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We talk with Sarah McCammon, a National Political Correspondent for NPR, about her newly released book, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church.

Author Robert Sorrell takes us from Greene County, Tennessee, north to Norton, Virginia, through his new book Secret Appalachian Highlands: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure.

Our guest is Dr. Stephen Fritz, Professor of History at East Tennessee State University and a leading authority on World War II. We talk about Dr. Fritz’s most recent book, The First Soldier: Hitler as Military Leader, published by Yale University Press.

Our subject is a new book, How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music. Guests are Alison Fensterstock, who edited the book, and Ann Powers, who wrote the introduction.

We get an up-close look at what daily life was like during World War II through the letters of tank commander John Goodin, originally from Erwin, Tennessee. Many of his letters are collected in a new book, Appalachia to Dessau: Letters of a Tank Commander in World War II, edited by Sandy Laws and published in 2024 by McFarland and Company.

Our guest is Dr. Cindy Ott, associate professor of history at the University of Delaware. She is the author of the book Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon.

We learn about traditional holiday foods of the 18th century with North Carolina author Mary Bohlen.

We visit with Mary Louise Kelly, co-host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Her book, It Goes So Fast: The Year of No Do-Overs, which was originally published in 2023, comes out in paperback on April 8, 2025, from Henry Holt and Company.

Our topic is a recently published book entitled Appalachian Epidemics: From Smallpox to COVID-19. Our guest is one of the book’s co-editors, Dr. Chris White, from Marshall University. The book is published by the University Press of Kentucky.

In part two of our interview with Marshall University’s Dr. Chris White, we look at how epidemics have affected the Appalachian region, including a comparison between the so-called “Spanish “ flu pandemic of 1918 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. White is co-editor of the new book Appalachian Epidemics: From Smallpox to COVID-19, published by the University Press of Kentucky. The photo here comes from what became known as the “Summer Without Children,” in 1950, when Wytheville, Virginia, had the highest per capita rate of polio in the nation.