Arts & Life

A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt — And Why They Shouldn't by William B. Irvine

Books
Arts

You're So Dumb, You Probably Think This Book Is About Getting Slapped

5:58pm March 27, 2013

by NPR Staff

"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!" Philosophy professor William Irvine's new book, A Slap in the Face, is a compendium of insults — and a scholarly look at why we're constantly compelled to one-up each other.

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The only known photograph of the 1935 Bismarck town team.

Integrated Baseball, A Decade Before Jackie Robinson

5:05pm March 27, 2013

by NPR Staff

Over ten years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the major leagues, a little-known baseball team went to bat with players both black and white. Journalist Tom Dunkel writes about the team from Bismarck, N.D., in his new book Color Blind.

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In Jonathan Dee's new novel a woman finds her knack for getting powerful men to apologize.

Books
Arts

The Apathy In 'A Thousand Pardons' Is Hard To Forgive

4:32pm March 27, 2013

by Maureen Corrigan

The rich and good-looking get a taste of life among the 99 percent in Jonathan Dee's novels. In A Thousand Pardons, his protagonist, Helen Armstead, finds a secret talent for getting powerful men to apologize after her marriage falls apart and she is forced to enter the working world.

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Anchor Chris Hayes will host a new MSNBC weeknight show beginning April 1.

Arts

Chris Hayes: From 'Up' In The Morning To 'All In' At Night

2:09pm March 27, 2013

After hosting his Sunday morning show on MSNBC for the past year and a half, Hayes is making the move to a weeknight news show that premieres April 1. At 34, Hayes will be the youngest prime-time anchor on any of the major cable news channels.

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Cookbook author Marilynn Brass says eating Virginia Lima's traditional Portuguese Sweet Bread is like biting into a cloud.

Arts

A Sweet Bread, A Wash Basin And A Shot Of Whiskey

6:45pm March 26, 2013

by NPR Staff

As part of All Things Considered's Found Recipes series, cookbook duo the Brass Sisters share a friend's memories of his mother's Portuguese Sweet Bread. Her tradition involved a big enamel basin, a nip of whiskey and a little prayer that the bread would turn out right.

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Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris plays Elizabeth Keckly and Naomi Jacobson plays Mary Todd Lincoln in Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater's production of Mary T. & Lizzy K.

Arts

'Mary T. and Lizzy K.': History's Unlikely Friendship

5:03pm March 26, 2013

First lady Mary Todd Lincoln's closest friend was her dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley. Keckley was a talented seamstress who bought her own freedom. This unlikely friendship between the two women is the subject of playwright Tazewell Thompson's Mary T. and Lizzy K.

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Lynne Olson, a former journalist for The Baltimore Sun, is also the author of Citizens of London.

Books
Arts

'Angry Days' Shows An America Torn Over Entering World War II

3:30pm March 26, 2013

World War II is often thought of as a good and just war — a war the U.S. had to fight. But it wasn't that simple. Public debate was heated between interventionism, which President Roosevelt supported, and isolationism, which aviator Charles Lindbergh became an unofficial spokesman for.

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Pam Thatcher and her family ultimately moved into her mother's two-bedroom apartment because they couldn't make rent.

'American Winter' Families Struggle To Survive Fall From Middle Class

9:57am March 26, 2013

by Karen Grigsby Bates

Diedre Melson, John Cox and Pam Thatcher are college-educated parents who once considered themselves part of the middle class. Then the Great Recession hit. A new HBO documentary shows their families desperately trying to make ends meet.

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Books
Arts

How And Why The Hollywood Star Machine Made 'Gods Like Us'

2:25pm March 25, 2013

In a new book about movie stardom and fame, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr looks at the evolving history of the relationship between movie stars and the people who love them, and at how changing technology influences the kinds of stars the public wants.

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Dan Fagin is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the science, health, and environmental reporting program at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Books
Arts

For Toms River, An Imperfect Salvation

2:03pm March 25, 2013

by NPR Staff

Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation traces the story of a New Jersey town plagued by two generations of toxic waste dumping. Its author, Dan Fagin, talks about the origins of dumping in Toms River and its legacy today.

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