Arts & Life

Arts

How Dictionary Searches Define Readers

2:44pm March 14, 2013

After Vice President Joe Biden used the term "malarkey" in a 2012 debate, searches for the word in online dictionaries surged. Now that dictionaries are readily available with a mouse click or finger tap, dictionary publishers can track the correlation between word searches and current events.

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Water pouring from a bottle into a glass.

Books
Arts

A Young Man Gets 'Filthy Rich' Boiling, Bottling Tap Water

1:16pm March 13, 2013

Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia explores life in the modern megalopolis and the growing scarcity of clean water. In search of his fortune, Hamid's protagonist lands on a scam to boil and sell tap water as bottled mineral water in a novel that takes inspiration from self-help books.

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Arts

Backstage At The Bolshoi Ballet

4:29pm March 12, 2013

The Bolshoi Ballet dancer suspected in the acid attack on the theater's artistic director could keep his job if a court acquits him, according to the Bolshoi's director. New Yorker editor David Remnick provides a glimpse into the hypercompetitive world of the famed Russian ballet.

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Books
Arts

'Lean In': Not Much Of A Manifesto, But Still A Win For Women

2:19pm March 12, 2013

by Maureen Corrigan

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has drawn a lot of attention with her "sort of a feminist manifesto" Lean In. Critic Maureen Corrigan finds that much of the book is bland, but toward the end, Sandberg's intellectual charisma breaks through.

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"Cutting Ribbon, Man In Wheelchair, Paintings (Version #2), 1988" by John Baldessari.

Arts

For John Baldessari, Conceptual Art Means Serious Mischief

2:14pm March 12, 2013

by Susan Stamberg

Artist John Baldessari is an iconic figure in some modern art circles. His conceptual pieces — black-and-white photographs covered with colorful dots, a blue sky painted on a museum floor — can provoke smiles. But serious ideas lie beneath the surface.

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Arts

Remembering Lillian Cahn, Creator Of The Coach Handbag

5:36pm March 11, 2013

by Audie Cornish

Cahn's inspiration for the high-end leather totes came from her experience delivering noodles during the Depression. "One of her suggestions early on was: Why can't we make a shopping bag, but out of leather?" recalls her husband, Miles Cahn. Lillian Cahn died March 4 at age 89.

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'Frankenstein's Cat': Bioengineering The Animals Of The Future

1:52pm March 11, 2013

Science journalist Emily Anthes talks about how scientists are engineering mice with tumors and working to create pigs that can grow organs for human transplant and insects that could serve as drones for the military.

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Books
Arts

A Twin Carries On Alone In 'Her: A Memoir'

5:01pm March 10, 2013

by NPR Staff

Christa Parravani tells the story of her identical twin, Cara, whose brutal rape led to a heroin addiction and eventually her death at the age of 28.

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Adam Kantor and Betsy Woolfe star in the current off-Broadway revival of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years.

'The Last Five Years' Returns To New York

5:01pm March 10, 2013

by NPR Staff

A cult-favorite musical, The Last Five Years is a semi-autobiographical look at one couple's failed marriage. A revival hits off-Broadway this week, and the show's creator Jason Robert Brown joins host Jacki Lyden to talk about the last 11 years of the little show that could.

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Tadd Dameron (smiling at center) was an important figure in American jazz and bebop. He is shown here with Fats Navarro on trumpet, and Charlie Rouse and Ernie Henry on saxophone.

Tadd Dameron, A Jazz Master With A 'Lyrical Grace'

6:30am March 10, 2013

by Tom Vitale

Dameron was a composer and pianist who fused the sophisticated arrangements of the Big Band era with bebop's complex harmonies. A new biography shines a light on the too-brief life of the man known as "The Architect of Bop."

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