For the author, John's job is a handy pulpit, allowing him to fulminate against radio, New Age affectation, and campus politicking. Keillor remains a master of the cantankerous one-liner, yet there's a romance here, too--between John and a historian named Alida Freeman. And while Keillor can't resist roping Alida into his own pan-Scandinavian schtick--she's writing a scholarly study of a 19th-century Norwegian neuropath who administered high colonics to Lincoln himself--the love story is genuinely touching and gives the novel an extra emotional ballast.

So, too, does the magnetic pull of Lake Wobegon. John keeps describing life back in Minnesota as one long exercise in sensory (and emotional) deprivation: "We were not brought up to experience pleasure, so it doesn't register with us, like writing on glass with a pencil. Dullness is our stock-in-trade, dullness honed to its keenest edge." Nonetheless, he returns twice in the course of the novel, and his sojourns among the Lutherans are the source of not only comedy but home truths.

But when his second novel bombs and he finds himself in the grip of writer's block, Wyler discovers that success—and the New York publishing scene—is a fickle mistress, indeed. Creatively barren, nearly destitute, and longing for Iris, he accepts a job writing “Ask Mr. Blue,” a column doling out advice to the lovelorn. It may not be glamorous work, but through it Wyler discovers what's really important and sets out to win back the woman he left behind.

Charles Kuralt America is written and told by Charles Kuralt. Ever since October 1967, when he set off in a battered motor home to explore America and talk to its people, Charles Kuralt has been one of our premier chroniclers- a man who has helped us see and celebrate our country in a way we never had before.

From Montana in September and Alaska in June to winter in Cajun country and the North Carolina mountains in spring, Kuralt's accounts are filled with people, stories and experiences. Suffused by a poet's love of language and rich in the spirit and flavor of this infinite and varied land, Charles Kuralt's America is, like it's author, a national treasure. All new journeys from the New York Times Bestselling author of A Life On The Road. 1 cassette 1 Hour

More News From Lake Wobegon written and told by Garrison Keillor. Here are four of Garrison Keillor's classic "News From Lake Wobegon" monologues, taken from the original live radio broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion.

The unusually broad geographic range of this volume extends beyond Israel to encompass the Holy Land's biblical neighbors from southern Turkey to central Sudan and from Cyprus to the Iraq border.

Richly illustrated with extensive color photography and with a foreword by the incomparable Garrison Keillor, this delightful ecumenical botany offers the welcome tonic of a deep look into an enduring, shared natural heritage.