Arts & Life

Killing Is My Business: A Novel, by Adam Christopher

Books
Arts

3 Supernatural Noir Tales That Reflect The Inhuman Condition

7:00am July 27, 2017

by Jason Heller

Some great noir fiction has been written about Los Angeles, but what happens when a different genre bleeds through? We've got three tales of murder, magic and robot detectives to cool your summer.

Cover detail from Chester B. Himes, by Lawrence P. Jackson.

Books
Arts

New Chester Himes Biography Reveals A Life As Wild As Any Detective Story

1:45pm July 26, 2017

by Maureen Corrigan

Lawrence P. Jackson's biography tracks the writer's course from prison to published novelist. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Himes' life story is well worth reading.

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Looking Back At The Most Powerful Earthquake Ever To Strike North America

1:45pm July 26, 2017

Science writer Henry Fountain says the deadly quake that shook Alaska in 1964 was so loud some thought it was the beginning of World War III. His new book is The Great Quake.

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(L to R) Dina (Tiffany Haddish), Ryan (Regina Hall), Sasha (Queen Latifah) and Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) paint the town red (and Bourbon Street yellow) in Girls Trip.

Arts

Pop Culture Happy Hour: 'Girls Trip'

11:24am July 26, 2017

by Glen Weldon

The "surprising" success of the raunch-com Girls Trip didn't particularly surprise us; we talk about precisely where this "out-of-nowhere" hit came from.

Hip Hop deejays Stretch Armstrong (right) aka Adrian Bartos and Bobbito (left) aka Robert Garcia became legends on The Stretch Armstrong Show during the 1990s. Back then, they were hip hop tastemakers on college station WKCR in New York City. Now they're

Stretch & Bobbito On Race, Hip-Hop, And Belonging

11:18am July 26, 2017

by Aleli May Vuelta

The pioneering hip-hop radio duo drop by the Code Switch podcast to talk about making their way in a traditionally black genre and their new NPR interview show, What's Good? with Stretch & Bobbito.

Books
Arts

'Strange Practice:' The Doctor Is In

11:08am July 26, 2017

by Jason Sheehan

In Strange Practice, Vivian Shaw kicks off a new series about Dr. Greta Helsing, descendant of the famous Professor Abraham Van Helsing and general practitioner to the ghouls and ghasts of London.

In Germany, A Comedy Renaissance

6:10pm July 25, 2017

by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson

Germany and comedy have not been synonymous, to say the least, since World War II. But, now, German comedy is making a comeback.

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An 1894 engraving depicts chapter 18 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Books
Arts

The Enduring Legacy Of Jane Austen's 'Truth Universally Acknowledged'

4:52pm July 25, 2017

by Geoff Nunberg

Linguist Geoff Nunberg describes the opening sentence to Pride and Prejudice as a "masterpiece of indirection" that is frequently repurposed, but whose irony is never matched.

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Jessica Williams plays a struggling playwright who is trying to get over an ex-boyfriend in The Incredible Jessica James.

Arts

Comic Jessica Williams On 'The Daily Show' And Learning To 'Never Be Average'

3:15pm July 25, 2017

by Terry Gross

Williams joined The Daily Show when she was 22. She says, "I was younger and I was black and I was a woman, so ... I'm like, I have something to prove." She now stars in The Incredible Jessica James.

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Books
Arts

'The World Broke In Two': Four Writers, One Transformational Year

2:00pm July 25, 2017

by Glen Weldon

Using excerpts from letters and diaries, historian and critic Bill Goldstein follows writers Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot through the tumultuous literary year of 1922.