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Ari Shapiro’s new book reveals true tales that even a novelist couldn’t imagine

‘The Best Strangers in the World’ recounts NPR star’s multi-faceted life

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(Book cover image courtesy HarperOne)

‘The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening’ 
By Ari Shapiro
c.2023, HarperOne
$28.99/256 pages

Maybe in your dreams, you’ve been to an underwear party with Alan Cumming on Fire Island or, from a seat on Air Force One, noticed the razor bumps on Barack Obama’s neck.

These dreams are part of everyday life for Ari Shapiro, host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” In his memoir “The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening,” he tells true tales that even a novelist couldn’t imagine.

From early on, Shapiro, who sings with the band Pink Martini and performs in the stage show “Och and Oy” with Cumming, has been both an outsider and someone who loves the spotlight.

Shapiro, 44, began speaking in public when he was a first-grader in Fargo, N.D. He and his older brother were the only Jewish kids at their elementary school. At Christmastime, “he and I would go from classroom to classroom with a menorah and a dreidel, explaining to children descended form Scandinavian immigrants what Hanukkah was,” he writes.

This was his first experience of explaining the unfamiliar — of, as Shapiro writes, “making the foreign seem a bit less strange.”

Shapiro’s parents were professors at North Dakota State University. They encouraged Shapiro to be curious about the world.

When he was eight, Shapiro and his family moved from Fargo to Portland, Ore. At 16, Shapiro came out as gay. His parents were supportive.

Though he hadn’t even kissed a boy, Shapiro writes, there were rumors among his peers about his sexuality. “I decided that the best approach was to drown out the whisper campaign with a bullhorn,” he writes.

He plastered his locker with postcards of Tom of Finland drawings and photographs by Herb Ritts and Tom Bianchi. “On Halloween, I came to school in drag,” Shapiro writes, “After that, my calculus teacher stopped calling on me when I raised my hand in class.”

His hair, he recalls, was parted in the center, and fell to his chin in a “sort of Nirvana-meets-Prince Valiant bob.”

Shapiro, refreshingly, is not too self-serious about his coming out. Yet, when he notes that he carried Mace because “not everybody was excited about having a gay classmate,” you remember how homophobic it was then.

Shapiro, after graduating from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in English, came to NPR through an internship with Nina Totenberg. “Grow a pair,” Shapiro writes, Totenberg told him when he hemmed and hawed while asking a source for an interview.

Most journalists are known primarily for their reporting. But journalism is just one facet of Shapiro’s life.

In “The Best Strangers in the World,” Shapiro lets readers in on what it’s like to have a multi-faceted life. Where one moment, he’s reporting from Washington, D.C., and the next day he’s singing with Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl.

Reporters, usually, don’t want to become part of the news. In 2004, Shapiro worried about that when he and his boyfriend Mike Gottlieb got married in San Francisco. “I thought I should ask permission from my employer, NPR,” Shapiro writes, “I was about to step into the middle of the culture wars at a time when the country was undecided on whether gay couples should be allowed to legally commit to a life together.”

“As a journalist,” he added, “I would be …becoming a participant in a major news story.”

At times, Shapiro almost comes off as being unbearably privileged – as someone’s who’s had everything go their way from love to their career.

This impression is erased when Shapiro reveals that he sweats as much as Aaron, the anxious reporter in “Broadcast News.” Or, when he writes movingly about covering the Pulse massacre in 2016. As a gay man, Shapiro writes, he brought “lived experience” to his coverage of Pulse. “I had been bar hopping in Orlando more than a decade earlier,” Shapiro writes.

Then, he’d made friends with bartenders at a bar. Twelve years later, while in Orlando, Shapiro realized that that bar was Pulse.

“The Best Strangers in the World” is the best read this spring. 

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A boy-meets-boy, family-mess story with heat

New book offers a stunning, satisfying love story

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(Book cover image courtesy of Random House)

‘When the Harvest Comes’
By Denne Michele Norris
c.2025, Random House
$28/304 pages

Happy is the bride the sun shines on.

Of all the clichés that exist about weddings, that’s the one that seems to make you smile the most. Just invoking good weather and bright sunshine feels like a cosmic blessing on the newlyweds and their future. It’s a happy omen for bride and groom or, as in the new book “When the Harvest Comes” by Denne Michele Norris, for groom and groom.

Davis Freeman never thought he could love or be loved like this.

He was wildly, wholeheartedly, mind-and-soul smitten with Everett Caldwell, and life was everything that Davis ever wanted. He was a successful symphony musician in New York. They had an apartment they enjoyed and friends they cherished. Now it was their wedding day, a day Davis had planned with the man he adored, the details almost down to the stitches in their attire. He’d even purchased a gorgeous wedding gown that he’d never risk wearing.

He knew that Everett’s family loved him a lot, but Davis didn’t dare tickle the fates with a white dress on their big day. Everett’s dad, just like Davis’s own father, had considerable reservations about his son marrying another man – although Everett’s father seemed to have come to terms with his son’s bisexuality. Davis’s father, whom Davis called the Reverend, never would. Years ago, father and son had a falling-out that destroyed any chance of peace between Davis and his dad; in fact, the door slammed shut to any reconciliation.

But Davis tried not to think about that. Not on his wedding day. Not, unbeknownst to him, as the Reverend was rushing toward the wedding venue, uninvited but not unrepentant. Not when there was an accident and the Reverend was killed, miles away and during the nuptials.

Davis didn’t know that, of course, as he was marrying the love of his life. Neither did Everett, who had familial problems of his own, including homophobic family members who tried (but failed) to pretend otherwise.

Happy is the groom the sun shines on. But when the storm comes, it can be impossible to remain sunny.

What can be said about “When the Harvest Comes?” It’s a romance with a bit of ghost-pepper-like heat that’s not there for the mere sake of titillation. It’s filled with drama, intrigue, hate, characters you want to just slap, and some in bad need of a hug.

In short, this book is quite stunning.

Author Denne Michele Norris offers a love story that’s everything you want in this genre, including partners you genuinely want to get to know, in situations that are real. This is done by putting readers inside the characters’ minds, letting Davis and Everett themselves explain why they acted as they did, mistakes and all. Don’t be surprised if you have to read the last few pages twice to best enjoy how things end. You won’t be sorry.

If you want a complicated, boy-meets-boy, family-mess kind of book with occasional heat, “When the Harvest Comes” is your book. Truly, this novel shines.

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Chronicling disastrous effects of ‘conversion therapy’

New book uncovers horror, unexpected humor of discredited practice

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(Book cover image courtesy of Jessica Kingsley Publishers)

‘Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy’
By Lucas F. W. Wilson
c.2025, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
$21.95/190 pages

You’re a few months in, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.

You made your New Year’s resolutions with forethought, purpose, and determination but after all this time, you still struggle, ugh. You’ve backslid. You’ve cheated because change is hard. It’s sometimes impossible. And in the new book, “Shame-Sex Attraction” by Lucas F. W. Wilson, it can be exceptionally traumatic.

Progress does not come without problems.

While it’s true that the LGBTQ community has been adversely affected by the current administration, there are still things to be happy about when it comes to civil rights and acceptance. Still, says Wilson, one “particularly slow-moving aspect… has been the fight against what is widely known as conversion therapy.”

Such practices, he says, “have numerous damaging, death-dealing, and no doubt disastrous consequences.” The stories he’s collected in this volume reflect that, but they also mirror confidence and strength in the face of detrimental treatment.

Writer Gregory Elsasser-Chavez was told to breathe in something repellent every time he thought about other men. He says, in the end, he decided not to “pray away the gay.” Instead, he quips, he’d “sniff it away.”

D. Apple became her “own conversation therapist” by exhausting herself with service to others as therapy. Peter Nunn’s father took him on a surprise trip, but the surprise was a conversion facility; Nunn’s father said if it didn’t work, he’d “get rid of” his 15-year-old son. Chaim Levin was forced to humiliate himself as part of his therapy.

Lexie Bean struggled to make a therapist understand that they didn’t want to be a man because they were “both.” Jordan Sullivan writes of the years it takes “to re-integrate and become whole” after conversion therapy. Chris Csabs writes that he “tried everything to find the root of my problem” but “nothing so far had worked.”

Says Syre Klenke of a group conversion session, “My heart shattered over and over as people tried to console and encourage each other…. I wonder if each of them is okay and still with us today.”

Here’s a bit of advice for reading “Shame-Sex Attraction”: dip into the first chapter, maybe the second, then go back and read the foreword and introduction, and resume.

The reason: author Lucas F. W. Wilson’s intro is deep and steep, full of footnotes and statistics, and if you’re not prepared or you didn’t come for the education, it might scare you away. No, the subtitle of this book is likely why you’d pick the book up so because that’s what you really wanted, indulge before backtracking.

You won’t be sorry; the first stories are bracing and they’ll steel you for the rest, for the emotion and the tears, the horror and the unexpected humor.

Be aware that there are triggers all over this book, especially if you’ve been subjected to anything like conversion therapy yourself. Remember, though, that the survivors are just that: survivors, and their strength is what makes this book worthwhile. Even so, though “Shame-Sex Attraction” is an essential read, that doesn’t make it any easier.

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Books

How one gay Catholic helped change the world

‘A Prince of a Boy,’ falls short of author’s previous work

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(Book cover image via Amazon)

Brian McNaught, the pioneering gay activist and author of 1986’s “On Being Gay” and 1993’s “Gay Issues in the Workplace,” has written a personal account about his Catholic faith and homosexuality. It is a memoir without much substance.  

“A Prince of a Boy: How One Gay Catholic Helped Change the World” (Cascade Books) is a strong personal statement by McNaught. He helped change family relationships. He helped change attitudes about homosexuality. He helped change workplaces, but the world?

In January 2023, the Catholic News Service reported that Pope Francis announced that, “being homosexual is not a crime.” In December 2023, NPR reported that Pope Francis approved “Catholic blessings for same-sex couples, but not for marriage.” Francis died Monday at age 88. Although Catholics may not see homosexuality as a crime, they see sex outside of marriage as a sin. They see same-sex marriage as a sin.

In 2021, Gallup reported that membership in the Catholic Church had declined 20 percent since 2000. In 2025, the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans identified as Protestant, while the same study found that only 19 percent identified as Catholic.

McNaught devotes much of his book to his life as a gay Catholic. It is challenging to read about his personal struggle. Some readers may find it interesting. Others might find it boring. Catholic readers may find it more compelling than Protestant readers.

As the above statistics prove, McNaught has much more work to do to change the Catholic Church’s views about homosexuality. We should be glad for his contribution to the debate within the Catholic Church. We should pray for full acceptance of gays in the Catholic Church.

“A Prince of a Boy” becomes more interesting when McNaught describes his work as an educator on LGBTQ issues. He has had an impact on workplace policies, academic programs, and public education, and his lectures, books, and other materials are widely used. 

Based on my experience in the federal government and volunteering with LGBTQ organizations from the Bay Area to Washington, D.C., I believe McNaught’s work as an educator has improved LGBTQ lives, careers, and families. During the Clinton administration, I gave many copies of “Gay Issues in the Workplace” to personnel directors. I felt their staff could benefit from reading it. I thought it would help the lives and careers of my federal LGBTQ colleagues.

McNaught’s “A Prince of a Boy” was released in December 2024. Anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant died the same month. Bryant campaigned against a gay rights law in Florida. She began a national campaign against gays.

When Bryant successfully reversed a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida, McNaught wrote the important essay “Dear Anita, Late Night Thoughts of an Irish Catholic Homosexual.” The essay is not in “A Prince of a Boy”; however, McNaught mentions Bryant.

In his training programs, McNaught describes homosexuals as journeying from confusion to denial to acceptance to pride. “Anita Bryant and AIDS brought Gay people to identity pride very quickly,” McNaught writes. San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk (1930-1978) and other activists reached similar conclusions about Bryant’s vicious anti-gay campaign.

McNaught helped change the LGBTQ world and brought pride to many people’s lives. McNaught walks in pride, works in pride, and educates others in pride. 

“A Prince of a Boy” is a disappointing book. It provides small details about Brian McNaught’s large, proud life. A meaningful biography about this great gay leader is long overdue.

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