Adam Phillips

We have dozens of ways to describe insanity, but there is no agreement on -- not even a medical definition of -- sanity. Psychotherapist Adam Phillips calls upon his own clinical experience as well as research to ask us to consider "saneness," in his book Going Sane.

Paul Lukacs

Some of the best wines in the world are now made in America, and not just in California, either. Wine columnist Paul Lukacs took on the task of trying to identify America's best, in his book The Great Wines of America. But his is a book not just about hardy grapes, and wine, but about the hardy people who run the vineyards.

James Moore

The history of the United States can be told through the prayers of its people, says the author of a book that traces that history. James Moore undertook an unprecedented study of prayer in America and found that it has been far more ubiquitous and influential than many have previously understood. His book is called One Nation Under God.

June Fletcher

Seven out of ten Americans are now homeowners, many of them encouraged by an incredible rise in home prices in recent years. But the air has already begun leaking out of that bubble, says Wall Street Journal writer June Fletcher. Her book House Poor is aimed at preparing homeowners and potential homebuyers for the emerging downturn.

Arlene Blum

Arlene Blum has been places only a handful of other human beings have ever seen. She's now retired, but until 1993 she was a world-class mountain-climber and expedition leader. Now Blum pauses to look back on her life and career in a book called Breaking Trail.

Mysteries of 2005

There were some fine mysteries published in 2005, by authors well-known and some who are not yet. On today's Mystery Monday on THE BOOKCAST, we've put together a brief retrospective of our interviews this year with some of the world's top mystery writers.

Jody Rosen & Jeff Guinn

Today, apropos to what day it is, two interviews from our recent archive. We'll go back to an interview I did about a year ago with Jeff Guinn, the author of the The Autobiography of Santa Claus, revealing that while the cartoonish Santa is mostly made-up, there is actually a lot more historical fact behind the Santa story than most people realize. But first, my interview from 2002 with music journalist Jody Rosen, whose book White Christmas tells the story behind the song first made popular in 1942 by Bing Crosby and which is now one of the world's favorite holiday tunes.

Jan Karon

For nine years writer Jan Karon has built a huge following for her series of novels about a minister named Father Tim, set in a small town called Mitford, books she says are simply about "decent, ordinary people living ordinary lives." But the Mitford Years novels have now run their course, and Karon has wrapped up the series with her ninth Mitford novel, called Light From Heaven.

Peter Post

Every couple has conflicts, but many of those conflicts can be resolved quickly and easily if you know what to do about them, says Peter Post. He's the great-grandson of the original etiquette maven Emily Post, and his book Essential Manners for Couples is based in large part on surveys taken by the Emily Post Institute.

Maureen Dowd

It's been thirty-plus years since the feminist revolution, and we still haven't solved anything in the gender wars, it would appear. With a generous helping of humor, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd zeroes in on some of the ways men and women are still trying to make peace in her book Are Men Necessary?

Brad Meltzer

Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman head an all-star cast of DC Comics superheroes in an unusual book by popular thriller writer Brad Meltzer. Identity Crisis pulls together a seven-issue comic book series in which the superheroes must find a killer who's making it personal, by attacking their loved ones.

Larry Beinhart

Novelist and political columnist Larry Beinhart coined a term in 2004, in his novel The Librarian. Referring to information that has been published, covered in the media, but then lost in the public consciousiness, Beinhart came up with the phrase "fog facts." Facts that somehow get lost in the fog of right-wing Republican obfuscation. Beinhart has now written a book called Fog Facts.

David Lozell Martin

A Native American protest group vandalizes the St. Louis gateway arch, in David Lozell Martin's thriller Facing Rushmore. But are they terrorists? Or is the power these protestors seem to wield coming from a source that has struck fear in the white man's heart for generations?

Nancy Baggett

Nothing's as American as apple pie, but there are thousands of other things Americans also call dessert, and now famed cookbook author Nancy Baggett has collected recipes from all over the country, for her book The All-American Dessert Book.

David Vise

A few years ago Larry Page and Sergey Brin were just a couple of postgraduate students with a strong desire for a better Internet search engine. Today they are billionaires, after founding Google, the juggernaut that is redefining not just the web, but information handling of all kinds. Washington Post reporter David Vise provides the details of Google's amazing rise in his book The Google Story.

Jef Mallett

One of the rising new stars in the funny pages is a likeable young elementary school janitor named Frazz, who is also a musician as well as, it seems, philosopher, counselor, and best bud to his pre-adolescent cartoon-mates. Frazz is the creation of cartoonist Jef Mallett, whose first collection of strips is called Frazz: Live from Bryson Elementary.

Diana Gabaldon

The three years leading up to the American Revolution are momentous years for the main characters of Diana Gabaldon's novel A Breath of Snow and Ashes, the sixth book in her immensely popular Outlander series. Jamie Fraser and his wife Clare, a time-traveler from the twentieth century, face harrowing new challenges -- and an event that seems pre-destined.

Mireille Guiliano

When she was a teenager, French-born Mireille Guiliano came to America as an exchange student. And gained twenty pounds. Back home in France, her family doctor shared with her the secrets French women have known for generations, about eating properly so as not to gain weight. Now Guiliano shares those secrets in her bestselling book French Women Don't Get Fat.

Frank McCourt

At age 66 Frank McCourt wrote his first book, Angela's Ashes, a powerful memoir of a childhood in poverty in Ireland. He followed up that book with another, about his years as a young man in America. Now the trilogy is complete, with McCourt's memoir of 30 years of teaching in the New York City public school system. He calls it Teacher Man.

Lea Wait

Maggie Summer is an antiques dealer, a history professor, and a solver of crimes in the series of cozy mysteries by Lea Wait. The fourth in the series, Shadows at the Spring Show, finds Maggie organizing an antique fair for charity. The trouble begins when someone begins sending threatening letters.

Art Buchwald

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald has no equal. He has been writing about the absurdity of Washington since the Eisenhower administration, and has never been at a loss for words. His latest collection of columns is called Beating Around the Bush.

Sandra Boynton

"The train goes nowhere, but it goes there fast," is what it says on the back cover of a book-and-CD for children called Dog Train.A creative team headed by illustrator and songwriter Sandra Boynton assembled an all-star musical cast to bring the songs in Dog Train to life.

John Hodgman

Complete world knowledge, is what writer John Hodgman promises in his book The Areas of My Expertise. The fact that the knowledge is all wrong, plausible yet completely fictional, is beside the point. Hodgman's book is a shrewd literary parody, an homage to the traditional almanac.

Mark Crispin Miller

We wuz robbed. So says the author of a book that lays out evidence that the 2004 presidential election was stolen by forces determined to return George W. Bush to the White House for a second term. And critic and political commentator Mark Crispin Miller warns, in his book Fooled Again, that it could happen again if we let it.

Jonathan Harr

How a young Italian graduate student and a 91-year-old British scholar teamed up to recover a famous lost masterpiece is told in journalist Jonathan Harr's book The Lost Painting. Using the same narrative technique that made his book A Civil Action a major bestseller, Harr recreates the dusty, sometimes dangerous trail that led to the priceless masterpiece by Caravaggio.

Frank Warren

What's your secret, the one thing you've never told anyone, maybe not even yourself? One man from Maryland is inspiring people to finally reveal those secrets. Frank Warren began by asking people to anonymously send him a postcard. Then he began posting those postcards on a website, and now it's become a global phenomenon. PostSecret, the book, features some of those postcards and the secrets that are finally seeing the light of day.

P.D. James

Having only a small number of possible suspects doesn't make a murder easier to solve, as one character reminds another in the P.D. James mystery The Lighthouse. It's not a locked-room mystery as much as it is an isolated-island mystery, where a prominent, but not very likeable, author has been found dead. James' very likeable hero, Scotland Yard Commander Adam Dalgliesh, is soon on the case.

Behzad Yaghmaian & Hugh Kennedy

Millions of Muslims from oppressed nations in the Middle East and Africa are fleeing to the West -- into the embrace of the infidel -- and their story is now told in a new book by journalist Behzad Yaghmaian called Embracing the Infidel. We'll talk with him in a few minutes, but first: today's Baghdad is a city besieged by war, the capital of a struggling third-world country. But many centuries ago, Baghdad was a world-class city, a shining star, the fabled metropolis we've read about in The Arabian Nights. Now British historian Hugh Kennedy brings the ancient city to life in a book called When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World.

Alan Alda

Alan Alda was born into show business. His father was a well-known stage, film and vaudeville actor, and young "Allie" was out on stage himself by age nine. His autobiography, however, is more about his evolution into a happy, well-adjusted human being than about the many character roles that have made him one of America's favorite actors. Alda calls his book Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.

Nikki Giovanni & Rosa Parks

Fifty years ago today, in Montgomery, Alabama, a seamstress from the projects named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Angered and inspired by her arrest, the city's African-American residents launched a bus boycott that provided the spark for the American civil rights movement, and which gave rise to a young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. Now acclaimed poet and educator Nikki Giovanni has written a book for children about the late Rosa Parks, called Rosa. Nikki Giovanni joins us today on THE BOOKCAST -- and then keep listening, to hear Rosa Parks herself talk about that day, her status as a heroine, and her relationship with Dr. King.