Jordan Flaherty is journalist and editor of Left Turn Magazine; his book Floodlines is a firsthand account of community, culture, and resistance in New Orleans in the years before and after Katrina. The book weaves the interconnected stories of prisoners at Angola, Mardi Gras Indians, Arab and Latino immigrants, public housing residents, gay rappers, spoken word poets, victims of police brutality, out of town volunteers, and grassroots activists.

A quarter of a million dollars is the going tab for four years at most top-tier universities. But why does it cost so much and is it worth it? Sociologist Andrew Hacker and his co -author, Claudia Dreifus say the we have lost sight of the primary mission in Higher Education?.

Teresa Gowan’s look at homelessness in San Francisco is a devastating examination of poverty in the United States in  Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders.

Author, Jennifer Jordan was at the base of the mountain in 2002 when she stumbled upon a grisly discovery. There she saw a skeleton of a human being: the pelvis, two femurs, and scattered ribs. She backtracks to tell the story from start to finish about how a wealthy American died alone in The Last Man on the Mountain. At the half, Thomas Scott McKenzie, the co-author of The Man Behind the Nose talks about the legacy of Larry Harmon, the man known as Bozo the Clown.

Writer, actress and comedian, Kristen Schaal with her Daily Show writer boyfriend Rich Blomquist have collaborated on a new book, The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex. She is best known for her role as Mel in the HBO series Flight of the Conchords and she is a contributor on The Daily Show.

 Noted journalist, Alex Zaitchik, who had already spent quite a bit of time covering the right wing exposes the details behind Glenn Beck’s rise to prominence and what he stands for in Common Nonsense.

Issues in the news with Brent Budowsky who served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen and is a regular columnist on TheHill.com. Is there a revolution in the air? Later, David Callahan who co-founded Demos, a public policy center based in New York City talks about his new book, Fortunes of Change. He contends that something big is happening among the rich in America: they’re drifting to the left.

Tom Engelhardt is the creator and editor of the website TomDispatch and his latest book is The American Way of War. Did Bush’s wars become Obama’s? At the half, retired Colonel and professor Andrew Bacevich critically examines the Washington consensus on national security and why it must change in Washington Rules.

Pat Tillman walked away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army and became an icon of post-9/11 patriotism. When he was killed in Afghanistan two years later, a legend was born. The real Pat Tillman was much more remarkable, and considerably more complicated than the public knew and best selling author Jon Krakauer gives us a stunning account in Where Men Win Glory.

Jessica Stern is one of the nation’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder and she recounts her moments of terror in Denial when she and her younger sister were raped at gunpoint.  In doing so, she examines the horrors of trauma an denial. Later Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate group with Palinisms. You betcha!