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford

The legacy of growing up black in a state whose original constitution stated "no free negro or mulatto not residing in the state at the time of the adoption of this constitution shall come, reside or be within the state or hold any real estate or make any contracts or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state or employ or harbor them." This legacy is explored with brutal honesty and humor, poetry, and above all, with love for the family that is Mitchell Jackson's American family. It is a memoir that uses original storytelling methods to encompass a vibrant personal journey of race, violence, manhood and tragedy. But it is defined by survival within that chaos.

We spend a lot of time talking and listening. But are we really listening and are we being heard? Do you fail to register the name of a person that you were just introduced to? Do you find that someone is texting or looking at their phone while you're having a conversation with them? And why, with all the connecting that we're doing, are more people lonely and unheard?  Kate Murphy is a Houston, Texas-based journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Economist, Agence France-Presse, and Texas Monthly.

Doctors are acculturated and socialized to maintain life. Sometimes at all costs, even the human costs of suffering. The relatively new field of palliative care looks for the way that medicine can embrace and relieve the tension of seeking to preserve life while embracing life’s temporality. Dr. Sunita Puri explores the issues with exquisite elegance and humanity in her book That Good Night, out now in paperback from Penguin Press. Dr. Sunita Puri is an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California, and medical director of palliative medicine at the Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center. She has published essays in The New York Times, Slate, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and JAMA-Internal Medicine. She lives in Los Angeles.

A fine spring and a beautiful evening on May 10, 1940, didn’t seem the type of day that would portend a sequence of events that would define our world to this day. Yet, on Winston Churchill’s first day as Prime Minister, Hitler invaded Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and that succeeding year, May 1940 to May 1941, saw the death of 45,000 Britains through a blistering series of bombings amounting risks that Germany would occupy and rule all of Europe, and the emergence of Churchill as a man that would define for all time true leadership. Erik Larson again brings his extraordinary talent in making history relevant and riveting to his latest book, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz.

Richie Jackson is currently producing Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song on Broadway. He executive produced Showtime's Nurse Jackie (Emmy and Golden Globe nominee for "Best Comedy Series") for seven seasons and co-executive produced the film Shortbus, written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell. He and his husband, Jordan Roth, were honored with The Trevor Project's 2016 Trevor Hero Award. They live in New York City with their two sons.

The #MeToo movement is thriving. Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose have lost their seats. Harvey Weinstein is on trial for rape. The veil of secrecy and shame has been lifted. Does this mean that we can check that box—mission accomplished? Not really. The real corporate world has yet to do all that it will take for environments to fundamentally change. Sylvia Ann Hewlett in her new book, #MeToo in the Corporate World: Power, Privilege, and the Path Forward uses data, analysis, interviews, and her considerable and award-winning skills to help us understand the day-to-day contributing factors of corporate culture that must change. In her fourteenth book, she gives us another critically acclaimed book that is practical, smart, and slightly optimistic.

Our democracy is dependent on the free flow of information, but it is as critically dependent on the reliability of that information. Since waging an information war is easier and cheaper than buying tanks and tridents, we’re at a critical stage of protecting our democracy. We could have no better guy to this conversation than Rick Stengel. Among his esteemed positions and experience—being Time magazine’s editor in chief and serving three years as President Obama’s Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Affairs. In his latest book, Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What Can We Do About It, we have a lively front seat into what’s happening right now and whether democracy is safe.

Ada Calhoun, author of 'Why We Can’t Sleep,' explores the unique challenges of midlife crises for Gen X women on Just the Right Book. From societal expectations to resilience, the podcast delves into balancing career, family, and redefining success in modern times.