What goes on the dining table has never mattered as much to our lives as what goes on around it, says Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for The New Yorker. Guest host John Donvan talks with Gopnik about his new book, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food.

Emily Dickinson is all over Tucson, Ariz. Reading, lectures, classroom lessons — it's all part of the Big Read Project, which is devoted to "inspiring people across the country to pick up a good book."

Karl Pillemer's new book 30 Lessons for Living results from an effort to collect wisdom from more than 1,200 older Americans. Guest host Tony Cox speaks with Pillemer and Helene Rosenblatt, one of the elders featured in the book, about what we can learn from our elders and why we don't listen to them more often.

Daily Beast and Newsweek editor Tina Brown explores the work of newspaper columnists through readings that propose a new way of looking at the 2012 election and the scandal at Penn State.

The Bronte siblings created elaborate fantasy worlds. A recently discovered childhood manuscript by Charlotte Bronte reveals how vividly the worlds were imagined — and may provide clues to the later work.

In The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones, Jon Ronson explores the subculture of ordinary individuals who adopt superhero identities (and costumes) to patrol the streets.

Before his death in 2008, Michael Crichton was among the world's best-selling authors. Three years after Crichton died, a new Crichton novel is being published in hopes that it will be a best seller. It was not completed before Crichton's death and was finished by novelist Richard Preston. But Micro displays the familiar science fiction of Crichton's work.