Culture

Tuesday, Doug is joined by area book sellers Ken Sanders of Ken Sanders Rare Books, Catherine Weller of Weller Book Works and Betsy Burton of The King's English with their suggestions for this year's best titles. Sure, you could get that special someone a package of socks or an ugly Christmas sweater – but finding just the right book will kick your holiday gift-giving up a notch. We've got fiction and poetry – non-fiction and illustrated books and of course new and classic children's titles.

For the past 40 years western economies have splurged on debt, but it’s hardly a new phenomenon. Financial journalist Philip Coggan says that economic crises have a time-worn place in history. Governments fall, currencies lose their value and new systems emerge. In his book Paper Promises, Coggan traces our attitudes towards money and debt through history. He joins us to explain what these debt cycles can teach us about our current situation and how our attitudes might be about to change again. (Rebroadcast)

Few questions could ever be as vexing or confounding: why is there something instead of nothing? Faced with that inquiry, most people would just shrug their shoulders. The writer and reporter Jim Holt took a much different approach. He went on an epic journey to uncover past and present attempts to tackle the biggest of questions, and to find out if we’re just a few Einsteins short of getting our origins straight. Holt joins us on Wednesday to help us wrap our minds around an infamously knotty concept. (Rebroadcast)

As you're planning your Thanksgiving meal, we're talking to The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik about his latest book, "The Table Comes First." Gopnik says that every human group that's ever been ritualizes its food. Indeed, the way we approach the table defines who we are. The book is a journey from eighteenth-century France to our modern-day obsession with gastronomy. Monday, Gopnik joins us to answer this question: what is the true meaning of food in our lives?