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Books
Arts

'It's Not Religion': In 'The Runaways,' Bhutto Examines The Lure Of Extremism

5:05am August 17, 2020

"I was really trying to look at why a 19-year-old boy would give up everything ... in order, quite literally, to take up arms against the world," says novelist Fatima Bhutto.

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Author Nina Jankowicz On Disinformation And Her New Book

5:55pm August 16, 2020

NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of the new book How to Lose the Information War.

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Stephen Miller, White House senior adviser for policy, listens during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 15.

'Hatemonger' Tracks How Right-Wing Media Shaped Trump Policy Architect Stephen Miller

7:59am August 16, 2020

by Lulu Garcia-Navarro

Jean Guerrero tells NPR she became fascinated, when reporting from the border, with how a descendant of Jewish refugees ended up as the person crafting Donald Trump's "harshest rhetoric and policies."

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The Daughters of Ys, by M.T. Anderson and Jo Rioux

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Feeling Deluged By News? Let 'The Daughters Of Ys' Wash Over You

7:00am August 16, 2020

by Etelka Lehoczky

M.T. Anderson's new graphic novel — with gorgeous art by Jo Rioux — adapts the old legend of the drowned city of Ys, giving it better, fuller female characters and a timely environmental message.

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Arts

Giving Autism Some Love In 'A Room Called Earth'

7:57am August 15, 2020

by Scott Simon

Author Madeleine Ryan was diagnosed with autism while she was writing her new novel — she says creating her main character helped her embrace the way she process her own thoughts and feelings.

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Sister Helen Prejean On Witnessing Executions: 'I Couldn't Let Them Die Alone'

1:38pm August 14, 2020

by Terry Gross

The Catholic nun became an opponent of the death penalty following the events in her book Dead Man Walking. She details her spiritual journey in River of Fire. Originally broadcast Aug. 12, 2019.

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Bukowski At 100: Remembering A Literary Icon

6:57am August 14, 2020

by Tom Vitale

Poet and novelist Charles Bukowski was notorious for his drinking and womanizing. Some called him a misogynist. But his work could also be tender and reveal truths about the human condition.

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A man walks past a mural of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr. in London.

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Black Power Scholar Illustrates How MLK And Malcolm X Influenced Each Other

4:05pm August 12, 2020

by Terry Gross

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are frequently seen as opposing forces in the struggle for civil rights but Peniel Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield, says the truth is more nuanced.

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Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast, by Marjoleine Kars

In 'Blood On The River,' The Berbice Rebellion Foreshadows Later Insurgencies

7:59am August 12, 2020

by Martha Anne Toll

Marjoleine Kars recounts a tale of oppression, bloodshed, and some triumph in her previously untold account of the 1763-64 slave rebellion in Dutch Berbice, modern day Guyana.

Unemployed people gather outside City Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, on Oct. 9, 1930 during the Great Depression.

Books
Arts

Fifty Years After Studs Terkel Published 'Hard Times' ... Here We Are Again

5:35pm August 11, 2020

by Neda Ulaby

Studs Terkel's bestselling oral history of the Great Depression came out in 1970. Who could've guessed it would feel so relevant half a century later?

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