Comedian Kumail Nanjiani steps into the leading role in a semi-autobiographical love story. It's a quietly groundbreaking crowd-pleaser, though some characters aren't as fully dimensional as others.
Several years ago, when Garrett Graff was working at Washingtonian magazine, a coworker brought him a lost ID badge that he'd found on the floor of a parking garage.
On his first day in the seventh grade, Sherman Alexie opened up his school-assigned math book and found his mother's maiden name written in it. "I was looking at a 30-year-old math book," he says — and that was the moment he knew that he needed to leave his home.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has figured something out: "I learned how to become one of the most popular politicians in America," he says. "Announce that you are not running for president, and be authentic."
The title of Maile Meloy's new novel is misleading: Do Not Become Alarmed sounds like a suspense story. Granted, I did read it in two nights; but, while I'm a unapologetic fan of thrillers, Meloy's novel is something else, something trickier to characterize. I'd call it a very smart work of literary fiction that exposes how very thin the layer of good luck is that keeps most of us from falling into the abyss.
When it comes to comedy, Late Night host Seth Meyers is clear about what drew him in: "I got into it because it looked like the most fun job in the world," he says. "And it has not led me astray."
The only literary work about punctuation I'm aware of is an odd early story by Anton Chekhov called "The Exclamation Mark." After getting into an argument with a colleague about punctuation, a school inspector named Yefim Perekladin asks his wife what an exclamation point is for. She tells him it signifies delight, indignation, joy and rage. He realizes that in 40 years of writing official reports, he has never had the need to express any of those emotions.
Washington Post correspondent Souad Mekhennet has risked kidnapping and imprisonment to report on extremist groups, such as ISIS and the Taliban. Her new memoir is I Was Told to Come Alone.
Author Mark Bowden says the capture of Hue, Vietnam, was part of a wave of well-planned Communist attacks that shocked American commanders and helped turn U.S. public opinion against the war.
Rachel Weisz plays a widow who might have designs on her cousin's fortune in a new adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's 1951 novel. Critic David Edelstein says the film will keep viewers in suspense.
After defying her country's ban on woman drivers, Manal al Sharif was arrested. The outcry by people all over the world led to her release. She tells her story from growing up in Mecca, and adhering to the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam to being a security engineer at Aramco, the Saudi national oil company.
Salma Hayek plays a Mexican-American massage therapist who attends the dinner party of a wealthy client in Beatriz At Dinner. Reviewer Justin Chang calls the film an "elegantly acerbic new comedy."
Actor Giancarlo Esposito talks about coming back to play Gus Fring in Better Call Saul, after originating the role in Breaking Bad. . . and how being bi-racial has affected his life and career. He's the son of an white Italian father, and an African-american mother, who was an opera singer.
Conservation photographer Paul Nicklen has been documenting the wildlife in the arctic regions of the world for decades, often getting dangerously up close with the animals he encounters in the sea and on land.
Author Sheryll Cashin's talks about the Loving v. Virginia ruling, which overturned state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Cashin grew up the child of civil rights activists in Huntsville, Ala
Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews two new short story collections: The Winter Without Milk by Jane Avrich, and The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters.
Illustrator Marjane Satrapi is the author of the memoir, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. The book is in the form of an illustrated comic. Satrapi was born in 1969 in Iran, and grew up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. One reviewer writes, "A triumph... Like Maus, Persepolis is one of those comic books capable of seducing even those most allergic to the genre."
