His influence on the written and spoken word is without question, but should Noah Webster get more credit for launching our uniquely American culture? We’ll talk this hour with Joshua Kendall, author of “The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture” (Putnam, 2011).

Who was Peter Mark Roget and what prompted him, from the age of eight, to begin the systematic organization of the English language that made him famous? We’ll talk with journalist Joshua Kendall, whose new book is “The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus” (Putnam, 2008).