Antonin Scalia was not merely a great legal mind, he was also a great writer–as Christopher J. Scalia reveals in Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived, a collection of speeches by his late father (and co-edited with Edward Whelan).

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Scalia describes assembling this book from his father’s papers, how the elder Scalia learned to write so well and on so many topics (from the value of the arts to the wonders of turkey hunting), and on his surprising friendship with fellow Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Understanding Ukraine today is impossible without also understanding what the Soviet Union did to it in the 1930, says Anne Applebaum, author of Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Applebaum describes Stalin’s act of mass murder against the Ukrainian people, how knowledge of this enormity slowly seeped into the West, and how its aftereffects continue to influence Ukraine’s present confrontation with Russia.

Who were the Maya and what did they believe? Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos explains in Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya.

In a 10-minute conversation with The Bookmonger, Chinchilla describes what compelled him to devote his professional life to the study of these ancient people, what the images they put on vases and murals tells us about them, and why they become a “lost civilization.”