A central misunderstanding, Greg Toppo writes, is that video game-based learning is somehow "easier." Often, he says, it's hard work, but students love the challenge.
"He had an underground kind of appeal that built on itself," says author Mark Ribowsky, whose book Dreams to Remember traces Redding's unlikely pivot into national stardom.
When Will Hodgkinson was a kid, his father, a journalist, was hit with a bad case of food poisoning. Over the long recovery period, he rethought his life — and decided to join the Brahma Kumaris.
Bill Shirer brought stories of war in Europe into American homes. NPR's Scott Simon talks with Ken Cuthbertson about his new book, A Complex Fate: William L. Shirer and the American Century.
Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, who selected the book, tells NPR's David Greene that Kate Atkinson is "one of those writers that really can make you weep on one page and laugh on the next."
In her memoir Whatever ... Love is Love, Bello describes the evolution of her "modern family," which includes her romantic partner (a woman), her adolescent son and her son's father.
In his memoir Do No Harm, Henry Marsh confesses to the uncertainties he's dealt with as a surgeon, revisits his triumphs and failures and reflects on the enigmas of the brain and consciousness.
"I've never accused myself of being manly," Offerman says, noting his real-life persona is different from his Parks and Recreation character. His book is a set of essays about people who inspire him.
Johnson, the son of an African-American mother and an Irish-American father, has just written Loving Day, a funny, sometimes absurd look at what it means to grow up mixed heritage in the U.S.