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How Two Brothers Waged A 'Secret World War' In The 1950s

6:30pm September 29, 2013

by NPR Staff

Sharing power in the Eisenhower administration, John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles were the forefathers of using covert operations to upset foreign governments. Journalist Stephen Kinzer, who wrote a book on the siblings, says Americans are still paying the price for them.

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'Faithful Scribe': Tracing Ancestry Through Pakistan's History

7:10pm September 28, 2013

by NPR Staff

In The Faithful Scribe, Shahan Mufti examines the history of Pakistan and that nation's relationship to the U.S. He interweaves the story of his own family with the tumultuous story of the nation. Mufti talks with NPR's Arun Rath about the future of the world's first Islamic democracy.

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From Kolbasa To Borscht, 'Soviet Cooking' Tells A Personal History

6:52pm September 28, 2013

by Ellah Allfrey

Anya von Bremzen's new memoir is a delicious narrative of memory and cuisine in 20th century Soviet Union. She writes about her family's own history and contemplates the nation's "complicated, even tortured, relationship with food."

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Garrison Keillor has been the host of A Prairie Home Companion since it began nearly four decades ago. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1994.

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News From Lake Wobegon: Garrison Keillor Has A New Book Of Poetry

11:16am September 28, 2013

by NPR Staff

The host of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac has published his first poetry collection called O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic and Profound. "I love rhymes," Keillor says. "I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme 'oysters' with 'The Cloisters.' "

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Gabe Baltazar (fourth from left) at New York City's Birdland Club in 1962, with members of Stan Kenton's band and the Count Basie Orchestra. The photo, from Baltazar's collection, is signed by Kenton (fourth from from right) and trumpeter Harry "Sweets" E

'If It Swings': An Asian-American Jazzman's Pioneering Career

11:16am September 28, 2013

by Heidi Chang

Saxophonist Gabe Baltazar is one of the last living links to an era when Asian-Americans began to make a name for themselves in jazz. Now, at the age of 83, he's sharing his story in an autobiography.

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I, Spy: Valerie Plame Makes Her Fiction Debut In CIA Thriller

11:16am September 28, 2013

by NPR Staff

In Blowback, Plame channels her expertise in nuclear counterproliferation into a "realistic portrait" of a female covert agent. Plame confesses that there's a lot of downtime in the life of a spy, but still, the CIA is "the world's biggest dating agency."

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Diane Ravitch critiques attempts to replace teachers with technology.

Diane Ravitch Rebukes Education Activists' 'Reign Of Error'

8:11am September 27, 2013

by NPR Staff

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch spent years advocating for an overhaul of the American education system. Now she criticizes changes that she used to support, like charter schools and school choice. She explains her reasoning in Reign of Error, her new book on the pitfalls of privatizing education.

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NFL's A Nonprofit? Author Says It's Time For Football Reform

6:18pm September 24, 2013

by NPR Staff

Despite pro football's sky-high profits, taxpayers subsidize the industry with $1 billion each year. In The King of Sports, Gregg Easterbrook argues for some serious reforms, including incentives for college graduation rates and a new approach to youth football leagues.

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'Reaped' Is A Reminder That No One Is Promised Tomorrow

3:23pm September 24, 2013

In Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward recalls the deaths of five young men in her life, which she believes were all connected to being poor and black in the rural South. "It made me feel that I wasn't promised some long life. ... That's not a given for me."

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Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies.

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Political Violence, Uneasy Silence Echo In Lahiri's 'Lowland'

2:02pm September 23, 2013

by Lynn Neary

India's politics and history play a central role in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. In the Booker Prize-nominated novel, an Indian radical is killed, and his wife and brother start over in America. Lahiri tells NPR's Lynn Neary that the story was inspired by true events, but very unlike her own life.

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