Author Interviews

Books

Reporter's Role In Exposing Hiroshima Cover-Up Explored In 'Fallout'

5:36pm August 04, 2020

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Lesley Blume about her new book, Fallout, which explores how reporter John Hersey uncovered the effects of the atomic bomb after the U.S. dropped it on Hiroshima.

In her new book, Caste, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson examines the laws and practices that created what she describes as a bipolar, Black and white caste system in the United States. Above, a sign in Jackson, Miss., in May 1961.

Books
Arts

It's More Than Racism: Isabel Wilkerson Explains America's 'Caste' System

4:14pm August 04, 2020

by Terry Gross

In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines the laws and practices that created a bipolar caste system in the U.S. — and how the Nazis borrowed from it.

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Books
Arts

'Vivek Oji' Is Very Much Alive In This Boundary-Breaking New Novel

6:07pm August 03, 2020

by Ari Shapiro

You know what's going to happen in Akwaeke Emezi's new book — it's right there in the title: The Death of Vivek Oji. But this novel about a death is full of gender-bending, boundary crossing life.

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Books
Arts

'Ghosting The News' Author Says Local Journalism 'Freefall' Is Accelerating

2:04pm August 03, 2020

by Dave Davies

More than 2,000 newspapers have shut down in recent years, and some regions have become news deserts. Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan says the collapse of local news undermines democracy.

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Books

In 'Life Of A Klansman,' Edward Ball Traces A Difficult Family History

8:03am August 02, 2020

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with author Edward Ball about his new book, Life of a Klansman, revolving around a man his family called "our Klansman."

Books

Author Morgan Jerkins Reconnects With Her Southern African-American Roots In New Book

8:00am August 01, 2020

NPR's Leila Fadel speaks to Morgan Jerkins about her new book. Wandering In Strange Lands, where she travels to the South to understand the roots of her African-American culture.

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Books

Kim Johnson Talks Racism, Mass Incarceration In Debut Novel

8:00am August 01, 2020

NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Kim Johnson about her debut novel This Is My America. In it, a teenage girl works to get her father off of death row.

American Christianity Must Reckon With Legacy Of White Supremacy, Author Says

1:12pm July 30, 2020

by Terry Gross

White Too Long author Robert P. Jones says churches should be more in vocal on issues of social justice: "White Christians have been largely silent ... and have hardly begun these conversations."

Books

In His New Book, Stephen Graham Jones Explores The Idea Of 'Good Indians'

4:05pm July 29, 2020

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Stephen Graham Jones, an American author and a member of the Blackfeet tribe, about his new book, The Only Good Indians.

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Maria Sherman's new book gives critical consideration to a too-often maligned phenomenon within pop music: the boy band.

A New Book Traces The History Of Boy Bands, The Pop Phenomenon 'Larger Than Life'

7:59pm July 28, 2020

Author and music critic Maria Sherman talks about her new book, Larger Than Life: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS and forgoing rock elitism to give into the joy of boy band pop songs.

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