Author Interviews

A collection of current and past presidential advertising materials hangs on a wall in the visitor center of the New Hampshire State House in Concord, N.H.

Collect Data, Influence Votes: 'If Then' Traces The Genesis Of Data-Driven Politics

2:36pm September 15, 2020

by Dave Davies

In If Then, historian Jill Lepore tells the story of Simulmatics. Founded in 1959, the company's "people machine" used a computer program to predict the impact of various political messages.

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Books

'If Then' Examines Early Fears That Computers Would Manipulate Voters

12:02pm September 15, 2020

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Jill Lepore about her latest book If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. Her acclaimed books include These Truths, a history of the U.S.

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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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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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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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"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

In 'Monogamy,' Sue Miller Explores Widowhood

3:58pm September 12, 2020

NPR's Scott Simon talks with novelist Sue Miller about her latest work, Monogamy, which follows the story of a new widow.

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Books

In His New Book, Trevor Barnes Tells Story Of Portland Spy Ring

7:52am September 12, 2020

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Trevor Barnes, author of the new book, Dead Doubles: The Extraordinary Worldwide Hunt for One of the Cold War's Most Notorious Spy Rings.

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Collateral Damage: Britain, America, and Europe in the Age of Trump, by Kim Darroch

Former British Ambassador To U.S. Reflects On Becoming Trump Persona Non Grata

4:47pm September 11, 2020

by Mary Louise Kelly

When Kim Darroch described Donald Trump's White House as "inept" and "deeply dysfunctional," an international scandal ensued. He writes about the experience and his time in D.C. in Collateral Damage.

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