Introducing The Thread Book Club

We're launching The Thread Book Club — and you're invited.

Read along with us and we'll bring the authors into the studio to answer your questions.

Every month, we'll pick a new book — fiction, nonfiction, classics and new releases. We'll invite a guest reader to join us, too — someone who can offer a new perspective or experience.

For the first run of The Thread Book Club, we delved into Elliot Ackerman's "Green on Blue." Ackerman completed five tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. He channeled his experience overseas into his debut novel.

Andrew Zimmern, who has traveled the world as an award-winning chef and writer, joined Ackerman and Kerri Miller to discuss "Green on Blue" and its place in the growing genre of modern war literature.

For April, we're jumping over to the nonfiction shelf with "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction" by Matthew B. Crawford.

The news is packed with articles about declining attention spans — they put the blame on social media and technology rewiring our brains. But Crawford takes a different tack. He tracks down people who have managed to hold onto the art of concentration in the face of our constantly buzzing, beeping world: Ice hockey players, short-order cooks, Baroque pipe organ builders, motorcyclists and more.

He draws on interviews and a long history of philosophy to answer the question: Where does concentration really come from?

Crawford will join Kerri Miller for The Thread Book Club on April 30. Javier Morillo will join the discussion as this month's guest reader.

Share your questions for Crawford with @thethreadmpr and we'll ask them in the studio.