Books

We love our morning coffee, but what's really in that piping hot cup of java? It's a powerful drug called caffeine.

Wake Up And Smell The Caffeine. It's A Powerful Drug

8:31am March 14, 2014

by NPR Staff

Around the world, many of us start our day with a drug derived from a natural insecticide: caffeine. Murray Carpenter tells the tale in Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts and Hooks Us.

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Grid of sticky notes with To Do lists on them.

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For Working Moms, Key To Balance May Lie In Elusive Leisure Time

5:33pm March 12, 2014

If waiting for help when your car breaks down doesn't strike you as a leisurely activity, it may be time to reconsider. A new book looks at time management challenges of being a working parent.

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Walter Kirn's novels include Up in the Air, Mission to America and The Unbinding.

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'Blood Will Out' Reveals Secrets Of A Murderous Master Manipulator

3:02pm March 10, 2014

Author Walter Kirn thought he was befriending an eccentric Rockefeller, but his pal turned out to be an impostor wanted for murder. Kirn's new book explores the depths of that deception.

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Martin Luther King Jr., shown here with Stokely Carmichael during a voter registration march in Mississippi in 1966, regarded the younger Carmichael as one of the civil rights movement's most promising leaders.

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Stokely Carmichael, A Philosopher Behind The Black Power Movement

12:26pm March 10, 2014

by Karen Grigsby Bates

A new biography traces Carmichael's evolution from civil rights activist to an early proponent of the black power movement and international human rights advocate.

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Publisher Releases Lullabies From 'Goodnight Moon' Author

11:39am March 07, 2014

Goodnight Songs is a compilation of formerly unpublished lullabies and poems by the author of Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown. Linda Wertheimer talks to Amy Gary, who discovered the new material.

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Terry Golway is a journalist and historian. His other books include Washington's General and Together We Cannot Fail.

The Case For Tammany Hall Being On The Right Side Of History

9:18am March 06, 2014

In a new book, Terry Golway takes a sympathetic view of Manhattan's infamous political machine. He says, "Tammany Hall was there for the poor immigrant who was otherwise friendless in New York."

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Retro microphone with an 'On the Air' illuminated sign on a desk.

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'Schmuck' Revisits The Golden Age Of Radio, And A Bygone Manhattan

3:12pm March 05, 2014

by Maureen Corrigan

Ross Klavan's novel follows two radio sidekicks in midcentury New York: golden-voiced straight man Ted Fox, who has an eye for a good-looking dame, and funnyman Jerry Elkin, a veteran of World War II.

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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.

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Kevin Young On Blues, Poetry And 'Laughing To Keep From Crying'

2:46pm March 04, 2014

The poet describes his new book — about the death of his father and the birth of his son — as having a blues sensibility. "There are moments of humor even in the sorrow," he says.

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Fresh Air Remembers Literary Biographer Justin Kaplan

2:46pm March 04, 2014

Kaplan died Sunday at 88. His biography of Mark Twain won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. He also edited two editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Kaplan spoke to Fresh Air in 1992.

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Mark Harris' previous book is Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood. He is also a columnist for Entertainment Weekly and Grantland.

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During World War II, Even Filmmakers Reported For Duty

1:35pm March 03, 2014

A new book looks at how the military and Hollywood directors teamed up during the war. The films they made helped show Americans what was at stake, and served as evidence during the Nuremberg Trials.

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