How does Alan coming follow up his first number one bestselling memoir, Not My Father's

Son? The actor, author, screenwriter and performer will be here to talk about his latest

book, Baggage. What made Robert E. Lee become a traitor to his country? Historian Alan

Gellzo will be here to talk about his new biography of the controversial Confederate

leader. Alexander Alter will be here to talk about what's going on in the publishing

world, plus our critics will join us to talk about the books they've been reading and

reviewing. This is the Book Review Podcast from the New York Times. It's November 12th.

I'm Pamela Paul.

Director, writer, director, podcaster, author of many books. Alan coming joins us now from

the East Village in New York to talk about his new book, Baggage. Tales from a fully packed

life. Alan, thanks for being here. My pleasure. Even though there are celebrities who

flip in and out of this, this is not really a celebrity memoir. And I want to talk before

we even get on to baggage about your first memoir, which was definitely not what we would

call a typical celebrity memoir. So for those who have not had the opportunity yet to read

that book, can you talk a little bit about your first memoir, not my father's son?

That was written in reaction to a series of events that happened to me in 2010. And

what happened was I did this BBC TV show. Well, there's an American version too. It's

called Who Do You Think You Are Where They Trace Your Genealogy? And there'd always been

a sort of a family mystery about my maternal grandfather. It was called Tommy Darling. And

I knew he'd died in a shooting accident in Malaysia. But we didn't know the circumstances.

And he'd never come back after the war. And I don't know. And anyway, what they do is

and that's in that program, they come and say, would you like to do this show? And you

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