Books

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future, Jill Lepore

Long Before Cambridge Analytica And Facebook, Simulmatics Linked Data And Politics

6:09pm September 14, 2020

by Shannon Bond

In If Then, author and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore unearths Simulmatics' story and makes the argument that the company paved the way for our 21st-century obsession with data and prediction.

Books
Arts

Home Sweet Labyrinth: Susanna Clarke's Mysterious 'Piranesi' Will Lock You In

3:50pm September 14, 2020

by Ari Shapiro

It's been 16 years since Clarke wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. "The pressure of all the years when I hadn't written, and all the stories I hadn't written, weighed very heavily on me," she says.

Books
Arts

'Homeland Elegies' Novelist Reflects On Homesickness And The Immigrant Experience

1:40pm September 14, 2020

by Dave Davies

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar centers his new novel on a Muslim man who, like Akhtar, is the son of Pakistani immigrants living in Wisconsin.

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Journalist Bob Woodward, seen here in 2017 arriving for meetings with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York, is the author of the newly released book Rage.

Woodward Addresses Criticism That He Should've Detailed Trump Interviews Earlier

9:17am September 14, 2020

by Barbara Sprunt

Journalist Bob Woodward has faced some criticism for not promptly sharing with the public what the president told him about the coronavirus in a series of interviews earlier this year.

Woodward Criticized For Not Publishing Trump Revelations Sooner

7:33am September 14, 2020

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to Bob Woodward about his new book: Rage. Woodward documents that President Trump was aware of how lethal the coronavirus was, well before he let on in public.

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News Brief: Wildfires, Woodward's 'Rage,' Voters In Pa. County Speak Out

6:02am September 14, 2020

Wildfires burn millions of acres in California, Oregon and Washington. Bob Woodward addresses criticism that he should've detailed Trump comments earlier. And, we hear from voters in Erie County, Pa.

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Ayad Akhtar won a Pulitzer Prize for Disgraced, his play about a conflicted American Muslim man living in New York after Sept. 11.

Books
Arts

It's Real, It's Fiction, It's A Paradox: Ayad Akhtar On His 'Homeland Elegies'

6:02am September 14, 2020

by Noel King

The narrator's name in the novel is also Ayad Akhtar, and the book reads like memoir. Akhtar says he had to "pilfer" from his own life to write a novel that had the "addictive thrill" of reality TV.

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Hanging Tree Guitars: The Wood's 'Not Good, Not Bad, Not Ugly — Just Strange'

1:26pm September 13, 2020

by Debbie Elliott

Freeman Vines is an African American luthier who creates what have been called "contemporary art sculptures hidden as guitars" out of old wood, some of it from a tree used for a lynching.

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"We all have to work at making the immigrant story much more public," said Maria Hinojosa, author of a new memoir, Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America.

Books

Journalist Maria Hinojosa Tells Latinos, Silenced Voices: 'We Need You'

7:53am September 13, 2020

by Lulu Garcia-Navarro

The Latino USA host, who's spent a career covering those silenced in the media, now tells her own story in a new memoir. "We all have to work at making the immigrant story much more public," she said.

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Books
Arts

'The Contradictions' Chronicles A Classic College Experience

7:00am September 13, 2020

by Etelka Lehoczky

Sophie Yanow's new graphic novel chronicles her time studying abroad in Paris; it's not suspenseful or eventful, but Yanow's combination of perception and humility makes for an engaging read.