Author Interviews

Detail from Plate 11 of Joe Sacco's The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme. On July 1st, at precisely 7:30 a.m., the attack commences.

Books
Arts

A Panorama Of Devastation: Drawing Of WWI Battle Spans 24 Feet

6:58pm November 10, 2013

by Lynn Neary

Joe Sacco has made a career of tackling difficult subjects through imagery. He's a journalist and cartoonist who has reported on the Middle East and Bosnia — in both written and comic form. In his latest book, The Great War, Sacco turns to history, producing a 24-foot-long depiction of the horrifying first day of the Battle of the Somme.

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How Cynthia Rylant Discovered The Poetry Of Storytelling

6:58pm November 10, 2013

by NPR Staff

Award-winning author Cynthia Rylant's pictures books revolve around children relying on their families for love and support. To write a good children's book, she says, "you have to be a good poet." Her latest book, God Got A Dog, is a collection of poems that only took her a day to write.

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Peter Baker's other books include The Breach and Kremlin Rising.

'Days Of Fire': The Evolution Of The Bush-Cheney White House

5:00pm November 09, 2013

by NPR Staff

Peter Baker covered the George W. Bush administration for The New York Times. In his new book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, Baker takes a second look at those controversial years.

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Steve Young learned about industrial musicals when he started coming across compilations, like this one, in used record stores. (You definitely want to click to enlarge this.)

Sales Take Center Stage: To Boost Morale, Companies Burst Into Song

9:47am November 08, 2013

Industrial musicals were like Broadway shows, only written and performed for corporate sales meetings or conventions. And as ridiculous as the songs were — "My bathroom, my bathroom is a private kind of place" — they were often delivered by very talented people.

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Chef Roy Choi was named Food and Wine Magazine's Best New Chef in 2010.

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Arts

Roy Choi's Tacos Channel LA And The Immigrant Experience

5:24pm November 07, 2013

The Los Angeles chef says the Korean taco was "like a lint roller," pulling its chefs' backgrounds into one food truck offering. Choi's new book, L.A. Son, tells his story of addiction, culinary success and growing up Korean in Orange Country, Calif.

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Omar Khadr apologizes to Tabitha Speer, who shakes her head "no" and weeps.

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Arts

At Guantanamo, 'Sketching' Defendants, Witnesses And KSM's Nose

3:45pm November 05, 2013

by NPR Staff

Janet Hamlin was the only courtroom sketch artist allowed at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals in 2006. Her work has been collected in a new book, Sketching Guantanamo — and she tells NPR's Renee Montagne that getting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nose right ended up being a challenge.

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Arts

Teddy Roosevelt's 'Bully Pulpit' Isn't The Platform It Once Was

5:28pm November 04, 2013

by NPR Staff

Roosevelt described the power of the presidency to shape public opinion as "the bully pulpit." That's also the title of a new book from presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, in which she explains the unique relationships Roosevelt forged with reporters.

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Amy Tan's latest novel, The Valley of Amazement, will be published on Tuesday.

Books

Amy Tan Weaves Family Mystery Into 'Valley Of Amazement'

5:28pm November 04, 2013

by Karen Grigsby Bates

Speculation about her grandmother's life in China in the early 1900s provided Tan inspiration for her latest novel, out Tuesday. Valley is an opus that covers half of a tumultuous century, ranges across two continents and involves love, deceit, forgiveness and, ultimately, redemption.

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Iranian demonstrators march in Tehran in 2011, during a protest asking the government to intensify its enforcement of the Islamic dress code.

From Sulking To Sanctions, A Street-Level View Of Life In Iran

3:15pm November 04, 2013

Journalist Hooman Majd's new book, The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay, was inspired by the year he and his young American family spent in Tehran, where Majd was born. He tells Fresh Air about the country's long-standing tradition of sulking, and what sets Tehran apart from most other Islamic metropolises.

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Best known for the Discworld fantasy series, Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease in 2007. But that hasn't kept him from continuing to write.

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With Fading Memory, Terry Pratchett Revisits 'Carpet People'

5:34pm November 03, 2013

by NPR Staff

At the age of 59, the British science-fiction writer was diagnosed with a form of Alzheimer's. Now he's publishing an edited version of a book he first wrote when he was 17. He can't read because of his disease, but Pratchett continues writing — with the help of dictation software.

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