Books

Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. looks at the cultural legacy of African slaves brought to Latin America.

Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano explains why our brains make mistakes when we try to remember long lists of information or add large numbers in our heads. Humans live "in a time and place we didn't evolve to live in," he says.

The physician and anthropologist has spent 30 years treating patients in Haiti. In Haiti After The Earthquake, he details what it was like on the ground in the days after the 2010 quake — and why the country is still struggling to recover.

Sally H. Jacobs' new biography, The Other Barack, follows the troubled life of Barack Obama Sr. — from Kenya to Hawaii and back. Jacobs believes that if Obama Sr. had played a larger role in his son's life, Obama probably wouldn't have become president.

Romance comics flourished in the 1940s and '50s, with titles like Was I a Wicked Wife? and Kisses Came Second. Pop culture writer Michael Barson collects some of his favorites in the new anthology, Agonizing Love: The Golden Era of Romance Comics.

Fallon is thankful for slow walkers, people named Lloyd and the word "moist." The comedian and host of Late Night collects more than 100 nuggets of gratitude in his book Thank You Notes. He talks with Terry Gross about giving thanks and doing impressions.

New York Times financial writer Diana Henriques was the first journalist to interview Bernie Madoff after he was sent to prison. Henriques' new book, The Wizard of Lies, details how Madoff created the biggest Ponzi scheme in history after playing a prominent role in shaping modern markets.

Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee chronicles how our understanding of cancer has evolved in his new book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

This interview was originally broadcast on Nov. 17, 2010. Siddhartha Mukherjee recently received the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for 'The Emperor of all Maladies.'

Jon Sarkin was working as a chiropractor when he suffered a massive stroke. Afterwards, he became an obsessive visual artist whose work was as fragmented and cluttered as his mind had become. Sarkin is the subject of a new book, Shadows Bright as Glass, by science writer Amy Nutt.

During the 1898-1904 pox epidemic, public health officials and policemen forced thousands of Americans to be vaccinated against their will. Historian Michael Willrich examines that epidemic's far-reaching implications for individual civil liberties in Pox: An American History.