Books

Books
Arts

'The Shadow King' Is A Gorgeous Meditation On Memory, War And Violence

7:00am September 25, 2019

by Michael Schaub

Maaza Mengiste's new novel is set just before the second Italo-Ethiopian War, and follows a woman who becomes a guard to a "shadow king," a man impersonating exiled Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie.

Audrey Hepburn appears as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. In a letter to director George Cukor, she raved about the script.

Books
Arts

In Golden Age Hollywood, Film Stars Slid Into Each Others' Telegrams

5:03am September 25, 2019

by Susan Stamberg

The new book Letters from Hollywood offers a peek inside the inner workings of the film industry through 137 communiques from luminaries like Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis and a very young Jane Fonda.

Patti Smith Weaves Between Worlds Real And Imagined In 'Year Of The Monkey'

3:24pm September 24, 2019

by Gabino Iglesias

Smith's musical career sometimes threatens to overshadow her accomplishments in other creative fields, but every page in this book reminds us that she is an accomplished novelist, essayist and poet.

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The Joys of Mothering While Black

2:39pm September 24, 2019

Black motherhood is joyful. That’s one message three black women writers are sharing with the world in their latest works. Nefertiti Austin is a single, adoptive mother who quickly learned

Ta-Nehisi Coates' 2014 Atlantic Magazine cover story, "The Case for Reparations," led to a national conversation about how to reckon with injustices resulting from years of slavery. He won a National Book Award in 2015 for Between the World and Me.

Books
Arts

Ta-Nehisi Coates On Magic, Memory And The Underground Railroad

12:17pm September 24, 2019

by Terry Gross

"Magic is often very much a part" of the story of enslavement and escape, Coates says. His new novel, The Water Dancer, imagines a world in which teleportation helps power the Underground Railroad.

Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays, by Leslie Jamison

Books
Arts

In 'Make It Scream, Make It Burn,' Leslie Jamison Turns The Pen On Herself

11:58am September 24, 2019

by Heller McAlpin

With her new essay collection, Jamison reverses the arc of The Empathy Exams by moving from the external to the internal, from others' longings and hauntings to her own.

Books

Author of 'The Recovering,' And 'The Empathy Exams' Releases Essays

5:07am September 24, 2019

NPR's Noel King talks to Leslie Jamison about her latest collection of essays: Make It Scream, Make It Burn.

Books

Ta-Nehisi Coates Explores The Tension Between Escape, Family In 'The Water Dancer'

12:09am September 24, 2019

NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates about his new novel, The Water Dancer.

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An engraving dating from the 19th century depicts passenger pigeons, once one of the most common birds in North America but now extinct because of overhunting and deforestation.

Books
Arts

When We Love Our Food So Much That It Goes Extinct

7:38pm September 23, 2019

by Luisa Torres

A new book explores how overhunting and habitat destruction have left us with only a fraction of the foods that existed a century ago, and the changes that are needed to preserve our culinary variety.

Chanel Miller poses for a portrait before her interview on Sept. 23 at NPR's bureau in New York City. Miller was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner in 2015. The lenient sentence Turner received elicited widespread controversy and helped inspire new legisl

Chanel Miller, Sexual Assault Survivor, On The 'Immense Relief' Of Going Public

4:03pm September 23, 2019

She was long known only as the victim of Brock Turner, who got a lenient sentence for assaulting her. Now, Miller tells NPR she can "finally exist in the world without having to hide anything."