Heather Cox Richardson talks about her book, “How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America,” during this year’s festival.

Jenna Bush Hager, former first daughter and granddaughter, bestselling author and co-anchor of the “Today” show, shares moving, funny stories about her beloved grandparents and the wisdom they passed on to her in her new book, “Everything Beautiful in Its Time: Seasons of Love and Loss.”

Dark Star trilogy novelist Marlon James, author of “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” talks with sci-fi/fantasy writer Jeff VanderMeer, author of “A Peculiar Peril,” in a conversation titled “Dystopian Worlds.”

Téa Obreht’s most recent book, “Inland,” is a historical novel set in the drought-ridden Arizona Territory in 1893. Washington Post fiction critic Ron Charles interviewed the author during this year’s National Book Festival.

Colson Whitehead, author of the Pulitzer-winning “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” discusses his work and receives the 2020 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction at this year’s National Book Festival.

America has been founded not once, but twice, according to Eric Foner, one of the nation’s foremost historians. At this year’s festival he discusses his newest book, “The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution.”

John Grisham is America’s most popular writer of legal thrillers. “The Guardians” is his hair-raising thriller about wrongful convictions, and “Camino Winds” is a light-hearted novel about a murder investigation undertaken by a bookseller.