Author Interviews

Jake Tapper is CNN's chief Washington correspondent and the host of The Lead and State of the Union. His novel, The Hellfire Club, is set in 1954 Washington, D.C.

CNN's Jake Tapper On McCarthyism, Trump And The 'Jar Jar Binks Principle'

2:04pm April 26, 2018

by Terry Gross

Tapper's new novel, The Hellfire Club, takes place in 1954 during Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Communist "witch hunt" — a time he describes as "very resonant" with the current political climate.

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Kevin Young's 2012 essay collection The Grey Album: On The Blackness Of Blackness was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Books
Arts

Filtering American History Through A 'Brown' Lens

11:00am April 26, 2018

by Karen Grigsby Bates

Kevin Young's new book of poetry, Brown, is colored by memories from his family and childhood, U.S. history and black culture.

By some estimates, nearly half of the people confined in U.S. jails and prisons have a mental illness, notes Alisa Roth, author of Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness.

'Insane': America's 3 Largest Psychiatric Facilities Are Jails

10:21pm April 25, 2018

by Ailsa Chang

Alisa Roth's new book suggests U.S. jails and prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill. They often get sicker in these facilities, Roth says, because they don't get appropriate treatment.

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How America's White Power Movement Coalesced After The Vietnam War

1:42pm April 25, 2018

by Terry Gross

Author Kathleen Belew says that as America's disparate racist groups came together in the 1970s and '80s, the movement's goal shifted from one of "vigilante activism" to something more wide-reaching.

Books

Kevin Young Examines All Things 'Brown'

7:45am April 25, 2018

by Karen Grigsby Bates

Poet Kevin Young's new book is titled Brown. Using everything from elementary school to baseball to R&B music, Young examines race and culture through poems.

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Alex Wagner is a co-host of The Circus on Showtime and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Above, she speaks at the 69th Writers Guild Awards on Feb. 19, 2017, in New York City.

Books
Arts

In 'The New Face Of America,' Journalist Alex Wagner Saw Herself

8:56pm April 24, 2018

by Ailsa Chang

In 1993, Wagner saw a computer-generated face on Time magazine that reminded her a lot of her own. The journalist searches for answers about her own ancestry in her new book, Futureface.

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Books

Pulitzer Prize Winner Gilbert King's Latest Book: 'Beneath A Ruthless Sun'

6:24am April 24, 2018

In the book, a white, mentally impaired man is falsely accused of rape in Jim Crow-era Florida and a journalist pushes to uncover the story. Noel King talks to King about Beneath a Ruthless Sun.

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The U.S. Army's Autonomous Remote Engagement System is mounted on the Picatinny Lightweight Remote Weapon System and coupled with an M240B machine gun. It's part of a program that reduces the time to identify targets using automatic target detection and u

Autonomous Weapons Would Take Warfare To A New Domain, Without Humans

8:17pm April 23, 2018

by Ari Shapiro

Former special operations agent Paul Scharre helped create U.S. military guidelines on autonomous weapons. His new book Army of None, looks at the advances in technology, and the questions they raise.

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Books
Arts

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Reflects On 'Ambition And Manhood In America'

2:26pm April 23, 2018

by Terry Gross

Gregory Pardlo's new memoir, Air Traffic, chronicles his complicated relationship with his father, a labor organizer who lost his job following the air traffic controllers' 1981 strike.

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Goldberg's 'Suicide Of The West' Tackles Ills Of Identity Politics

6:17am April 23, 2018

Steve Inskeep talks to National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg about his new book, Suicide of the West. Goldberg argues that the "miracle" of liberal democratic capitalism is at risk.

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