Steve Allen, the versatile entertainer and musician, discusses his travels and his book, "Explaining China."*Please note: some sections have been edited out from the original recording due to copyright considerations   

Through an interpreter, Madame Ida Kaminska discusses her role in the film "The Shop on Main Street." Both her mother and father were actors, too. Madame Kaminska explains she comes from a family of actors from 100 years ago.

Author and actor Patricia Bosworth discusses her book “Anything your Little Heart Desires,” which details her upbringing and her father’s life as a lawyer.

In the book, "By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age," Paul Boyer covers people's feelings and attitudes after the bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. Boyer admits he, himself, when he was a young boy, he sent away for a free atomic ring that was being advertised. The program includes an excerpt of David Lilienthal talking.

Content Warning: This conversation has the presence of outdated, biased, offensive language. Rather than remove this content, we present it in the context of twentieth-century social history to acknowledge and learn from its impact and to inspire awareness and discussion. Taylor Branch discusses his book "Parting the Waters," touching on topics including the impact of Martin Luther King Jr., the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the March on Washington. Includes excerpts from interviews with Martin Luther King Jr., Mahalia Jackson, E. D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, and Myles Horton.

Some people thought the 60's were glorious years and other people thought they were destructive years. "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage," is Todd Gitlin's autobiography where he offers his perspective of those years.

Buffalo, land, barbed wire, treaties and legal cases are all topics of Vine Deloria's book, "American Indians, American Justice". A lawyer and a Sioux Indian himself, Deloria points out a tricky question for the courts -- What constitutes Indian country?

In her book, "After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese," Lady Burton tells stories and reflects on what it was like to live among the village people in South Vietnam. Borton found the people to be smart. Among some of her stories, she learned how women carried messages and weapons through enemy territories.

Author Douglas Dowd discusses topics from his book "Blues For America: A Critique, A Lament, and Some Memories," including war, religion, and American history.

The blues and jazz are topics covered by Ralph Ellison. Ellison himself started to play the trumpet at the age of seven. Ellison said for him, when hearing classical music, he then had to go and find classical literature.