The Thread® - Books and Literary News

The Thread® is your source for book recommendations and other literary news.

Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. Listen to Ask a Bookseller to find your next favorite book.

Big Books and Bold Ideas

Big Books and Bold Ideas is a weekly series hosted by Kerri Miller every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

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Talking Volumes

Talking Volumes is an annual event series featuring notable authors in conversation about their new books. Presented by MPR News and The Minnesota Star Tribune. 

The gut's curious history
Historian Elsa Richardson’s new book, “Rumbles,” takes us on a fascinating tour of the gut’s medical and cultural past.
How to talk with children about racialized trauma
MPR News host Angela Davis talks with the authors of an illustrated children’s book aimed at helping families have conversations about generational trauma.
Ask a Bookseller: ‘No Two Persons’ by Erica Bauermeister
David Stippick of Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, Texas, recommends “No Two Persons” by Erica Bauermeister.
Richard Flanagan’s exploration of history, family and human interconnection in ‘Question 7’
Australian author Richard Flanagan recently became the first writer to win both the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Best Book of Nonfiction. The latter prize was for his memoir “Question 7.” In it he examines his own life through a series of interconnections stretching across history and spanning the globe.
New book tells how the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe defended its reservation and sovereignty
“They Would Not Be Moved: The Enduring Struggle of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to Keep their Reservation” by historian and anthropologist Bruce White was published earlier this year by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. The book details the nearly 200-year fight by the tribal nation to maintain their land.
Ask a Bookseller: ‘North Woods’ by Daniel Mason
Justin Dickinson of Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kan., recommends ‘North Woods’ by Daniel Mason.
Dr. Marty Makary on medicine's blind spots
Dr. Marty Makary says data misinterpretation and conventional thinking is not serving us well — and he wants to change that. His new book, “Blind Spots,” details when medicine got it wrong and then resisted making it right.