NPR Bestsellers: Paperback Nonfiction, Week Of March 12, 2015
Michio Kaku explores the inner workings of the brain in The Future of the Mind. It appears at No. 11.
Books
Author Terry Pratchett Was No Stranger To Death
The prolific author, who died Thursday at 66, was known for his novels about the fantasy planet Discworld, populated by humans, witches, trolls and dwarves — and a very human, sympathetic Death.
In Vargas Llosa's Latest, Dickens Meets Soap Opera
The Peruvian Nobel Prize-winning writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, has a new novel out, and he's not resting on his laurels. It's an ambitious and weighty novel that's worth the effort.
'Test Kitchen': How To Make Vegetarian Dishes Pop With A Little Umami
Cooking with plant foods naturally high in compounds called glutamates can stimulate the same taste receptors that meat does. America's Test Kitchen explains in The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook.
Terry Pratchett, Prolific Fantasy Author, Dies At 66
The Discworld series author had for years struggled with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Pratchett amassed a devoted following over four decades of writing — and dozens of novels.
How We Deal With Loss In Different Ways In Two Beautifully Written Memoirs
In Abigail Thomas' What Comes Next and How to Like It, the aging process robs the 70-something of beauty and energy. In H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald trains a goshawk after her father dies.
The Ecstatic, Erotic Joy Of Reading 'Girl In The Dark'
Anna Lyndsey's pseudonymous memoir of her severe light sensitivity is full of rich, sensuous language, all grounded in the ever-present limits of a body that keeps her to the margins of normal life.
'Dirty Old London': A History Of The Victorians' Infamous Filth
In the 1800s, the Thames River was thick with human sewage and the streets were covered with horse dung, the removal of which, according to Lee Jackson, presented an "impossible challenge."
Bio Credits Manson's Terrible Rise To Right Place And Time
California parolee Charles Manson arrived in San Francisco in 1967, when the city was full of young seeking a guru. In Manson, Jeff Guinn says it was the perfect spot for him to enact his cult vision.
'B & Me' Is Intelligent, Immoderate, And A Bit Belabored
J.C. Hallman's audacious account of his engagement with the erotic writing of Nicholson Baker makes a splash, but critic Heller McAlpin says the book sometimes runs aground in self-indulgence.