Today nearly three years after the attack on the US Capitol my guest is American hero, Aquillino Gonell, author of the new book American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy. You know Staff Sergeant Gonell as one of the brave members of the Capitol Police who defended our country and our constitution when insurrectionist mobs attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.  You saw Sergeant Gonell testify in July of 2021 at a televised Congressional hearing. At the witness table with him was his friend and fellow U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Harry Dunn. And also with them were Washington Metropolitan Police Department officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges.  As I wrote in the Washington Monthly at the time, “These four heroes and their colleagues defended the U.S. Capitol from an angry mob hell-bent on murdering Vice President Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi and stopping the House and Senate from officially counting electoral votes to declare Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the winners of the November presidential election.” Gonell was born in the Dominican Republic and came to the United States in 1992. The first member of his family to attend college, he became a U.S. citizen just before his 21st birthday. He praised “this country” for giving him the opportunity to “become whatever I wanted.” In his testimony, Gonell said he was more fearful on January 6 than when he was deployed in Iraq. In Iraq, he was scared to go in convoys or supply missions to Iraqis, but he knew the risks. At the Capitol, he didn’t. How could he? “I did not recognize my fellow citizens,” he said. He heard threats against Pelosi and Pence, and realized his own life was at risk. “The rioters called me ‘traitor,” he said. They shouted that he should be “executed.” These were not peaceful protesters: “The mob brought weapons to try to accomplish their insurrectionist agenda.” These included hammers, rebar, knives, batons, bear spray, and pepper spray. They wore tactical gear. Some seized officers’ batons and shields. One rioter attacked an officer with an American flag. Rioters pulled Gonell by his leg, shield, and gear. “My survivor’s instincts kicked in,” he said. He hit a rioter who was grabbing him. Then he stood and fended off “new attackers as they kept rotating and attacking me again and again.” It was “like a medieval battle, fighting hand to hand.” The rioters were shouting “Trump sent us. Pick the right side. We want Trump.” Gonell heard an officer near him, whom he later learned was Hodges, scream in pain. He thought “this is how I’m going to die.” Gonell wiped away tears as he described learning later on that his family had been texting him frantically because they saw the turmoil. Returning home in the middle of the night, he had to tell his wife not to hug him because of the chemicals on his uniform. His body was burning. He showered, barely slept, then returned to work at Capitol around 8 am. “I’m still trying to recover from my injuries,” Gonell said. Both of his hands, his left shoulder, and his right foot were injured. He needed surgery on his right foot and now needs it on shoulder, too. He’ll likely require rehab for at least a year. He wants to know why the U.S. Capitol Police had all the support it needed during Black Lives Matter protests but not on January 6. “We don’t want medals,” he said. “We want justice and accountability.” Today I am honored to have Aquillino Gonell as my guest to talk about his new book American Shield, how his recovery is progressing, and what is to come. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Sgt. Gonell Twitter | Website | Author of AMERICAN SHIELD Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Welcome back to Booked Up, a podcast that features you, me and our favorite authors. We release a new episode every Sunday morning.  Today for the December book club, we are discussing Norman Lear, the Hollywood legend who passed this month at the young age of 101. There are gazillion people who have a thing or two to say about this ground-breaking writer, director, producer, activist.  So, to anchor our conversation, Jen selected his best-selling memoir Even This I Get to Experience, published by Penguin Books in 2014. With a blend of sheer luck, immense creativity, and epic perseverance, Lear created programs for television and film that transformed television for the better. Known best for situation comedies: All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, and Good Times, Norman Lear brought diverse, complicated families into our living rooms night after night, year after year.  His films include cult favorites like This is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride. May his memory be a blessing. Less known is his work in founding the non-profit People for the American Way. Here to talk about Norman Lear today on the Book Club are two friends of the show and a new for us here at Booked Up. First the new guy: David Kusnet. David was one of the first staffers hired by Norman for People for the American Way where he was the VP for communications.. After working there, David went on to chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton during the 1992 campaign.He is the author of Speaking American and Love the Work, Hate the Job and co-author  Also returning to the show today are Dr. Bridgette Baldwin and Comedian Judy Gold. Bridgette teaches courses in criminal law and also Critical Race Theory. Her scholarly work has examined the intersection of the 9th Amendment and social movements, as well as, the convergence of race, class and gender on welfare reform legislation. She is a Professor of Law at the Western New England University School of Law. Also joining the book club today is two-time Emmy-Award winning comedian Judy Gold. Judy is a comedian, actor, and writer. She’s the author of: Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians, We Are All in Trouble. You can see Judy live doing her stand up schtict in on January 12 at City Winery in New York. Then the next day, January 13 at City Winery in Philly. Of course there are more shows. Look them up yourself. What am I, her booking agent? Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Bridgette Baldwin Facebook | Website | Author of WISCONSIN WORKS? Get More from Judy Gold Twitter | Website | Author of YES, I CAN SAY THAT Get More from Mark Tushet Twitter | Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY  More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Rob Verchick, author of the award-winning new book, The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience is Jen’s guest today. Why this unusual title? As he describes: “One morning in Miami Beach, an unexpected guest showed up in a luxury condominium complex’s parking garage: an octopus. The image quickly went viral. But the octopus—and the combination of infrastructure quirks and climate impacts that left it stranded—is more than a funny meme. It’s a potent symbol of the disruptions that a changing climate has already brought to our doorsteps and the ways we will have to adjust.” Replete with gorgeous writing and inspiring calls-to-action, The Octopus in the Parking Garage offers hope. Rob takes us on a journey with his words, including his description of kayak paddling with his law school class.  “A forty-odd-minute drive from New Orleans, Maurepas Swamp consists of about ninety-six square miles of flooded forest consisting mainly of water tupelo and bald cypress trees and the rootlike ‘knees’ of the latter poking out of the water like dragon’s teeth. Dripping with Spanish moss, their branches shade an understory of wax myrtle, pumpkin ash, and an abundance of things that slide and crawl.” Rob is a leading climate law scholar who designed and implemented climate-resilience policies in the Obama administration. Before graduating from Harvard Law School, he  majored in English at Stanford where his senior thesis topic was “Mark Twain and Comic Theory.” Jen got to ask him about that. It’s not something you’ll see in his official buttoned up bio. Rob holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Chair in Environmental Law at Loyola University New Orleans, is a senior fellow in disaster resilience at Tulane University, and serves as president of the Center for Progressive Reform. He has written four other books in addition to the Octopus in the Parking Garage of the podcast Connect the Dots. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Rob Verchick Twitter | Website | Author of THE OCTOPUS IN THE PARKING GARAGE  More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Today we are doing Jen’s favorite thing: following the big dirty money. This time the focus is on the world of private equity. Those two words together sound ever so restrained and elite, even contained.  In reality though the world of private equity is rough and destructive and affects all of us from patients seeking health care to workers losing their jobs. There are more than $10 trillion in private equity assets under management. And many public pension funds as well as ordinary members of the public are invested. Not private at all. Timing is everything. In early December, two U.S. senators launched a bipartisan investigation on the takeover of our nation’s healthcare by giant private equity firms. Today on Booked Up we  have the top experts on this topic,Joining Jen to discuss this topic are authors Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner. Their new bestseller These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America is a must-read for anyone and everyone who wants to understand why and how the rich get richer and the rest of us are struggling to make ends meet. You may recognize Gretchen and Josh from their first book, about the 2008 financial and related mortgage crisis. It was a great resource for me when I wrote about that dangerous period. Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.  Gretchen is the senior financial reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. A former stockbroker, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her “trenchant and incisive” reporting on Wall Street. Josh is managing director at independent research consultancy Graham Fisher and Co., advising regulators, policymakers, and institutional investors on banking and financial markets.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Gretchen Morgenson Twitter | Website | Author of THESE ARE THE PLUNDERERS Get More from Josh Rosner Twitter | Website | Author of THESE ARE THE PLUNDERERS More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Chuck Collins, author of several works of nonfiction including The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions is Jen’s guest today. They mostly discuss his debut novel, Altar to an Erupting Sun, a near-future story of one community facing climate disruption came out this May. “My bologna has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R. My bologna has a second name, it’s M-A-Y-E-R….” Listeners of a certain age will remember that television ad jingle from their childhoods. Chuck Collins also has childhood and young adult memories as the great-grandson of Oscar F. Mayer, founder of the eponymous meat company, of giving up his fortune for the greater good. When he was 26, he received an inheritance of $500,000 (what would be around $1.4 million today). Instead of spending or investing the money, he donated it to various foundations. Today, Chuck is the Director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits the website Inequality Dot Org. He is an expert on U.S. inequality and the racial wealth divide and author of over ten books and dozens of reports about inequality, climate disruption, philanthropy, the racial wealth divide, affordable housing, and billionaire wealth dynasties. Praise for Chuck’s work is voluminous. Truly a who’s who in politics, academia, and policy circles shared their admiration for The Wealth Hoarders. Senator Bernie Sanders said “Chuck's book reveals not only the inner workings of this elaborate scheme to hide more than $20 trillion in wealth, it offers us a blueprint for reversing this obscene inequality so we can take back our democracy and ensure that our government works for everybody—not just the billionaire class and wealthy campaign contributors.” Brooke Harrington, Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College and author of Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent said Chuck Collins  "Skillfully blends personal narrative with social scientific research to create unique insights into a world of privilege that is ordinarily out of sight and out of mind for the rest of us." David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of Perfectly Legal  said: “While government takes out taxes before we get paid, the wealthiest avoid taxes with trusts, evade taxes with help from tax haven governments and escape the IRS because Congress hobbles tax law enforcement. Collins, who rejected the privilege of his birth, explains in plain English how wealth hoarding works and shows how we can stop this costly corruption.” Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Chuck Collins Website | Author of ALTAR TO AN ERUPTING SUN and THE WEALTH HOARDERS More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Today Jen’s guest is Orly Lobel, author of the recent book THE EQUALITY MACHINE: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future. Orly just sold the film rights to her book on Barbie to CBS Studios. The book is called YOU DON’T OWN ME: How Mattel v. MGA Entertainment Exposed Barbie's Dark Side. The book and the CBS production will follow the parallel journeys of Barbie inventor Ruth Handler and Bratz creator Carter Bryant. “Inspiration exists; it must find you working.” Picasso. You can find this gem and other fascinating details in Orly Lobel’s new book, THE EQUALITY MACHINE. She’s got it covered from virtual reality to sex robots. If you don’t know Orly, you should. Beyond being an award-winning author she is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. Professor Lobel  is the Director of the Program of Employment and Labor Law as well as the founding faculty of the Center for Intellectual Property and Markets. In addition to the Equality Machine and You Don’t Own Me, Orly also authored Talent Wants to Be Free: Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids, and Free Riding. Orly’s work has been covered in The Economist, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Financial Times, Globe and Mail, NPR’s “Marketplace,” CNBC, and CNN Money. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Orly Lobel Twitter | Website | Author of THE EQUALITY MACHINE and YOU DON’T OWN ME More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

For our special book club episode today, we are discussing the new bestselling memoir – THE WOMAN IN ME by pop icon Britney Spears. As you know, Britney is a multiplatinum, Grammy-Award winning entertainer. She has sold an incredible 100 million records worldwide. She released her new book THE WOMAN IN ME around two years after she got free from the abusive and legally questionable 13 year long conservatorship during which her father and his team controlled her every move, every morsel, and every dollar, paying themselves handsomely, and more than she earned off the product that this one-time child star had become. Joining Jen to discuss this book are two legends in their own fields.  Lisa Birnbach my long time idol, new time dear friend. Lisa is an award-winning journalist, cultural commentator and bestselling author. She also served as a witness at the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault trial against Donald Trump. If you are Gen X, you know Lisa from her runaway New York Times bestsellers: The Official Preppy Handbook and True Prep. Lis has published 20 other books, which have been translated into a dozen languages. I did not know The Preppy Handbook was a satire. It was my guide to life as a teenager. Victoria Haneman is my brilliant legal academy colleague. She has a very fancy title: the Frank J. Kellegher Professor of Trusts & Estates at Creighton University School of Law. Victoria is the real nerdy deal.  She has authored four books related to estate planning and taxation, and also published more than twenty other works including among them law review articles, essays, and peer-reviewed book chapters. Victoria is a sought after expert, appearing on television, radio, and in print.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Victoria Haneman Twitter | Website | Author of MAKING TAX LAW Get More from Lisa Birnbach Twitter | Website | Author of THE OFFICIAL PREPPY HANDBOOK and TRUE PREP More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Today Jen’s guest is Taylor Lorenz, author of the new book, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. Together they discussed many topics including the controversy around mommy bloggers and the credit due to Julia Allison and other women social media pioneers. Taylor Lorenz is the sometimes controvesial, never boring  technology columnist for the business section of the Washington Post, covering online culture and the content creator industry. She was previously a reporter for the New York Times and has written for numerous other publications including New York magazine and Rolling Stone. Taylor frequently appears on NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and the BBC. She was a 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.  In 2020, Taylor helped adapt a feature she wrote for the New York Times into the documentary Who Gets To Be An Influencer?, which ran on FX and Hulu.  The New York Times said Extremely Online “aims to tell a sociological story, not a psychological one, and in its breadth it demonstrates a new cultural logic emerging out of 21st-century media chaos.”  The Washington Post said Taylor is  “Infectious in celebrating the tsunami of creative youth culture ... Lorenz gives us a clear and compelling history of how the money came to flow into amateur-made short video content. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Taylor Lorenz Website | Author of EXTREMELY ONLINE More from Jen Taub: Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Today Jen’s guest is journalist, filmmaker, author, and activist Andrea Chalupa. You know Andrea from her award-winning podcast Gaslit Nation that she founded with Sarah Kendzior. Fake populism. Demonizing the press. Scapegoating. Propaganda. Personal militia. All ingredients for a successful dictatorship and topics of their conversation. Andrea and Sarah collaborated on the book we are discussing today called DICTATORSHIP: IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK. They describe DICTATORSHIP  as “a wild ride showing the perks and pitfalls of becoming a dictator, and how to overthrow one.” Part of the book focuses on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s genocidal famine in Ukraine in 1933. Andrea is also the writer and producer of the award-winning journalistic thriller that was produced by MGM called Mr. Jones that came out in 2019. Mr. Jones was directed by three-time Academy Award-nominee Agnieszka Holland (known for her work on Europa Europa; The Secret Garden; House of Cards; The Wire) and starring James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, and Peter Sarsgaard. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Film star Illeana Douglas is Jen’s guest today. Ileana is the author of the gorgeous new book: Connecticut in the Movies: From Dream Houses to Dark Suburbia. This spans around 100 years from the silent film era up through the early 21st Century. This beautiful coffee table book is filled with delicious never-before-seen movie stills and back lot stories. Illeana  has starred in too many films to mention. You know her from the movies including Cape Fear, Ghost of My Heart, Good Fellas, and To Die For, plus the many television shows like Entourage, Seinfeld, and Six Feet Under. Her first book, I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories from a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies was named Best Pop Culture book of the year in 2015 by Entertainment Weekly. With Connecticut in the Movies, readers revisit classic films and are introduced to deep cuts. Illeana also places more contemporary films in context. My favorite chapter is Dark Suburbia Redux which focuses on more contemporary films like The Ice Storm 1997, directed by Ang Lee and starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver.   I love it, but so do so many others. Here’s what Pulitizer-Prize winning investigative journalist Ronan Farrow had to say: “In Connecticut in the Movies, Illeana Douglas puts on her historian’s hat and takes readers on a compelling tour of her adopted state’s surprising, colorful, and sometimes dark history in cinema. Her adoration of the state, and the movies, leaps off of these pages—and it’s infectious.” Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY  Get More from Iliana Douglas: Twitter| Website  | Author of CONNECTICUT IN THE MOVIES

Today for the October book club, Jen Taub’s friends, authors Jennifer Rubin and Brian Karem discuss Cassidy Hutchinson’s new best-selling memoir, ENOUGH.  Is Cassidy Hutchinson a heroic champion of the truth or just another Trump Administration insider who could have spoken sooner when it really mattered? Does the story she tells in ENOUGH make readers more empathic or more resentful? These questions and more are the focus of Jen’s conversation today with Jen and Brian. Unless you have been living under a rock (which actually sounds kind of pleasant given the current overwhelm), you know Cassidy Hutchinson is a former special assistant to President Donald Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Cassidy became a public figure when she appeared as a key witness in June of 2022 before the House Select Comittee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol. The world watched her testify under oath that Donald Trump knew his supporters were armed and angry and that he physically assaulted  his own driver in a failed attempt to force him to drive from the eclipse to the Capitol where the violent mob would gather.  Cassidy’s bombshell testimony last June took place during the “before times,” meaning this was just before the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in August, before a special counsel was appointed in November to investigate her former boss for the national security document hoarding and for the insurrection. This was before Trump was indicted by a New York grand jury in Manhattan, a federal grand jury in Flordia, a federal grand jury in Washington D.C. and a Georgia grand jury in Fulton County.  With ENOUGH, we learn so much more from Cassidy about her painful family history and the adults around her who supported her so that she could find the strength to tell the truth and stand up to one of the world's biggest bullies. Guest Jennifer Rubin writes a column for The Washington Post where she covers politics and policy, foreign and domestic, and provides insight into the conservative movement, the Republican and Democratic parties, and threats to Western democracies. Prior to her career in journalism, Jen Rubin practiced labor law for two decades, an experience that informs and enriches her work. She is the author of “Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump” and is host of the podcast Jen Rubin's "Green Room." And Brian Karem is an award-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated reporter and author of seven books including Free the Press: The Death of American Journalism and How to Revive It. Brian is a veteran White House correspondent and former senior correspondent for Playboy Magazine. He currently writes a weekly column on the White House for Salon.com.  He is also a frequent guest on numerous radio shows throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. ​Brian also hosts the  podcast, “Just Ask the Question.” Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

The hilarious self-named “progressive hillbilly” comedians Trae Crowder and Corey Ryan Forrester are Jen’s guests today. They co-authored the super-funny book  Round Here and Over Yonder.  I’m just going to steal their bios right from their book because nothing I could say would compare. Trae Crowder grew up in Celina, TN, a town sometimes described as having “more liquor stores than traffic lights” (2-0 as of the last count). He first cained national attention for his “Liberal Redneck” series of viral videos. He has been performing his particular brand of gravy-covered intellectual comedy for over a decade and touring nationally with Corey and their comedy and drinking partner, Drew. Corey Ryan Forrester grew up in Chicakmunga, Georgia where he fell in love with comedy watching Carson and then Leno from a blanket on the floor next to his daddy Dale. At sixteen lying about his age he worked up the nerve to do his first open mic. He also ran the family bakery with his mom, where he was known as the “head Quiche Chef.” This is Trae and Corey’s second book. The first one they wrote with their aforementioned buddy Drew. Who has a last name although it’s not on the jacket flap. It’s Morgan. Drew Morgan. The book was called THE LIBERAL REDNECK MANIFESTO. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Trae Crowder  Twitter| Website | Author of ROUND HERE AND OVER YONDER and THE LIBERAL REDNECK MANIFESTO Get More from Corey Ryan Forrester Twitter| Website | Author of ROUND HERE AND OVER YONDER   Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Zeke Faux, author of the new bestseller, Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall is Jen’s guest today.  Of all the books, and scholarly articles, and news stories, and blog posts, and legal complaints and, you get the idea…  on crypto, Number Go Up is truly the first one to pull everything together in one place. And that result is something immensely entertaining and informative. And to be clear, this is not a condemnation of those other works, readers can learn so much from. Instead, it’s an expression of high praise for what Zeke has accomplished here. If name-dropping is helpful for you in judging the strength of a book, then let me throw out a few who have heaped praise on Number Go Up.  Evan Osnos National Book Award–winning author of Age of Ambition said: “This book is ludicrously compelling. I, quite literally, couldn’t put it down—and I don’t even care about crypto.” Matt Levine, the Money Stuff columnist said: “This book is what happens when the funniest financial journalist in America takes on the funniest story in modern finance. The results are as darkly hilarious as you could hope for.” Bethany McLean, author of The SMartest Guys in the Room (that was made into a brilliant documentary said “Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the mass delusion that was crypto.” Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Zeke Faux Twitter| Website | Author of NUMBER GO UP Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Author Michael Lewis joins Jen Taub today to talk about Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, his new book that focuses on Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto-wunderkind who is now on trial on federal criminal charges including wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering.  Though Michael needs no introduction, here’s one anyway. You know Michael from his numerous bestselling works of narrative nonfiction. You may in fact be someone like John Williams of the New York Times book review who wrote: “I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it.”  I’m certain that I would as well, and not just because my preliminary research of the stapler shows that there is some controversy as to its origins. But, I digress. Michael Lewis may be best known for his follow-the-money books. These include his debut work  Liar’s Poker about binge-eating bond traders on Wall Street in the 1980s, as well as The Big Short published in 2010, about a scrappy selection of investors who saw that the toxic-mortgage-linked securities bubble was about to burst and made billions on their related trades. Several of Michael’s books have been made into feature films including the Big Short, directed by Adam McKay; Moneyball, and The Blind Side. Beyond his story-telling excellence, what makes Michael’s work so compellihg are the unexpected discoveries about the fragility of our government infrastructure such as with the Fifth Risk and his ability to make us think in a more nuanced way about high-profile topics, including his already controversial take on SBF. Jen and Michael Lewis talk about indicted crypto-wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).  In their discussion they contemplated whether SBF ran his businesses like an absent-minded parent setting up an Easter Egg hunt without making note of how many and where the eggs were. As an alternative, he might have deliberately siphoned off customer and investor assets and hide them in accounts to use later for himself or his charitable causes.  Let’s dive in, Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Michael Lewis  Website | Author of GOING INFINITE  and Many more books! Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

We are extraordinarily grateful that historian and biographer Dr. Helen Fry made time for us right as her latest book Women in Intelligence: The Hidden History of Two World Wars was released in the UK and is poised to launch in the United States.  This new book is filled with intrigue hidden in plain sight. Spies recruited at cafés, ordinary women bicycling around town passing along messages to help the Allies, secret codes knit into jumpers (that’s the British English word for what we Americans call sweaters). Helen Fry has authored too many popular books to count. These include: The London Cage, The Walls Have Ears, MI9, Spymaster: The Man who Saved M16 and more than twenty books on intelligence, prisoners of war, and the social history of World War II. She appears regularly in media interviews and podcasts and has been involved in numerous documentaries. Here’s the official, delicious description of Women in Intelligence: “In this major, panoramic history, Helen Fry looks at the rich and varied work women undertook as civilians and in uniform. From spies who worked for the Belgian network ‘La Dame Blanche’, knitting coded messages into jumpers, to those who interpreted aerial images and even ran entire sections, Fry shows just how crucial women were in the intelligence mission.” Nigel West, author of Spies Who Changed History described Women in Intelligence as “A fascinating, minutely researched study of women in the espionage business.” And Clare Mulley, author of The Spy Who Loved, warns us: “Beware – this is a book full of danger and deception, sabotage and secret codes, and some brilliant, unstoppable women.  “This account is long overdue. Helen Fry redresses the relative neglect of the contribution of women as intelligence officer and agents during and between the two world wars, with gripping personal stories of bravery, grit and analytic brilliance.”—Sir David Omand GCB, former Director of GCHQ Helen Fry was raised in North Devon and went on to graduate from the University of Exeter with a degree and Ph.D. The focus of her (okay, we’ve counted now. It’s ) 25 books has been the 10,000 Germans and Austrians who fought for Britain, and intelligence, espionage and prisoners of war. Her highly acclaimed book The Walls Have Ears: The Greatest Intelligence Operation of WWII was in the top 8 Daily Mail’s Books of the Year in War, and has been optioned for film.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Helen Fry Twitter| Website | Author of WOMEN IN INTELLIGENCE and Many more books! Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Believe or not, this month’s Booked Up Book Club is TUCKER, the book, the man, the walking grievance machine. It’s true, Jen read Chadwick Moore’s authorized biography of Tucker Carlson. And joining her are Rick Wilson and Martin Pengelly, to talk about it so you don’t have to.  Rick Wilson is a longtime Republican political strategist, award-winning ad-maker, and political commentator (and fifth generation Florida man). In 2015, Rick emerged as one of the earliest and most vocal critics of Donald Trump, helping found the Never Trump movement. His bestselling book EVERYTHING TRUMP TOUCHES DIES sprung from and perpetuated the acronym ETTD, used by millions on social media as a glib-schandenfraude-tinged response to each and every indictment or other misfortunte that befalls those who hitched their wagons to the Donald.  Martin Pengelly is the Washington-based breaking news correspondent for the Guardian U.S. Born in Leeds, Martin played rugby for Durham University and Rosslyn Park FC and worked for Rugby News, the Guardian and the Independent before moving to the US in 2012. Since then, he has written about politics, books, and rugby in America. His work has also appeared in Sports Illustrated and the New York Times. His first book, Brotherhood: When West Point Rugby Went to War with an introduction by H. R. McMaster comes out on October 31. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Rick Wilson Twitter| Website | Author of EVERYTHING TRUMP TOUCHES DIES and RUNNING GAINST THE DEVIL Get More from Martin Pengelly Twitter| Guardian | Author of BROTHERHOOD Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Ali Velshi is Jen’s guest today. You know him as an anchor and business correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. His show Velshi appears every Saturday and Sunday from 10 - noon.  Ali is also the host of the podcast Velshi Banned Book Club. And, in keeping with the focus of Booked Up, Ali is a nonfiction author himself. He wrote Gimme My Money Back and co-authored  How to Speak Money. Plus he has several new books forthcoming. On September 25th, is the publication date for The Trump Indictments comes out with his preface, and then in spring of 2023, Ali’s book Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy Of Endurance And The Fight For Democracy is coming out. Ali Velshi has covered a broad range of breaking news events and global affairs throughout his career, including US presidential elections, the global financial crisis of 2008, and recently on the ground in the war in Ukraine.  An award-winning journalist, Ali Velshi has been honored with two National Headliner Awards. The first was for “How the Wheels Came Off,” a special on the near collapse of the American auto industry. And, recently last year for his coverage of Hurricane Ian. His work on disabled workers and Chicago’s red-light camera scandal in 2016 also earned him two News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations, adding to a nomination in 2010 for his terrorism coverage.  Born in Kenya and raised in Canada, Ali graduated from Queen’s University in Canada, which awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws in 2016. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Ali Velshi Twitter| Velshi Banned Book Club Podcast | Website | Author of THE TRUMP INDICTMENTS Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Hadley Vlahos is the author of the bestelling new book The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life’s Final Moments. She is a hospice registered nurse, mother, and wife. Hadley’s husband Chris also works in the medical field as a doctor of physical therapy. She started her career as a registered nurse at twenty-two. Today as  a hospice nurse, she now visits people at their home while also educating and sharing stories about hospice care on social media, where she has 1.6 million followers on TikTok alone. Jen read, or, rather listened on Audible to The In-Between in one sitting. This is a story you cannot put down. Hadley has a way of easing readers, and listeners, into some of the most challenging, yet so enriching moments of human existence – the  inevitable transition from this life to wherever and whatever awaits beyond. Organized around the stories of twelve of her hospice patients (whose names and personally identifiable details have been changed), with The In-Between, Hadley also shares her own journey, including painful memories growing up and self-doubts as an adult. Her vulnerability allows readers to face and tend to our own wounds and grow stronger. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Hadley Vlahos Instagram| Tik-Tok | Website | Author of THE IN-BETWEEN Get More from Jen Taub: taubjen on Threads| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

In this haunting new book, LAWYER, JAILER, ALLY, FOE, Eric L. Muller brings into vivid color a world that is largely forgotten paper records. It’s no wonder that his book caught the attention of novelist John Grisham whose praise appears on the cover: “A fascinating and detailed account of one of America’s darkest chapters.” Eric’s accomplishments with this work cannot be overstated. He made a complex topic emotionally moving by unearthing the stories of three men who worked as lawyers inside of the concentration camps in Wyoming, Arizona, and on an Indian Reservation where Japanese-Americans were held as prisoners during World War II. Like Eric, I choose to use the terms “concentration camps” and “prisoners” to describe what the officials euphemistically referred to then as “relocation centers” and “evacuees.”  Today, you may be more familiar with them referred to as Japanese internment camps. Eric is the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor of Law in Jurisprudence and Ethics at the University of North Carolina School of Law. It won’t surprise you to learn that he is one of the leading scholars of the removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans in World War II. He also focuses his research and writing in the areas of constitutional criminal procedure, the law of slavery, and the Nazi legal system.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Eric Muller Twitter | Website | Author of LAWYER, JAILER, ALLY, FOE Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Donald Trump is the subject of our book club today. Trump is not known to be a big reader or even an author – his most popular book Art of the Deal, was ghost written by Tony Schwarz, as you probably know. Nevertheless, our book club episode today focuses on him. Not a book, but on the day he got booked up in Georgia. We recorded this episode on Thursday, August 24th, just hours before Mr. Trump was scheduled to surrender at a jail in Georgia.  He will be there to answer to thirteen charges brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for racketeering and more in connection with his failed efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Joining Jen is Jill Wine-Banks and Morgan Cloud. Jill is an author, MSNBC legal analyst, and podcast host. Jill was the first woman to serve as an organized crime prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.. Just four years later, she was selected to be an Assistant Watergate Special Prosecutor in the obstruction of justice trial against President Nixon's top aides. You should read The Watergate Girl: My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President to learn about that experience. Jill was also in the Organized Crime Section at Justice when the federal Rackeeteer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) passed. Morgan is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law Emeritus, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Morgan has been working with RICO statutes since 1975, because Bob Blakey, the primary architect of the original federal statute, was his teacher and boss in law school. Before joining the Emory faculty, he was a trial lawyer and litigator in Florida and California, litigating cases throughout the United States. He writes and teaches about white collar crime, constitutional criminal procedure, and digital privacy. In addition to publishing in prestigious academic journals, Prof. Cloud has also taught courses in Germany, Hungary and France. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Jill Wine-Banks Twitter | Website | Author of THE WATERGATE GIRL: My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President Get More from Morgan Cloud Website | Politics War Room Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Connie Schultz is Jen’s guest today. Connie is the author of two memoirs. Her first Life Happens: And Other Unavoidable Truths and second …And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man. Connie made her fiction debut in 2020 with her New York Times bestselling novel The Daughters of Erietown. And this coming February the youngest readers can welcome into the world her first children’s book, Lola and the Troll. Formerly a columnist at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland she now writes a weekly column for USA Today. And, she just launched a substack called “Hopefully Yours.” When Connie’s  not writing, she’s teaching. She was at Kent State for seven years and this fall is joining the faculty of Denison University’s journalism program.  What makes Connie so special is that she is one of those women who lifts as she rises. A true friend who is there for you in your moments of doubt and your moments of joy. Connie lives in Cleveland with her husband, Senator Sherrod Brown, and their sweet rescue dogs Franklin and Walter. Connie and Sherrod have four children and eight grandchildren. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Connie Schultz: Facebook | Website | Author of THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIETOWN and LOLA AND THE TROLL Get More from Jen Taub: taubjen on Threads| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Brandon Wolf, author of the memoir A Place for Us joins Jen on Booked Up today. Brandon is a survivor of the 2016 horric domestic terror attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida where his best friends, Drew Leinonen and Juan Guerrero, and 47 others were murdered. Brandon has honored the victims’ legacies with action, advocating for LGTBQ+ civil rights and gun-safety reform. Today Brandon is the press secretary for Equality Florida.  Brandon’s memoir is beautifully-written and incredibly moving. Here’s just one expression of glowing praise for A Place for Us. Joy Reid, host of TheReidOut said “One of the most powerful voices of his generation, Brandon Wolf tells a story of race, place, and the sturggle for belonging that will drive you to tears and expand your capacity for hope, as well as your appreciation for the power of community. A true inspiration.” You may also know Brandon from his newspaper opinion pieces and as a contributor on MSNBC’s The ReidOut and on American Voices with Alicia Menendez.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Brandon Wolf: Website | Author of A PLACE FOR US Get More from Jen Taub: taubjen on Threads| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Today’s Booked Up guest is Allyson McCabe, author of the deeply felt, carefully researched book, Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters, which was published in May two months before the musician’s passing. Allyson interviewed Sinéad for NPR in 2021 in connection with her autobiography Rememberings.  As guitarist and songwriter Vernon Reid wrote, “Acknowledging that Sinéad's life story can be a difficult, contradictory mess, McCabe painstakingly relates this magnificent, irreplaceable artist's tale to her own heartfelt story, showing us in the process how and why so many of us also connect with Sinéad.” A little more on Allyson McCabe, who is decidedly Gen X. Before turning to writing, reporting and production fulltime, she taught in the English Department at Yale. You’ve definitely heard hermwork on NPR’s flagship showslike Morning Edition and All Things Considered. One example: “Willy Wonka-Inspired 'Candy Alchemist' Spins Sugar Into Pure Imagination.” Or more recently,“How artists and influencers set the stage for Hip-Hop's global rise.” You’ve also seen Allyson’s byline in assorted places including the New York Times, New York Magazine’s Vulture, BBC Culture, Bandcamp, and Wired. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Allyson McCabe: Website | Author of WHY SINÉAD O'CONNOR MATTERS Get More from Jen Taub: taubjen on Threads| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Today is all about BARBIE. The new film, the doll, the legend. Too much hype? No, not enough. This month’s new blockbuster film directed by Greta Gurwig starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling has more than just the best one-liners “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.” It also provides theater audiences the opportunity to share howls of laughter delight about the humorous send up of the patriarchy, and also sob openly about what our lives could have been if more girl’s imaginations were able to flourish as grown women, instead of us becoming accessories, enlisted in service of the ambitions of powerful men. Because Booked Up centers on books, our Barbie Book Club members today include M.G. Lord  author of Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll, originally published in 1994. Plus, M.G. has a fresh 3-part podcast series out now called  "LA Made: The Barbie Tapes” which includes audio from her one-on-one interviews with Barbie inventor and Mattel founder, Ruth Handler, among others. We’ll get into that. M.G. has written for numerous publications including the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. She is an Associate Professor of the Practice of English at the University of Southern California. Also joining the Barbie Book Club today is George Hahn. Cuter than a Ken Doll, more awesome than Allan, there is no better example of how to live an urban bon vivant life while on a bicycle than George Hahn. George – in his own witty words – “ is a self-made thousandaire playboy who wears tailored clothing, drinks coffee, talks on podcasts and occasionally writes and does TV.” You may know George from his screen roles in  “Sex and the City,” “Law and Order: Criminal Intent,” and Miramax’s “Kate & Leopold.” He also has a new podcast called Hahn: Solo and website GeorgeHahn.com that’s spelled H-A-H-N that features menswear, grooming, lifestyle essays and advice. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from M.G. Lord: Podcast | Website| Author of FOREVER BARBIE and several other books Get More from George Hahn: Twitter | Website| Podcast Hahn: Solo Get More from Jen Taub: taubjen on Threads| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Jen’s guest today is Ben McKenzie, author of the new book EASY MONEY: CRYPTOCURRENCY, CASINO CAPITALISM, AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRAUD. In this incredibly fast-paced, relatable book, Ben, joined by journalist Jacob Silverman,  takes us on a journey into the dark side of crypto. You don’t need any kind of expertise to follow along.  Plus, even if you’ve been around the bitcoin block before, you will appreciate the jaw-dropping encounters with the key players including  FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (before his indictment and extradition from the Bahamas), and Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky (before his indictment) who admitted to Ben at South by Southwest in early 2022 scope of this scam. Mashinsky said that only “ten to fifteen percent” of the crypto system was real money. “Everthing else,” he said “is just bubble.” Ben has been an outspoken critic of the cryptocurrency craze. Perhaps you saw him on C-Span in December of 2022, when he testified before the Senate Banking Committee for a hearing on the topic: The Crypto Crash: Why the FTX Bubble Burst and the Harm to Consumers.  During the hearing, Ben called FTX “the biggest Ponzi scheme in history” and told the senators that the 40 million Americans who have invested in crypto “have been lied to, in ways both big and small, by a once seemingly mighty crypto industry whose entire existence in fact depends on misinformation, hype and, yes, fraud.”  Not a C-Span cable network fan? You may also know Ben McKenzie from network television, the big screen, or more recently in his 2020 Broadway debut. He starred as Ryan Atwood on the teen drama “The O.C.” and as James Gordon in the hit series “Gotham.”  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Ben McKenzie Twitter | Website| Author with Jacob Silverman of EASY MONEY Get More from Jen Taub: taubjen on Threads| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Jen’s guest today is Professor Scott J. Shapiro, author of the new book FANCY BEAR GOES PHISHING. That’s phishing with a PH. But Fancy with an F, as in Fancy Bear, the Russian hack. Subtitled THE DARK HISTORY OF THE INFORMATION AGE, IN FIVE EXTRAORDINARY HACKS. With this book, Scott hopes “that these true-crime stories – some accidental, some not – will engage readers who have little or not prior interest in technology and equip them to read beyond the headlines.” You know Scott from his famous shitposting on Twitter, which he kindly also offers up on Threads. Or, if you’re lucky, you’ve taken a course from him at Yale Law school where he eaks out a meagre existence as the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy. His areas of interest include jurisprudence, international law, constitutional law, criminal law and cybersecurity. He is also Scott the founding director of the Yale CyberSecurity Lab.  Here’s some praise for FANCY BEAR GOES PHISHING from author Garrett Graff, “Accessible for regular readers, yet still fun for experts, this delightful book expertly traces the challenge of securing our digital lives and how the optimism of the internet's early pioneers has resulted in an online world today threatened by spies, criminals, and over-eager teen hackers.” In 2017 Scott also co-authored THE INTERNATIONALISTS with Professor Oona Hathaway. And his first book, published in 2011 was called LEGALITY: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World.   Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Scott J. Shapiro Twitter | Website| Author of FANCY BEAR GOES PHISHING Get More from Jen Taub: taubjen on Threads| Money & Gossip  Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Kathy Griffin is Jen’s guest today. They cover everything from her life on the D-List to her cameo in Pulp Fiction (while she was dating Quentin Tarantino) to how Donald Trump tried to destroy her, to her SOLD OUT show in Vegas at the Mirage. Plus a chills and ugly cry-induscing story about Stevie Nicks. No spoilers. You’ll have to listen. Kathy is “The Gays” favorite two-time-Emmy and Grammy award winning comedian. (Half-way to an EGOT). And, Kathy made the Guiness Book of World Records. That is the f’ing holy grail for a Gen-Xer like Jen. She got it for writing and starring in 23 televised stand-up specials. More than any other comic.  Kathy also acts. And writes. And tweets. And gets sued for tweeting. And gets cancelled and rises from the ashes to perform in Vegas. Live at the Mirage! October 6th. Get your tickets now.  Today Kathy and Jen talk about her book OFFICIAL BOOK CLUB SELECTION: A MEMOIR ACCORDING TO KATHY GRIFFIN. They also cover with honesty and compassion some difficult topics including addiction. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Kathy Griffin: Instagram | Website| Author of OFFICIAL BOOK CLUB SELECTION Get More from Jen Taub: Threads| Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week Jen’s guest is Adam Benforado, author of the compelling new book A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All.  The Atlantic said A Minor Revolution is “An extremely sympathetic and worthy attempt to protect kids…. [this is] a book that reads like a manifesto. His ideas are bold, to the point, and ambitious.” Salon praised Adam’s work as “Ambitious . . . His unifying argument is anti-inertial. . . . The book blew my mind.”  And friend of the podcast, Heather McGhee (author of The Sum of Us), said Adam “weaves compelling real-life stories with legal and economic analysis to deliver a bracing indictment of our society’s self-sabotage. He doesn’t end there, however; his final recommendations for how to change course are both revolutionary and accessible.” Adam is a professor of law at Drexel University. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, he served as a federal appellate law clerk and an attorney at Jenner & Block.  He is also the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller Unfair and is also the author of numerous scholarly articles and popular essays.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Adam Benforado Twitter | Website| Author of A MINOR REVOLUTION Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

As featured in The New York Times, Mary Trump and E. Jean Carroll are collaborating with Jen on a serialized romance novel called THE ITALIAN LESSON. Mary is writing the novel, Jen is editing, and E. Jean is advising and responding to readers’ questions. The trio is releasing Mary’s novel in segments on backstoryserial.com (which is on Substack). You can read everything in one place through chapter two by linking: https://www.backstoryserial.com/p/the-italian-lesson. Get a taste of the ITALIAN LESSON with this opening passage: The last time I saw him, I wanted him dead. Now here he was. Standing by the door, very much alive. When I opened my eyes I couldn’t see him clearly –– the muffled sounds of the EKG and the low thrum of the fluorescent lights made my head hurt and he hung back in the shadows. Still, I thought I saw the corner of his mouth curved upward in the beginning of a smile, the kind of smile he flashed at me when he knew he’d won. He moved toward the bed. I pretended not to notice and turned away as best I could, feigning disorientation. The closer he got the further away my life seemed. My life, the idyllic life I had built away from him, was slipping away. Then I remembered once wanting him dead—I had felt such horrible guilt afterward. It just wasn’t like me. But I was a different person now, to the extent that that’s possible. He reached for my hand and, before I lost consciousness again, I thought, “Instead of wanting him dead, I should have been more proactive.” And I felt no guilt at all. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get Backstory Serial and the Italian Lesson Press | Backstory Serial on Substack | THE ITALIAN LESSON Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

They kvetched, they kvelled, they talked about Hitler. Naturally. What did you expect? This week Jen’s guest is two-time Emmy-Award winning comedian Judy Gold. Judy fit Booked Up into her busy schedule. This spring she finished her one-woman show called, “Yes, I can Say That”, based on her similarly titled book Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians, We Are All in Trouble.  The New York Times called Judy’s show “A deliberately uncomfortable, laugh-packed show seeded with stealth missiles.” Time Out said her performance was  “Funny and furious... a testament to the importance of speaking one's truth, expecially for comedians.” There’s more… New York Stage Review said “Gold is so naturally funny, her delivery and comic timing so impeccable, that belly laughs are to be had in abundance.” And TheaterMania described Yes I can Say That as “An unflinching defense of free speech.” With “Yes, I Can Say That” wrapped and  summer season upon us you can see Judy live at the Post Office Cafe and Cabaret in Provincetown three nights a week from June 25 through September 3. Oh, and she will also be in Montreal in July for the “Just for Laughs” festival.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Judy Gold Twitter | Website | Author of YES, I CAN SAY THAT Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Today Jen’s guest is her long-time friend and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist David L. Marcus. They talk about Dave’s latest book Acceptance: A Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps Seven Kids Find the Right Colleges –– and Find Themselves.  Dave also happens to be the cousin of Roy Cohn the disgraced and disbarred attorney who represented the late Senator Joe “Have you No Sense of Decency” McCarthy and more recently Fred and Donald Trump.  Dave wears many hats. He’s a writing coach, career counselor and of course, writer. He has been a newspaper and newsmagazine reporter, a high school teacher and a writing instructor at a business school. In between, he wrote two highly-praised nonfiction books. The first was What It Takes To Pull Me Through: Why Teenagers Get in Trouble and How Four of Them Got Out. And the second Acceptance. As a staff member of the Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Miami Herald, Newsday and US News & World Report, Marcus was a columnist, roving national reporter and foreign correspondent. Now he speaks to groups about what he learned covering education and parenting. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from David Marcus Twitter | Website | Author of ACCEPTANCE Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Jen’s guest is David de Jong, the author of a mindblowing new narrative nonfiction book called Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties. Before he began researching for this book, David covered banking, finance, and hidden wealth for Bloomberg News. This book puts the lie to the often-heard claims by descendants and apologists for the industrialists who collaborated for profit with Hilter. You’ve heard them too. That these business leaders did not know what was going on at the concentration and extermination camps, that they were helping Jews by buying businesses on the cheap, that they had not sought out to be members of the Nazi party but were forced to to stay in business. Piece by piece, David offers the proof that these are not just lies but that the truth is more horrific than any of us can imagine.  The glowing reviews have rolled in. Bradley Hope, author of the fabulous book Billionaire Dollary Whale (about the Malaysian wealth fund) had this to say:  “David de Jong’s explosive debut of narrative nonfiction is as riveting as it is disturbing. At times, it felt like reading the anti–Schindler’s List: instead of secretly helping the Jews, Germany’s most powerful tycoons brutally exploited their suffering for personal profit. The fact that some of Germany’s greatest fortunes are deeply intertwined with the ignominies of the Third Reich should be much better known.” Yale Law Professor Samuel Moyn’s says, “David de Jong’s sleuthing has uncovered a remarkable and upsetting web of connections between the signature evil of the twentieth century and fabulous riches today. With its finely wrought stories of German individuals and families—including Jews who were expropriated—Nazi Billionaires suggests that even today amends have not yet been made for the profits that some reaped in an era of horror.” Why so much kvelling? It’s well-deserved. How David did this and the toll it took on him is at the top of my mind. Can’t wait to speak with him. So, with no further delays. Let’s dive in. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from David Dejong: Twitter | Website | Author of NAZI BILLIONAIRES Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week for the book club, we have poet Maggie Smith talking about her tell-most own new bestselling memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful. You know Maggie from a poem she wrote in an Ohio coffee shop in 2015. That poem “Good Bones” was so deeply true and beautiful that readers passed it around. And it went viral a year or two later. Poems don’t go viral, but this one did, so much so that the unimaginable happened. First. In April of 2017, Meryl Streep read that poem, “Good Bones” at a Lincoln Center gala. But there’s a next. Next, her husband –– the father of her two young children –– the fellow writer, turned lawyer she met in a creative writing class in college. That guy. He blew up the marriage with a postcard and a pine cone.  Joining us in this conversation is one of Maggie’s and my mutual friends, activist and writer Charlotte Clymer. You know Charlotte from her regular appearances on the Mary Trump Show. She was previously the press secretary for rapid response at the Human Rights Campaign and director of communications and strategy at Catholics for Choice. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Maggie Smith Twitter | Website | Author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful Get More from Charlotte Clymer Twitter | Website | Charlotte’s Web Thoughts Substack Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY

This week Jen’s guest is Professor Steve Vladeck, author of the sensational new book: The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.  The Shadow Docket is a must-read book, not just for court-watchers and garden-variety nerds, but also for anyone and everyone who wants to sound smarter on Twitter. Okay, maybe that’s a low bar. But, you get the drift. Don’t just trust me. Publisher’s Weekly said “This insightful and accessible account raises an important alarm.” Plus, Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Purdue the Pharma book, Empire of Pain praised Steve for using “elegant, accessible prose” to “expose[] the degree to which significant battles, from abortion to immigration, are being adjudicated behind closed doors, in unseen, unsigned, unexplained decisions.”  Steve Vladeck is professor at the University of Texas, at Austin School of Law where he holds the Charles Alan Wright Chair In Federal Courts. He is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice. But, anyone can claim to be an expert. On paper. Steve is the real deal. Not just in the classroom and prestigious academic journals (like the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal) but also in courtrooms. He has argued over a dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court, and various lower federal civilian and military courts. But most importantly, he’s a really nice person.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Steve Vladeck Twitter | Website | Author of THE SHADOW DOCKET Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week, Jen’s guest is Ben Smith, author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral. This hot new book takes a close look at the people and the patterns behind the click-bait-journalism-world that helped inflate Donald Trump but also gave us a renewed faith in humanity with an endless supply of baby-animal rescue videos. You know Ben from his role as the founding editor-in-chief for BuzzFeed News where he released the Steele Dossier to the world. Today, Ben is the editor-in-chief of Semafor, a new global news organization that launched last year. Just before that he was the media columnist for the New York Times. Jen and Ben recorded this interview just before Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced plans to shutter Buzzfeed News. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Ben Smith Twitter | Website | Author of TRAFFIC Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week, Jen’s guest on Booked Up is Anastasia Curwood. They discuss her insightful new biography Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics. As you likely know, in 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress and in 1972, the first Black major party presidential candidate.  Anastasia Curwood is a beloved and brilliant professor at University of Kentucky and Interim Chair of the History Department. She also serves as director of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies at UK.  Her scholarship focuses on the interface between private life and historical context for black Americans in the twentieth century. Her first book called Stormy Weather focused on marriages between middle-class African Americans between the two world wars.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Anastasia Curwood Twitter | Website | Author of SHIRLEY CHISHOLM and STORMY WEATHER Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Booked Up with Jen Taub has a special episode for April’s book club. The topic is your book.”  You’re the author, it’s you. Today we are talking about how books get proposed, sold, written, edited, published and promoted.  It’s kind of like back in 2006 when TIME magazine announced their person of the year. On the cover of that issue of TIME was a drawing of a large desktop computer. In the center of the monitor was a reflective surface that functioned as a mirror.  If you picked up the magazine in the supermarket checkout line, you would see yourself. In case you missed it. The text above the computer read, “Person of the Year.” And on the mirror-like surface was the word, “You.”  Guests are literary agent Jill Marr and book club regular, publicist Ivan Lett.  Jill is a literary agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. She looks for non-fiction by authors with a big, timely, smart message. Jill represents many names you would recognize including Dr. Jennifer Gunter, author of the bestseller THE MENOPAUSE MANIFESTO.  Jill is always looking for fiction and non-fiction by unrepresented voices, BIPOC and Latinx writers, disabled persons, and people identifying as LGBTQ+.  She loves food-centric novels, no matter what the genre.  Ivan, who is a regular on our Booked Up book club episodes, is a New York-based marketing, publishing, and communications professional; poet; and freelance writer. He advises fiction and nonfiction authors and researchers on strategies for print and digital publication. Ivan is currently a Publicity Manager at Basic Books, a publishing house founded in 1950 that has released award-winning books in history, science, sociology, psychology, politics, and current affairs. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Jill Marr Twitter | Website | Facebook Get More from Ivan Lett Twitter | Website | Author of HAARLEM REBORN Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

In his written work and public persona, Wajahat Ali is known for his quick wit. Humor seems to come naturally to him, and yet, he has turned his gift into a craft deployed deliberately. In Go Back to Where You Came From, he notes, “Humor, both sublime and silly, sophmoric and sophisticated, unleashed with purpose, can often help communicate very real, hard truths about American society.” At times this book is laugh-out-loud funny. Consider Waj’s comment about his mother after she told him that Santa Claus did not exist. “That same year, she decided to become the serial killer of all imaginary creatures.” But beneath the jokes about his family, there is also tremendous hardship and tests of loyalty and limits. His words resonate, “Sometimes, a nod of approval, or a compliment from family or a friend is all it takes, the small gust of wind that lifts the sails.” He opens up to his low moments. He was thirty, essentially homeless, helping his parents who had lost their home to criminal forfeiture, and were about to serve sentences for white collar crime convictions. Yet he had a successful play in production in New York. Friends thought he had “made it” and didn’t understand when he revealed a bit of his reality.  “Eventually, I stopped telling anyone and just kept it all hidden.”  The enduring love of his wife Sarah is on display.Waj wrote this about proposing to his future wife, “I promised Sarah that one day I would ‘make it rain’ and to just be patient and that I had a lot of potential despite having very little at the moment. She looked at me and said, ‘Wajahat, I’m not marrying you for your potential. I’m marrying you for the man you are right now.’” Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Waj Ali Twitter | Website | Author of GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Jen speaks with Professor Carissa Byrne Hessick about her remarkable book, Punishment without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining is a Bad Deal. Her book goes beyond just showing why plea bargaining is a bad deal. She also shines a light on several other types of punishments without trial. These are pre-trial detention, civil forfeiture, and assorted fees from pre-trial, booking and diversion programs.  Punishment without Trial shares the stories of heroes trying to address the inequities in the system and what they are up against, namely others trying to keep things the same or make them less just. We learn about how the search for truth and meaningful consequences is no longer the focus of the criminal justice system. Pressuring accused people into plea bargains is about valuing efficiency over due process. Carissa teaches at the UNC School of Law and has a VERY fancy title –– the Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland “Buck” Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. She is also director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Carissa Byrne-Hessick Twitter | Website | Author of PUNISHMENT WITHOUT TRIAL Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week, Jen’s guest is her good friend Elie Honig. Elie is a former prosecutor and currently a Senior Legal Analyst at CNN. At the Southern District of New York Elie prosecuted federal cases involving organized crime, human trafficking, public corruption, and violent crime. Among his successes were prosecutions of 100 members and associates of La Cosa Nostra, including Bosses and other high-ranking members of the Gambino and Genovese Organized Crime Families.   But this program is called Booked Up, not Locked Up, so Elie is here to talk about his equally stellar writing career. He is the author of the national bestseller Hatchet Man  about former Attorney General Bill Barr, and has a new must-read page-turner out now called Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It. It was Elie in Untouchable who broke the story about how the federal prosecutors decided not to charge Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Yes, the very case that local prosecutor, District Attorney Alvin Bragg chose to pursue. But, there are some differences and Elie and Jen get into all of that.  Plus he pulls no punches when it comes to critiquing Attorney General Merrick Garland.  Okay. Let’s dive in. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY  Get More from Elie Honig: Twitter | Website | Author of UNTOUCHABLE

This week, Jen’s guest is Leta McCollough Seletzky. Leta is a former litigator who left the law to become a literary sensation. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. If you don’t already know her name, you will soon. Leta is the author of a beautiful new memoir that will be published this coming Tuesday, April 4th. It’s called The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.   Get comfortable, because when you start reading you will not be able to put this book down. THE KNEELING MAN is a spellbinding account of a daughter piecing together her father’s mysterious role present there in an iconic photograph on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel, kneeling beside MLK pressing a white towel to his forehead and pointing across the parking lot in the direction of the assassin. With gorgeous prose and emotional honesty, Leta brings us on her journey to uncover deeply hidden family secrets to better understand our own. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This family has more money than God. Why in the world can’t they get some therapy? A Grandmother who never hugs her grandchildren? A father who does not hug his son after telling him his mother was killed?  No, our book is not a soap opera, it’s SPARE by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex is our Booked Up book club selection this month. Jen’s three special guests in alphabetical order are Christopher Bouzy, Linda Charnes, and Melissa Murray.  You know Christopher from his big splash of a social media site called Spoutible. Before that he started the site botsentinel which helped social media users spot and report trollbots. When he’s not busy spouting, Christopher finds time to appear in the occasional Netflix documentary, including the recent one on Harry and Meghan. His effort to expose anti-Meghan hate accounts made him the target of plenty of ire himself. Linda’s name should be familiar as she was my guest here on Booked Up in late January discussing Hamlet, Talionic Law (aka retributive eye-for-an-eye justice), and America’s revenge fantasies. The author of several brilliant books about Shakespeare, contemporary politics, and political psychology, Linda is a beloved Professor of English, European Studies and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. And, you probably feel like you know Melissa given her frequent appearances on cable news including as a guest host on several prime time shows on MSNBC. Not just a gifted communicator, Melissa is also the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law Faculty Director, Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network at NYU. Her award-winning research focuses on the legal regulation of intimate life. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Christopher Bouzy, Linda Charnes, and Melissa Murray Chris Bouzy: Spoutible| Twitter | Botsentinel Linda Charnes: Website |  Author of HAMLET’S HEIRS and NOTORIOUS IDENTITY Melissa Murray: Twitter | Website | Strict Scrutiny Podcast Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Heather McGhee joins Jen this week to talk about the newly released, young reader edition of her best-selling book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Heather’s book helps show how racism affects and harms all of us and how we need to face it head-on, together. An expert in economic and social policy. Heather is also the former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos and now chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.  Heather and Jen cover the key themes of the book including that shared prosperity is possible and success in America is not a zero-sum game. They also reflect on the personal stories of the ordinary heroes Heather profiles in The Sum of Us. All of this after reminiscing about their work together on bank reform during the Dodd-Frank legislative era in 2010. The episode ends with a discussion on book writing, including how Heather found a writing home away from home at a neighborhood bar called bar Peaches Shrimp and Crab. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Heather McGhee Twitter | Website | Author of THE SUM OF US Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money substack| Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week, my guest Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert in authoritarianism, democracy protection, and propaganda and author of the bestelling book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. Ruth is both a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. Outside of the classroom, Ruth frequently appears on cable news to discuss the frightening similarities between early fascism in Europe and current movements here in the United States within the Republican party and abroad. On today’s episode, I speak wth Ruth about our current crop of authoritarian brutes who use corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo to stay in power and what we can do to stop them. To stay current with Ruth’s thinking, you can subscribe to her substack, Lucid or read her and her insightful opinion column with MSNBC. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Ruth Ben-Ghiat Twitter | Website | LUCID Substack |  Author of STRONGMEN Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money substack| Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

You may think that Mary Trump needs no introduction, because you believe you know who she is in relation to a certain distasteful someone who shares her surname. Or you have read her first bestselling book:  Too much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. Or her equally stellar second, The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal. But what an author produces or shares with the public, as well as the degrees they collect (in Mary’s case a BA and MA in English literature as well as a doctorate PhD in clinical psychology) is only a part of who they are. And, it should go without saying that our family of origin is a piece, but not all of us. In today’s episode, Mary and Jen get lost in a conversation about books. They start with Mary’s childhood favorite, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, a children's picture book written and illustrated by William Steig that won a Caldecott Medal in 1970. And the conversation continued into weightier tomes like the more than 1,534 page epistolary novel Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson. The 1748 work’s rather lengthly alternative title reveals a bit about the story, but hardly as much as Mary does: The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life. And Particularly Shewing, the Distresses that May Attend the Misconduct Both of Parents and Children, In Relation to Marriage Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Mary Trump Twitter | The Good in Us Substack | Author of TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH and THE RECKONING Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” To help honor Black History Month at Booked Up, for our February book club we are discussing the letter Martin Luther King Jr. composed in April of  1963 from his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. Joining me are two regulars and two special guests. We have book club regulars, conservative attorney George Conway and book publicist Ivan Lett and special guests Bridgette Baldwin and Jonathan Metzl. Professor Baldwin teaches courses including Critical Race Theory and criminal law at Western New England University School of Law. Her scholarly work has examined the intersection of the Ninth Amendment and social movements, as well as, the convergence of race, class and gender on welfare reform legislation.  Professor Metzl is the author of several books including most recently the acclaimed Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland. During the podcast he also mentioned The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. He is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Book Club Members Bridgette Baldwin Facebook | Website | Author of WISCONSIN WORKS? George Conway Twitter | On Morning Joe | Author of Atlantic article Unfit for Office Ivan Lett Twitter | Website | Author of HAARLEM REBORN Jonathan Metzl Twitter | Website | Author of DYING OF WHITENESS and THE PROTEST PSYCHOSIS among others  Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week best-selling author Steve Phillips opens up about the very recent loss of his remarkable wife Susan Sandler and their shared goals on how to move America toward a multi-racial democracy.  In the dedication to her of his new book, How We Win the Civil War, Steve writes, “The reality of cancer forces one to a more spirtual place of contemplating life, meaning, and legacy. That reflection has fueled my work on this book to try to make it a lasting legacy for both of us.” Steve notes that the post 2020 election coup “was not the first time a large percentage of American people chose whiteness over democracy in the wake of an election whose outcome they did not like.” He uses humor when he writes about the urgency of facing America’s anti-democratic drift. “Imagine if Revere had instead ambled down the street saying, ‘We’re going to invite the British to dinner and see if we can reach a bipartisan agreement. Sinema and Manchin are bringing the clam chowder.’” Steve Phillips is a New York Times bestselling author of How Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and political expert. He is the host of "Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips," a color-conscious political podcast, and founder of Democracy in Color, a multimedia platform on race and politics. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Steve Phillips Twitter | Website | Author of HOW WE WIN THE CIVIL WAR and BROWN IS THE NEW WHITE Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week Jen speaks with David Enrich about his nationwide bestseller, Servants of the Damned, praised by David Cay Johnston in the Washington Post as “A powerful and important picture of how mega law firms distort justice."   While other large corporate law firms appear in Servants of the Damned, David explains why he made one firm in particular the centerpiece. He views Jones Day as one of the chief enablers of the most corrupt actors over recent decades. Clients include Big Tobacco whom the firm continually represented in efforts to avoid products liability. Jones Day also represented Pudue Pharma, maker of the highly addictive OxyContin, the Catholic Church in efforts to minimize consequences for child-sexual-abuse, and Russian oligarchs. Jones Day even “laid some of the legal groundwork for Trump to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 election,” David explains. David is the business investigations editor at The New York Times. His previous books were  Dark Towers, about Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump, and The Spider Network about UBS trader and apparent fall guy, Tom Hayes. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from David Enrich Twitter | New York Times Webpage| Author of SERVANTS OF THE DAMNED,  DARK TOWERS and THE SPIDER NETWORK  Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

This week, Jen’s guest is the award-winning journalist Lisa Gurrero, on to talk about her new book Warrior: My Path to Being Brave. Lisa is a pioneer in the field of sportsbroadcasting enduring verbal abuse and sexual harrassment. She began her sports career in the 1980s as an NFL cheerleader, then directed entertainment including the cheerleading squads for the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots. At the Patriots, the boss’s son told her to remove all of the “Black music” from the playlist and put the cheerleaders in skimpier outfits and high heels instead of sneakers. She refused and was fired but fought back with a lawsuit. Lisa was a pioneer sportsbroadcaster who later broke ground as the first woman sidelines reporter for Monday Night Football. In that role, she strained to put up with a toxic, hostile boss and suffered a miscarriage while at the game, but only shared her story now. Smart, focused, and persistent, Lisa built her entertainment career in sports as well as in acting, starring in the Aaron Spelling soap opera Sunset Beach in the 1990s, among other roles. In 2006, Lisa begcane a reporter for Inside Edition and has used her platform to make a difference. Now as the Chief Investigative Correspondent at Inside Edition, she exposes scams, child abuse and cold-case murders for an audience of 5 million viewers.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Lisa Guerrero Twitter | Website |Author of WARRIOR: MY PATH TO BEING BRAVE Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Who knows? One day perhaps we will look back on this episode of Booked Up to find out that Donald Trump has faced a different kind of booking. Or at least an indictment. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Today for our January book club meeting we are following the facts by discussing the content and implications of the Final Report of the Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the US. Capitol..  We have two special guests. Andrew Weissman, lead prosecutor in the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation and NYU law professor. And, Jill Wine-Banks: Watergate prosecutor and the first woman to serve as general counsel of the Army.  Jill is the author of Watergate Girl, and Andrew of Where Law Ends. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Book Club Members and Special Guests Andrew Weissman Twitter | Website | Author of WHERE LAW ENDS Jill Wine-Banks Twitter | Website | Author of WATERGATE GIRL Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Dr. Linda Charnes ––  Professor of English, European Studies and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington where she has taught since 1989–– joined Jen to talk about Hamlet, Talionic Law (aka retributive eye-for-an-eye justice), and America’s revenge fantasies.  She is the author of several books about Shakespeare, contemporary politics, and political psychology. Her first book was Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare published in 1993 by Harvard University Press, followed by Hamlet’s Heirs: Shakespeare and the Politics of a New Millennium, originally published in 2007 by Routledge, 2007, with a second edition in 2015. Dr. Charnes has bucked the trend of academic treatments of Shakespeare’s work in favor of unorthodox approaches that challenge temporal periods, field silos and most importantly, divides between ivory tower and mass cultural versions of Shakespeare’s plays. An expert in psychoanalytic and political theories, She was among the first to create and model an unorthodox blending of theoretical approaches, which she has called “a theory without organs.”  Dr. Charnes has lectured at prestigious venues all over the world, and directed faculty seminars at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the International Shakespeare Conference at Stratford-Upon-Avon. She fondly recalls giving the pre-performance lecture on Hamlet at the New Globe Theater in London, on the first night of Mark Rylance’s performance in the title role. The date was July 4th , 2000. In 2021, she was awarded the James P. Holland Award for Career Distinguished Teaching and Service to Students at Indiana University, Bloomington. For a cool photo of Linda click here for the website Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Linda Charnes Website |  Author of HAMLET’S HEIRS and NOTORIOUS IDENTITY Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Lauren Hough is the author of the New York Times bestseller, LEAVING ISN’T THE HARDEST THING, a collection of essays about growing up in the abusive Children of God cult, coming out in the military, and piecing a life together, as Roxane Gay put it, “on the margins as a working class woman and what it’s like to grow into the person you are might to be.” Jen caught up with Lauren before she headed out on the road with her dog, Woody to research her next book MONSTER OF A LAND. Though she pressed, Jen was not able to get Lauren to spill the details on what is (or is not happening) with the screenplay about her memoir LEAVING ISN’T THE HARDEST THING. However, they did get into other personal topics from social media mobs to drug use to their in-person meeting in 2021 (after covid vaccinations) and a stuffed animal known as lamby. The audiobook of LEAVING is narrated in part by actor Cate Blanchett, who is also reportedly the owner of the film rights. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Lauren Hough Twitter | Website | LEAVING ISN’T THE HARDEST THING Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Nearly a year into Russia’s Febuary 2022 invasion of Ukraine, journalist and author Luke Harding reflects on the people he met in the war zone while researching for his new book INVASION: THE INSIDE STORY OF RUSSIA’S BLOODY WAR AND UKRAINE’S FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL. Some of these brave sources are survivors of the Bucha massacre, who shared with him the trauma of losing loved ones and direct experiences of the violent atrocities. Others include a once optimistic contact from Mariupol who turned desperate, phoning Harding (who was 1,000 kilometers away) begging him to save his wife and children. The book is spellbinding on its own merits, yet, this interview with Harding uniquely reveals the personal toll that reporting from a war zone takes on a journalist with the associated survivor’s guilt. Among the pain, though, is laughter, including the humor and pride associated with the Ukrainians on Snake Island. On the day of the invasion, they were being fired upon by the Moskva, Russia’s giant guided-missile cruiser that patroled the Black Sea with a crew of more than 500 men. The Russians warned the Ukrainians on the island to surrender or they would be bombed. In response, the Ukrianian border guard believing they were facing certain death or capture said, “Russian War Ship, go fuck yourself.” Not only did these men survive, but later, in April, the Moskva caught fire and sunk. The Ukrainians claimed credit for its demise. Given his extensive background reporting from Russia as the former Moscow bureau chief, there are few if any reporters who have the first-hand understanding of Putin’s goals to retake Ukraine and beyond, and his lack of concern for the death toll he will run up trying, and failing to reach that goal.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Luke Harding Twitter | Guardian Website | Author of several books including INVASION, COLLUSION, THE SNOWDEN FILES and A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

A.M Homes is an award-winning nonfiction author, novelist, short-storry writer, playwright, and librettist. This is the first time she and Jen speak together, having been introduced virtually by a mutual friend.  In this conversation, AMH lives her axiom  that, “People should pay more attention. Everyone wants attention, but no one wants to give attention.” In fact, she even commandeers the interview for a bit, getting Jen to talk about her past and future own writing projects. A love of history permeates AMH’s fictional work, as she uses post-WWII American history as structural pins to help  llustrate how we got from there to where we are today. In her newest novel, The Unfolding historical moments and figures function as much more than backdrops. These important events are embedded in the inner lives of her well-observed characters, and these characters do more than react, they are catalysts. Her previous work includes, This Book Will Save Your Life, which won the 2013 Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Days of Awe, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from A.M. Homes Twitter | Website | Author of THE UNFOLDING and THE MISTRESS’S DAUGHTER Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

We kvetched, we laughed, we cried. Never-Trumper George Conway and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll puzzled over Jen’s selection for this month’s book, but were quickly won over by THE LIGHT WE CARRY after just a few pages. In fact, George now plans to read BECOMING. Ivan Lett encouraged us all to share the light we carry and appreciated the message about being yourself. In the words of First Lady Michelle Obama, “We only hurt ourselves when we hide our realness away." Lisa Birnbach helped us see the value in self-forgiveness.  Jen and Ivan agreed that when they go low, we don’t go high, we light to get down into the mud and fight. That said, we found so much value in the advice in THE LIGHT WE CARRY. Many passages were read aloud, including one on knitting by E. Jean, and an amusing bit about President Obama’s parenting style. Michelle wrote, “When [Sasha and Malia]  moved to California, he emailed them a lengthy article about earthquake preparedness and offered to have Secret Service give them a natural-disaster-response briefing. (This was met with a polite, 'No thanks.')” Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Book Club Members Lisa Birnbach Twitter | Website | Author of THE OFFICIAL PREPPY HANDBOOK and TRUE PREP E. Jean Carroll Twitter | Ask E. Jean Substack | Author of WHAT DO WE NEED MEN FOR? George Conway Twitter | On Morniing Joe | Author of Atlantic article Unfit for Office Ivan Lett Twitter | Website | Author of HAARLEM REBORN Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Journalist and author of several books including indentured and All the Devils are Here, Joe Nocera talks with Jen about the crooked psychiatrist Isaac (“Ike”) Herschkopf and his guileless patients behind the Wondery Podcast he created with Bloomberg called “The Shrink Next Door.” They recorded the conversation a few days before the arrest and indictment of Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”), majority owner and leader of FTX, the collapse crypto trading platform. Joe also revealed details about the new book he’s co-authoring with Bethany McLean about Covid and the economy.  Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Joe Nocera: Twitter | The Shrink Next Door Podcast | Author of INDENTURED Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Michael Cohen was the personal lawyer and fixer for Donald J. Trump for more than a decade. He is now a top-selling author and host of the popular Mea Culpa podcast which, as of our Booked Up interview, had 65 million downloads. His new book, REVENGE, a New York Times bestseller, published in October 2022, reveals the high price Cohen paid for telling the truth about Trump.  In early 2019, Cohen testified under oath before a Congessional Committee, describing in detail the corrupt manner in which his former boss manipulated on paper the value of his various properties for purposes of deceiving prospective lenders and taxing authorities. Unlike others in Trump’s orbit, Cohen chose to testify against his former boss and also cooperate with law enforcement. His work with the New York Attorney General has led to a civil lawsuit against Trump and businesses related to among other charges, bank fraud, tax fraud, and business records falsification. And his cooperation with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office contributed to the landmark conviction of two Trump Organization businesses and may lead to further criminal charges by the DA and even federal authorities. Cohen’s first book, DISLOYAL, shot to the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller’s list when it came out in September 2020. In this candid memoir, Cohen owned up to his misplaced admiration for Donald Trump, describing himself as “a demented follower willing to do anything for him, including, as I vowed once to a reporter, to take a bullet.”  His latest book, REVENGE,  takes a hard look at how he was treated under Bill Barr’s Department of Justice, including what happened when he was out of prison on furlough, and about to sign the official release papers and get his electronic monitoring bracelet. The bureau of prisons team demanded he give up the right to publish his book or even speak to the press in exchange for his release. When he and his lawyer objected to these provisions asking to negotiate, the team disappeared for over an hour, seemingly to speak to their superiors. There was no negotiation. They came back, shackeld Cohen and remande him back to prison. He remained in solitary confienement for two weeks, until a judge took Cohen’s side, ordered his release, admonishing the government for retaliating against him for the plan to publish DISLOYAL.The judge said “I’ve never seen such a clause in 21 years of being a judge and sentencing people and looking at terms of supervised release. Why would the Bureau of Prisons ask for something like this ... unless there was a retaliatory purpose?” Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Michael Cohen: Twitter | Mea Culpa Podcast | Author of REVENGE Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Dahlia Lithwick ––  senior editor at Slate and author of the instant New York Times bestseller, LADY JUSTICE –– joined Jen for the inaugural episode of Booked Up. Fresh off her book tour, Dahlia shared her writing secrets, tough love for the Supreme Court, and how she met (and almost scared away) her future husband.  Dahlia is the host of Amicus, Slate’s award-winning biweekly podcast about the law and the Supreme Court. She is a praise and prize magnet. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg avidly read Dahlia’s “Supreme Court Dispatches,” column, once quipping with admiration, “she’s spicy.”  In 2018, Dahlia received both the American Constitution Society’s Progressive Champion Award, and the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October of 2018. She earned her BA in English from Yale University and her JD from Stanford University. Contact Booked Up: You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to:  BOOKED UP,  P.O. BOX 147 NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061 Get More from Dahlia Lithwick: Twitter | Slate Bio | Author of LADY JUSTICE Get More from Jen Taub: Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY 

Jen’s guests include writers of current bestsellers and beloved backlist books. Conversations cover love, money, politics, early dreams, writing habits, reading tastes, procrastination techniques, self-doubt, and news of the day. Creator and host, Jen Taub is a law professor, advocate, and author. Her nonfiction books include BIG DIRTY MONEY (Viking 2020) and OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES (Yale Press 2014). She focuses on “follow the money” matters— promoting transparency and opposing corruption. Jen’s favorite poem is Prufrock (and yes she knows that Eliot held abhorrent views. She contains multitudes and can separate the dancer from the dance.) Taub was the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law in fall 2019 at Harvard Law School and is now a professor of law at the Western New England University School of Law. A former associate general counsel at Fidelity Investments, she is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School. You can write to Jen and the Booked Up team at: bookedup@politicon.com or Booked Up, P.O. Box 147, Northampton, MA 01061