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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Pistols and Petticoats: 175 Years of Lady Detectives

For TTBOOK host Anne Strainchamps her only encounters with guns happened in the pages of crime fiction -- usually, stories featuring women. Give her a woman and a gun and she was there for 200 plus pages.   Kinsey Milhone, VI Warshawski, Miss Marple, Nancy Drew…She could name dozens of fictional female crime fighters -- but not one real-life woman detective.  

That was until she picked up historian Erika Janik’s latest, “Pistols and Petticoats.”   It’s the story of how women moved from crime solving in fiction to the real world.   

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Mitch Horowitz on "Occult America"

Mitch Horowitz tells Anne Strainchamps that belief in the occult is as old as the colonies and that spiritualism was America's first great religious export.

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On Our Minds: Poet Nikki Giovanni

 Inspired by the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements and by African-American activists and artists Giovanni’s poetry has become synonymous with the struggle of African-Americans, and especially the struggle of Black women.

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Richard Schweid on Eels

Richard Schweid loves eels.  He tells Steve Paulson that scientists know very little about their life cycle, but that their numbers seem to be declining.

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Laura Miller on the Shortcomings of "Twilight"

Laura Miller tells Anne Strainchamps why she thinks Stephanie Meyers' "Twilight" books are such a phenomenal success with young women, even though the lead female character is so lacking in gifts or accomplishments.

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Nicholson Baker on Poets & Poetry

Nicholson Baker's latest novel is called "The Anthologist." Baker tells Anne Strainchamps the book's about a writer who longs to be a poet.

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Michael Benson and Lawrence Weschler on Photos of Space

Michael Benson is a film-maker who’s compiled an extraordinary book of still photographs. Lawrence Weschler wrote the book’s Afterward.

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Jonathan Lethem on "Chronic City"

Jonathan Lethem's new novel is "Chronic City." The book has been described as a cross between the famous borough-centric New Yorker cartoon and the darkest episode of "Seinfeld."

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