Books & Literature

Leidy Bonanno had just graduated nursing school when she was killed by an ex-boyfriend in 2003. Slamming Open the Door is Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno's way of remembering.

Critic Milo Miles reviews The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics. It's Dennis Kitchen and Paul Buhle's illustrated biography of influential artist and writer Harvey Kurtzman, the inventor of MAD Magazine.

Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim the English Channel, finishing faster than any of the five men who had done it before. Young Woman and the Sea shows how Ederle's fame grew, then evaporated.

The Mad Ones is the tale of real-life gangsters Larry, Albert "Kid Blast" and "Crazy" Joe Gallo — a Mafia clan that inspired Bob Dylan's "Joey" and were a major inspiration for The Godfather.

In a 1996 interview, the late memoirist shares richly detailed memories of his Limerick childhood and his adult life in the United States.

In time for the 110th anniversary of the author's birth, Ernest Hemingway's posthumous memoir, A Moveable Feast, has been restored — or rather, as Maureen Corrigan would have it, "remixed."

Iranian-American author and human rights activist Roya Hakakian talks about growing up Jewish in post-revolutionary Iran.

Recently issued in paperback, Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherland emerged to immediate acclaim in 2008, and many critics — including Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan — placed it on a footing with The Great Gatsby.

Short but not so sweet, Kate Walbert's melancholy new novel, A Short History of Women, follows five generations of women. Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Playing Shakespeare, a 1984 series in which actors dissect some of the Bard's most famous works, shows how crucial an understanding of Shakespeare's language and versification are to conveying the meaning — and power — of his scenes.

Former defense secretary Robert McNamara died Monday. In a 1995 interview with Terry Gross, McNamara reflects on Vietnam and admits his serious doubts about US policy and the decision-making that escalated the war.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' pays tribute to his father in his Memoir.

What can old issues of Publishers Weekly tell us about reading habits in dire economic times? Maureen Corrigan cracks open some of the magazine's 1933 issues and learns that readers today aren't so different from our Depression-era brethren.

In 2008, Dr. Maria Siemionow and a team of doctors made history when they performed the first near-total face transplant in the United States. Siemionow writes about the procedure in the memoir Face to Face.

In Chandler Burr's You or Someone Like You, the wife of a powerful Hollywood executive unexpectedly finds herself at the helm of a popular book group. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a "smart novel" that offers "a very tough reflection on the idea of 'group-ness' itself"

Actress Cloris Leachman, best known as nosy neighbor Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has penned her autobiography, Cloris, with husband George Englund. Leachman recently competed on Dancing with the Stars, and appears in the new film Inglorious Basterds.

Mark Kurlansky's The Food of a Younger Land presents a marvelous history of America's gastronomical oddities and antiques; a remembrance of tastes and customs past. Maureen Corrigan has a review.

When Rocco Mediate, a low-ranking journeyman golfer, challenged Tiger Woods to a sudden-death playoff at the 2008 U.S. Open, it became the subject of the new book Are You Kidding Me?

In his new memoir Lost Boy, Brent Jeffs talks about growing up in the polygamist FLDS chuch, his expulsion from the community, and his sexual-abuse lawsuit against his controversial uncle Warren Jeffs.

Reed Farrel Coleman holds down a job as a commercial truck driver. But that doesn't stop him from writing mysteries in his free time. His Moe Prager series has won a slew of major awards.