Brian Laird on WNYC in our Spring membership drive, trying to reach our goal of a thousand

donations by 7 o'clock.

And during this drive on this show, we're featuring new books. That's going to be a

series for this whole seven days of Brian Laira shows in this drive, books that we have on the

Brian Laira Show bookshelf. Some really interesting titles are out recently, and we decided we

would feature some of them. Some are more political, some are more personal, some are by

famous people, some by authors who are less well known, but who we think you'll enjoy listening

to or learning from or interacting with. We're planning to have at least one author on the show

each day of the drive, sometimes two, and we'll kick it off right now with New York Times columnist

Nicholas Christoff, who has now been with the Times for 40 years,

and who has just published a memoir about a lot of that called Chasing Hope, a reporter's life.

And you know, we could use some hope in these pessimistic times, right?

Interesting that it comes from Christoph, who has devoted

his career, as you regular readers would know, to exposing some of the worst suffering in the

world. That's what he's done. But maybe you saw his recent times op-ed, his column that draws on the

book called The Case for Hope. We'll talk about that. He also has a book-related New York

event tonight that brought him in physically from Oregon. It's Nicholas Christoph in conversation

with the author Tara Westover at the Stryker Cultural Center of Temple Emmanuel at 65th and 5th

in Manhattan tonight at 630. Check the Temple Emmanuel Striker Center website

for tickets. They're selling ticket plus book combos, I see. We'll also have a link on our site.

Nick, congratulations on the book and welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you. Great to be with you.

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