Ginger Dellenbaugh, "Maria Callas's Lyric and Coloratura Arias" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

“O Albany”: Novelist William Kennedy on His Great Cycle of the City

Monday, June 22—William Kennedy is to Albany what Joyce is to Dublin and Faulkner to Mississippi, a fictional alchemist who transforms his native place into novels at once deeply evocative of their setting and movingly universal in their human resonances. In The Albany Trilogy [https://www.loa.org/books/the-albany-trilogy/], just out from Library of America, three of Kennedy’s masterpieces—including his beloved novel Ironweed—take readers from the gutter to the statehouse in narratives of brokenness, resilience, and unexpected grace set against the backdrop of one of America’s most storied underdog cities. Join Kennedy himself, one of only a handful of living authors in the LOA series, and his longtime friend Paul Grondahl, editor of the LOA edition [https://www.loa.org/books/the-albany-trilogy/], for a special, intimate, and wide-ranging conversation about craft, Albany as a protagonist, and what’s next for this titan of American letters, at work on his next book at ninety-eight years old. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Ranita Ray, "Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

A powerful exposé of the American public education system's indifference toward marginalized children and the "slow violence" that fashions schools into hostile work and learning environments. In 2017, sociologist Ranita Ray stepped inside a fourth-grade classroom in one of the nation’s largest majority-minority districts in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was there to conduct research on the lack of resources and budget cuts that regularly face public schools. However, a few months into her immersion, a disturbed Ray recognized that that greatest impediment to students was the “slow violence” that preys on their minds, bodies, and spirits at the hands of teachers and administrators who are charged with their care. https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781250288301Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781250288301] (St. Martin's Press, 2025) lays bare the routine indifference, racism, and verbal and emotional abuse and harassment that teachers and administrators perpetrate routinely against the most vulnerable children in our schools. We meet Nazli, a bright, funny Black girl, and math wiz, who loses her baby brother, and is told that “grit” will enable her to rise above her grief. Reggie is a devoted student and curious scholar, but his path to success is derailed when teachers fashion him as a predator after they find him looking at two inappropriate photos on his iPad. There’s Nalin, a shy and determined Filipina who has just arrived in the US, but is ignored based on her educator’s assumption that “Asians” are “good at math.” Her entire journey through school is darkened by this stereotype. And there’s Miguel, a sharp, distracted Latino boy who can’t overcome his teachers’ urge to incorrectly diagnose him with autism. Bolstered by an empathetic and passionate voice as well as the latest breaking research in the social sciences, Ray goes beyond timeworn discussions about the school-to-prison pipeline, funding, and achievement gaps to directly address what happens behind the closed doors of classrooms, introducing a compelling—and crucial—new perspective into the conversation about our education system. In the warm, luminous spirit of character-driven books like Invisible Child, Slow Violence allows us to see that the way we’ve tried to make a start in education reform is wrong. To forge new approaches that foster young minds and flourishing generations we have to start with how children experience the classroom. Unflinchingly, Slow Violence tells us—and shows us where to begin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Bryan Alexander, "Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

Over the past decade, American colleges and universities have seen enrollment decline, campuses close, programs cut, faculty and staff laid off, and public confidence erode. In  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781421454702]Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781421454702] (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026), futurist Bryan Alexander forecasts what the next decade might hold if we continue down this path. He argues that the United States has passed its high-water mark for postsecondary education and now faces a critical turning point. How will higher ed institutions respond to this wave of change and crisis? Combining data-driven research with scenario modeling, Alexander outlines a powerful framework for understanding what led to this moment: declining birthrates, surging student debt, rising tuition, shifting political winds, and growing skepticism about the value of a college degree. He maps out how these forces, if left unchecked, could continue to reshape academia by shrinking its footprint, narrowing its mission, and jeopardizing its role in addressing the planet's most pressing challenges, from climate change to artificial intelligence. Alexander explores how institutions might adapt or recover, presenting two possible futures: a path of managed descent and a more hopeful course of reinvention. Peak Higher Ed examines the fraying of the "college for all" consensus, the long shadow of pandemic-era disruptions, and the political polarization that has placed universities in the crosshairs. Written for educators, policymakers, students, and anyone invested in the future of higher learning, this book offers a deeply informed, unflinching look at the road ahead and the choices that will determine whether colleges and universities retreat from their peak or rise to a new one. Guest: Bryan Alexander is an [https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/aac-u-announces-the-winner-of-the-2024-frederic-w-ness-book-award] award [https://bryanalexander.org/personal/an-award-from-the-council-for-independent-colleges/]–winning [https://bryanalexander.org/writing-2/my-academia-next-book-wins-2020-most-significant-futures-work-award/], internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of higher education’s future. He completed his English language and literature PhD at the University of Michigan in 1997, with a dissertation on doppelgangers in Romantic-era fiction and poetry. Then Bryan taught literature, writing, multimedia, and information technology studies at Centenary College of Louisiana [http://www.centenary.edu/]. There he also pioneered multi-campus interdisciplinary classes, while organizing an information literacy initiative. From 2002 to 2014 Bryan worked with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), a non-profit working to help small colleges and universities best integrate digital technologies. With NITLE he held several roles, including co-director of a regional education and technology center, director of emerging technologies, and senior fellow. Over those years Bryan helped develop and support the nonprofit, grew peer networks, consulted, and conducted a sustained research agenda. In 2013 Bryan launched a business, Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC [http://bryanalexanderconsulting.com/]. Through BAC he consults throughout higher education in the United States and abroad. Bryan is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University and teaches graduate seminars in their Learning, Design, and Technology program [https://ldt.georgetown.edu/]. You can learn more about Peak Higher Ed here [https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpeakhighered.com%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cmlamagna%40dccc.edu%7C4789f980cbf04eb9957c08decd60ffa2%7Cb89069848ef6452daeaa3dda7f6bab69%7C0%7C0%7C639174014245654246%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=xB8jc6ApXtEIm9igN9H2FXaRK%2B4NeQK8tyZ5DvcbTH4%3D&reserved=0] You can follow Bryan’s writing on AI, academia, and the Future here [https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Faiandacademia.substack.com%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cmlamagna%40dccc.edu%7C4789f980cbf04eb9957c08decd60ffa2%7Cb89069848ef6452daeaa3dda7f6bab69%7C0%7C0%7C639174014245678865%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=MJ3mzKxmN2bRB8hsZGI4ZwZfrhYOvwykgg%2BGncAmWrw%3D&reserved=0] Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Ijeoma Uchegbu, "Chain Reaction: How Chemistry Shapes Us and Our World" (HarperCollins, 2026)

By one of the world's leading chemists, an entertaining and revealing tour of the chemical bonds that shape our everyday lives and provide the infrastructure for our chaotic world.  We all have a relationship with chemistry. Bonds between molecules, forged and broken in the blink of an eye, underpin everything from the food we eat and the clothes we wear to the ways we treat illnesses and construct our homes. It’s a relationship we nurture, whether we know it or not, and for leading chemist Ijeoma Uchegbu, it was serious from the beginning. In Chain Reaction: How Chemistry Shapes Us and Our World [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780063394643] (HarperCollins, 2026) Uchegbu shows us the world through a chemist’s eyes, revealing the intricate science we take for granted: how our body’s most fundamental chemical structure, our DNA, is estimated to be two meters long, resting tightly within each of our cells; how egg yolks are held together by weak chemical bonds that make them primed for emulsifying our salad dressings; and how the chemical makeup of PFAs, or “forever chemicals,” makes them so good at sticking around. Along the way, we travel from Uchegbu’s home in London to Nigeria, where cooking experiments go awry in her family kitchen, and to Italy, where the chemically inert compounds that make up stained glass keep medieval windows shining. The careful interplay of bonds and molecules brings a sense of order and wonder to the chaos of our lives, she shows, and we don’t have to wear a lab coat or study solutions in beakers to appreciate it. For readers of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and anyone who wanted to be like Elizabeth Zott in Lessons in Chemistry, Chain Reaction is a lively and intimate portrait of the wondrous and under-explored field that shapes our everyday lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Andrew Wilson, "I Wanna Be Loved By You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Takes" (Grand Central Publishing, 2026)

Publishing one hundred years after her birth, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe, I Wanna Be Loved By You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Takes [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/andrew-wilson/i-wanna-be-loved-by-you/9781538723500/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23899436321&gbraid=0AAAAADkiNGY6qVzMxouoY8dmdq7lMUz4C&gclid=CjwKCAjw0dPRBhAPEiwAE5vTTryoKaOxTVCtl2yBoGCZbD7JCILy1Lb_XxzW1ipT42fZXue3lqtWYRoCBxAQAvD_BwE] (Grand Central Publishing, 2026), is a kaleidoscopic tour of her life told through 100 captivating snapshots. Dreamer. Bombshell. Icon. Featuring a wealth of unpublished material, I Wanna Be Loved By You presents Marilyn in a startling new light. It draws upon unpublished letters from Marilyn, Arthur Miller, and Joe DiMaggio; case notes and private letters from Monroe’s psychoanalyst, Dr. Ralph Greenson; and unpublished audio recordings from the likes of Jane Russell, Billy Wilder, John Huston, Amy and Milton Greene, housekeeper Eunice Murray (the last person to see Marilyn alive), and many more. We go behind the scenes of her marriages to teenage sweetheart Jim Dougherty, Joe DiMaggio, and Arthur Miller. We see Marilyn train with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, working to dismantle the common perception that she was merely a dumb blonde. And in the concluding chapters, Wilson dissects what happened on the night Marilyn died after a suspected drug overdose. Were the Kennedys involved, or was she just let down by those closest to her? With a dazzling and unique blend of reportage, archival investigation, interviews, and oral history, I Wanna Be Loved By You is a revealing and nuanced portrait of the life, death and afterlife of an icon who still fascinates us today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]