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Richard Breitman (left) and Allan Lichtman are distinguished professors of history at American University in Washington, D.C.

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'FDR And The Jews' Puts A President's Compromises In Context

9:17am March 24, 2013

by NPR Staff

President Franklin D. Roosevelt said little and did less on behalf of Jews trying to get out of Nazi Germany; but he also won Jewish votes by landslide margins and led the Allies to victory in World War II. A new history by Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman revises FDR's performance upward.

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Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Ann Fowler.

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'Z' Tells The Fitzgeralds' Story From Zelda's Point Of View

8:13am March 23, 2013

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald wed in 1920, and the two went on to have a famously turbulent literary marriage. Would Zelda have been better off without her husband? Novelist Therese Anne Fowler says, "They were two sides of one coin."

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From One Author To Another, Letters Of Praise

8:13am March 23, 2013

Host Scott Simon reads some of the best fan mail to authors, written by authors.

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Nathan Englander grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. He now splits his time between New York and Madison, Wis.

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Nathan Englander: Stories Of Faith, Family And The Holocaust

1:59pm March 22, 2013

In What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander writes about his own faith — and what it means to be Jewish — in stories that explore religious tension, Israeli-American relations and the Holocaust.

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Nigeria's Outspoken Writer Chinua Achebe Dies At 82

10:55am March 22, 2013

Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, who played a critical role in establishing post-colonial African literature, has died. The author of Things Fall Apart was 82.

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Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi-American poet who teaches in Michigan. She has published five books in Arabic and two in English.

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Revisiting Iraq Through The Eyes Of An Exiled Poet

9:45am March 22, 2013

by NPR Staff

Dunya Mikhail fled her homeland in the wake of the first Gulf War, after her writing was labeled subversive by Saddam Hussein's government. She has never physically returned to Iraq, but she remembers it in her poetry.

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In her new book, Sex and the Citadel, Shereen El Feki looks at the sex lives of people in the Middle East.

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'Sex And The Citadel' Peeks Inside Private Lives In The Arab World

2:49pm March 20, 2013

Shereen El Feki spent five years traveling across the Arab region asking people about sex: what they do, what they don't, what they think and why. Her ambition was to learn about the intimate lives of people in the Middle East, and how the sexual aspects of their lives reflect larger shifts.

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Book Review: 'Where Tigers Are At Home'

1:05pm March 20, 2013

by Alan Cheuse

Alan Cheuse reviews Where Tigers Are At Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles.

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Veterans Face Red Tape Accessing Disability, Other Benefits

5:05pm March 19, 2013

On the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, journalist Aaron Glantz talks about the challenges American service members face in accessing disability and other benefits. Glantz says there is a backlog of 900,000 claims and that the average waiting period is 273 days.

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A new documentary about Philip Roth premieres on PBS next week as part of a slew of celebrations in honor of the novelist's 80th birthday.

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A Measured Look At Roth As The Writer Turns 80

2:11pm March 19, 2013

by John Powers

The celebration of Philip Roth's career reaches its peak in a new documentary — Philip Roth Unmasked — that will screen on PBS next week as part of the American Masters series. There's no doubt that Roth is a master, and not just an American one, but the film tiptoes around the novelist's dark ferocity.

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