Books & Literature

Author Scott Eyman explains how Chaplin was smeared in the press, scandalized for his affairs with young women, condemned for his alleged communist ties and banned from returning to the U.S.

Atlantic writer McKay Coppins spent countless hours with the Utah senator and shares Romney's take on what Republican leaders privately think about Donald Trump. Coppins' book is Romney: A Reckoning.

David Grann's 2017 book chronicled how members of the Osage Indian Nation were murdered in the 1920s by white people who wanted to take control of their land. Originally broadcast April 17, 2017.

In the new memoir, Worthy, Pinkett Smith writes about her marriage, her career in Hollywood, her upbringing in Baltimore and her friendship with the late rapper Tupac Shakur. She also chronicles her struggle with depression and her efforts to better understand and accept herself.

"I love the way that Texans talk," Wright says. His novel centers on a naïve rancher who lucks into a seat in the state legislature, where he meets lobbyists, veteran politicians and power brokers.

When Helen Garner published her first novel, "Monkey Grip," in 1977, it made her a literary sensation in her native Australia. She's been a famous writer there ever since. The American publisher Pantheon has begun releasing her most popular books, starting with her 1984 novel "The Children's Bach" and her 2014 true crime book "This House Of Grief." Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says that Garner is one of his favorite writers and that these books offer the ideal introduction to a woman who's forever grappling with the hard stuff of life.

Safiya Sinclair, grew up in a Rasta family in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Her father is a reggae singer and guitarist. Her hair was twisted into dreadlocks until she was 19. She came to realize that for her, being Rasta meant living in a cage. It was through reading and writing poems that she came to better know herself and to break out of the cage and enter the larger world.

Cat Bohannon is the author of the book "Eve" How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution". The book attempts to trace the evolution of women's bodies and how that evolution has shaped our lives.

A new tribute album offers musical interpretations of Ginsberg's poems. The poet and countercultural activist spoke to Terry Gross in 1994 about his poem "Howl," which was inspired by his mother.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says given that it's a novel about the struggle to fend off deprivation and extinction, 'Land of Milk and Honey' is gloriously lush. Zhang's sensuous style makes us see, smell and, above all, taste the lure of that sun-dappled mountain enclave.

In her new novel called "The Vaster Wilds," Lauren Groff, who's been a finalist for the National Book Award three times, tells a harrowing story of an escape from Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World.

Hitler's Germany banned jazz, which was deemed degenerate music made by Jews and Black people. But NPR host Scott Simon says the Nazis repurposed jazz abroad to weaken British and American resolve.

Hua Hsu won the Pulitzer Prize for Stay True, his memoir about identity, musical obsessions and the sudden tragic murder of a close friend. Originally broadcast Oct. 18, 2022.

A story about a fictional famed Irish poet named Phil McDaragh who deserts his sick wife and two young daughters — a betrayal that reverberates into his granddaughter's life.

The Fraud is a work of historical fiction centering on the real-life Victorian Era Tichborne trial – and one of the trial's witnesses, a formerly enslaved man from Jamaica.

Joining us today to talk about the life and legacy of the Notorious B.I.G. is journalist Justin Tinsley. He's the author of the book "It Was All A Dream: Biggie And The World That Made Him." In the book, Tinsley explores Biggie's life in the context of not only rap, but the wider cultural and political forces that shaped him, including immigration, Reagan-era politics, the war on drugs and mass incarceration.

R. Eric Thomas Thomas' new book, Congratulations, the Best Is Over!, is about middle age, and what it feels like to go back to the place where you were born — especially when your relationship with that place is complicated.

Washington Post reporter Laura Meckler tells the story of Shaker Heights, Ohio, a town with high-performing, diverse schools — and also a pronounced achievement gap between white and Black students.

In Naomi Hirahara's new novel a Japanese American family that had been interned during World War II returns home to a Los Angeles that isn't what they remembered.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is one of the best novels she's read this year. She says it pulls off the singular magic trick of being simultaneously flattening and uplifting