Jonathan Rose, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History at Drew University, joins the show to talk about his new book, The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor (Yale University Press). It's a fascinating work about the books and plays that influenced one of the 20th century's greatest statesmen, drawing connections from Churchill's literary interests to his policy decisions, and helping us understand Churchill as an artist first and foremost.

Frank Wilson, book reviewer, columnist and founder of the Books, Inq. blog, completes our August book critics miniseries! Frank talks about 50 years in the book review biz, the similarities of poetry and religion, whether Catholics can write good novels, the perils of using big-name writers as book reviewers, the biggest gap in his literary background, his underrated/overrated ranks, and more!

Jessa Crispin, founder of Bookslut and Spolia, joins us to talk about 12 years of book-blogging, the downsides of learnign to write online, how she learned to love Henry James, why lack of ambition may have been Bookslut's key to success, and more!

Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda rejoins the Virtual Memories Show at Readercon 2014 to talk about the time Neil Gaiman tried to explain Twitter to him, his new project on the golden age of storytelling, what he dislikes about the tone of today's book reviewers, and more! [Also, we remastered our original Dirda podcast from 2012, over here!]