Books

Books
Arts

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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Arts

In Art Lost And Found, The Echoes Of A Century's Upheaval

8:08pm November 08, 2013

by Susan Choi

Earlier this week, German authorities announced that a trove of Nazi-looted art, once thought lost, had been discovered in a Munich apartment. That news has sparked the imagination of author Susan Choi, who recalls reading a novel with a similar theme: Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation.

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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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Arts

Female Friendship Puts 'New' Angle On Italian Classism And Machismo

9:46am November 08, 2013

by John Powers

Bound by the confines of gender and finances, two young women take divergent paths in Elena Ferrante's The Story of a New Name, the second book in her "Neapolitan Novels" trilogy. Critic John Powers believes the bold, expansive series to be semi-autobiographical, a revelation from a secretive author who won't reveal her true name.

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

Books
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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'Self-Help Messiah' Dale Carnegie Gets A Second Life In Print

3:50pm November 07, 2013

by Maureen Corrigan

In the many decades since the publication of How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie's self-help classic has been both celebrated and mocked, but it's still selling plenty of copies. Steven Watts' new biography of the man may feel overstuffed, but, as Maureen Corrigan notes, Carnegie's relentless positivity always shines through.

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Algeria-born Albert Camus poses for a portrait in Paris following the announcement that he is being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. Camus' views on his birthplace still stoke controversy.

Camus' Stance On Algeria Still Stokes Debate In France

2:56pm November 07, 2013

by Eleanor Beardsley

A hundred years after his birth, French writer Albert Camus is perhaps best known for novels like The Stranger and his philosophy of absurdism. But it's his views on Algeria's fight for independence that continues\ to get scrutiny.

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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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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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