Read Beat (...and repeat)
If you're like me, you like to know things but how much time to invest? That's the question. Here's the answer: Read Beat--Interviews with authors of new releases. These aren't book reviews but short (about 25-30 minutes on the average) chats with folks that usually have taken a lot of time to research a topic, enough to write a book about it. Hopefully, there's a topic or two that interests you. I try to come up with subjects that fascinate me or I need to know more about. Hopefully, listeners will agree. I'm Steve Tarter, former reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and a contributor to WCBU-FM, the Peoria public radio outlet, from 20202 to 2024. I post regularly on stevetarter.substack.com.
Episodes
211 episodes
"Southern News, Southern Politics" by Rob Christensen
Rob Christensen’s new book, Southern News, Southern Politics (University of North Carolina Press), is more than the history of the newspaper, the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., described at one point by a politician as ...
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Season 4
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Episode 49
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29:50
"Baseball's First Superstar" by Alan Gaff
When Christy Mathewson burst upon the scene with the New York Giants in 1900, baseball had a less-than-perfect image. It was a rowdy game played by roughnecks known for their consumption of alcohol and chewing tobacco, said Alan Gaff, author of...
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Season 4
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Episode 48
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29:58
"Mrs. Cook & the Klan" by Tom Chorneau
True crime accounts are all the rage these days. But Tom Chorneau didn’t want to just add another cold case to the national docket.Instead, the unsolved murder of Myrtle Cook in 1925 is related to political forces flowing through the sta...
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Season 4
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Episode 47
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27:57
"Rebranding the Western: A History of Comics and the Mythic West" by William Grady
How did you learn about the American West? Books came first. Reading material included notorious dime novels that made legends of Buffalo Bill and Jesse James. Newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, focused on the American West in the 19th centur...
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Season 4
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Episode 46
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32:51
Pink Cars & Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way into the Driver's Seat" by Jessica Brockmole
Chrysler released a special edition of the Dodge Royal Lancer that Chrysler in 1955 called LaFemme. Marketed as “a car for the modern woman,” the model offered a pink-and-white color scheme along with matching accessories. There was only one pr...
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Season 4
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Episode 45
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31:52
"Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet" by Lisa Lucero
Much is made of the temples and striking artwork of the ancient Maya. Justifiably. Ever since U.S. travel writer John Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood explored the ruins of Copan in Honduras, publishing Incidents of Travel i...
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Season 4
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Episode 44
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27:59
"What's Up With Women and Money?" by Alison Kosik
Before Alison Kosik wrote What's Up With Women and Money?: How To Do All the Financial Stuff You’ve Been Avoiding she’d been a business correspondent for CNN, often filing stories from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.Ko...
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Season 4
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Episode 42
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20:34
"One Death at a Time" by Abbi Waxman
Abbi Waxman, a British-born Californian, is the author of eight books including I Was Told It Would Get Easier, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, and The Garden of Small Beginnings. Her latest, One Death at a Time...
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Season 4
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Episode 43
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22:19
"Becoming Madam Secretary" by Stephanie Dray
Frances Perkins is one of those figures in history that you need to know more about. Helping in that regard is the latest book from Stephanie Dray, a historical novel called Becoming Madam President.Published in March 2024, ...
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Season 4
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Episode 41
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25:01
"Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)" by Jesse Sutanto
Jesse Sutanto is a successful writer educated at Oxford and California, lives in Jakarta, and has found her niche: the cozy mystery.I didn’t know what a cozy mystery was until Jesse explained it. “Nothing truly bad happens to the primary...
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Season 4
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Episode 40
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18:58
"Maya Blue: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Ancient Pigment" by Dean Arnold
The ancient Maya civilization is known for many things: pyramids, stone sculptures, complex astronomical calculations, a writing system, a rubber-ball game and the subject of anthropologist Dean Arnold's latest book, Maya Blue (Univers...
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Season 4
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Episode 39
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36:37
"Unveiling the Color Line" by Lisa McLeod
W.E. B. DuBois went on record in 1896 saying that white supremacy significantly warps whites' perceptions and behaviors. Even earlier--in 1890--as a 22-year-old Harvard College student--he called out Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Confedera...
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Season 4
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Episode 38
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26:22
"Ida Lupino: Forgotten Auteur" by Alexandra Seros
Ida Lupino's "problem" was that she constantly found herself the smartest person in the room, noted biographer Alexandra Seros, a Hollywood screenwriter and the author of Ida Lupino: Forgotten Auteur (University of Texas Press...
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Season 4
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Episode 37
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24:55
"Et Cetera: An Illustrated Guide to Latin Phrases" by Maia Lee-Chin
Maia Lee-Chin, whose book, Et Cetera: An Illustrated Guide to Latin Phrases (Andrews McMeel), was published last year, got more out of Latin class than I did.But she admits it didn't just happen. "I was forced to enroll in Latin...
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Season 4
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Episode 36
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25:35
"Midnight Black" by Mark Greaney
The Washington Post calls Mark Greaney the Tom Cruise of thriller writers. Like the Mission Impossible star, Greaney is on a roll, following in the footsteps of Tom Clancy, the thriller writer whose books have sold over 100 mi...
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Season 4
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Episode 35
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29:05
"Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets" by Kimberly Kay Hoang
Kimberly Kay Hoang, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, traveled over 300,000 miles, conducting hundreds of interviews to trace the flow of capital from offshore funds in the Cayman Islands, Samoa or Panama to holding compani...
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Season 4
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Episode 34
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30:11
“The Organization of Journalism” by Patrick Ferrucci
“It’s a new world when it comes to journalism. That prompted Patrick Ferrucci, the head of the journalism department at the University of Colorado at Boulder, to go out and see how that world has changed.The Organization of Journalis...
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Season 4
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Episode 33
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26:24
"What Works in Community News" by Dan Kennedy and Ellen Clegg
You already know about the local news crisis. The proof is probably not in your hands with the demise of so many newspapers. The terms “ghost paper” (a publication with an old masthead and little else) and “news deserts” (areas without local ne...
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Season 4
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Episode 32
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23:07
“Jeep Show: A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge” by Robert B. O’Connor
It’s been 80 years since the bloodiest battle of World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, a five-week struggle that started during the Christmas season of 1944 that took 19,000 American lives in fighting in the densely wooded Ardennes region of G...
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Season 4
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Episode 31
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24:24
"The Purpose Code" by Jordan Grumet MD
Dr. Jordan Grumet is a hospice doctor as well as a podcaster at The Earn & Invest Podcast. He’s also an author whose new book is The Purpose Code, a follow-up Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Indepe...
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Season 4
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Episode 30
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22:35
“The Uncomfortable Truth About Money” by Paul Podolsky
Books that seek to help you understand the world of finance probably aren’t viewed as the most engaging of literary categories. Consumers, after all, hold that book in their hands for a specific reason: to understand policy rates better or infl...
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Season 4
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Episode 29
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28:59
"Most Honorable Son" by Gregg Jones
You’re a Japanese American living in Nebraska in 1941. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, sending the United States into war. What do you do?At 24 when war broke out, Nebraskan Ben Kuroki enlisted to fight for his country. Ben joined the ...
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Season 4
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Episode 28
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37:21
"Carl Barks' Duck" by Peter Schilling Jr.
So many images represent Walt Disney. There’s that mouse, of course, and all those movies. There’s so much music, countless cartoons, and aisles of toys Once there were even comic books. Characters like Donald Duck operated across many differen...
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Season 4
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Episode 27
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33:21
"Pickleballers" by Ilana Long
Pickleball has become the fastest-growing sport in America. Ilana Long, author of Pickleballers, a debut romantic comedy set in Seattle, noted that as many as 50 million individuals are expected to play the sport in 2024.The game, ...
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Season 4
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Episode 26
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19:27
"Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior" by David Hone
Whenever the Jurassic Park/World franchise launches another movie entry, the national media runs to quote “a dinosaur guy” for a professional analysis. One of the guys they call is David Hone, a zoologist at Queen Mary University in Lo...
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Season 4
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Episode 25
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21:26
