Why Does Cynthia Ozick Write? ‘I Simply Must,’ She Says

‘Underground Airlines’ Is An Extraordinary Work Of Alternate History
In his new novel, Ben H. Winters imagines that the Civil War never happened and that slavery is still legal in some states. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Underground Airlines is “onesuspenseful tale.”

Dispelling The Myth Of A Classless Society In ‘White Trash’
Is America really a classless society? As part of the All Things Considered series, “The New Middle,” NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks to author Nancy Isenberg about her new book, White Trash which argues the notion of a classless society is a myth that hides an ugly truth about how we view the poor.

‘Coyote America’ Honors An Animal Making North America Home For Centuries
David Greene talks to historian Dan Flores about his book, Coyote America, a biography of an iconic animal of the American West. Increasingly, the coyote has become associated with suburban life.

‘I Am No One:’ Feels Like Somebody’s Watching Me
In Patrick Flanery’s new novel, the border between mental illness and justified paranoia grows porous as average guy Jeremy begins to fear he’s under surveillance. But is he? It’s never quite clear.

#LintonLies: How Zambians Are Using Social Media To Talk Back
Zambians have turned to Twitter to point out factual errors and criticize the tone in a British actress’s memoir about her gap year in their country.

A Starkly Different Iron Man: Black, Female, And 15 Years Old
Meet Riri Williams, a teenage genius who will be stepping into the Iron Man suit following the events of Marvel Comics’ latest crossover event.

Tracing The ‘Rise Of The Judicial Right’ To Warren Burger’s Supreme Court
Burger served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1969 until 1986. Linda Greenhouse, author of The Burger Court, says those years helped establish the court’s conservative legal foundation.

‘Faith’ Makes Fat A Force To Reckon With
Valiant Comics’ plus-size superhero is starring in her first solo book — and while the story (and her costume) underwhelm, Faith herself is a glorious creation; smart, compassionate, geeky and fun.

‘Here Comes The Sun’ Shows A Complex, Heartbreakingly Real Jamaica
Nicole Dennis-Benn’s assured, gorgeous debut novel follows Margot, a worker at a rich Jamaican resort, whose home life is a series of sacrifices as she struggles with family and forbidden love.

From ‘Runt Of The Litter’ To ‘Liberal Icon,’ The Story Of Robert Kennedy
Biographer Larry Tye says Kennedy wasn’t always the “hot-blooded liberal” we remember today. The transformation wasn’t a “flip-flop” he says; “he took things to heart in ways that few politicians do.”

‘Like Water For Chocolate’ Author Is Out With A Crime Thriller
In her novel, Pierced by the Sun, Laura Esdquivel tackles crime and corruption in modern-day Mexico and boasts a female protagonist. The book has just been published in English.

‘Hell Gate’ Is An Infectious But Unsatisfying Take On Typhoid Mary
Dana I. Wolff’s new novel digs up the story of infamous disease vector “Typhoid Mary” Mallon — it’s a fun, fast read, but misses a rich opportunity to draw parallels to modern pandemic scares.

‘This Is No Paradise’: Author Explores The Side Of Jamaica Tourists Don’t See
The characters in Here Comes the Sun are working class women, struggling with money, sexuality and the pressures of tourism. It is a debut novel for Jamaican author Nicole Dennis-Benn.

‘The Next Pandemic’: New Threats, But New Defenses, Too
Dr Ali S. Khan’s book, The Next Pandemic, takes us from doctor’s offices in the Midwest to the “hot zones” of Africa. In the process, he explains how to think about the risk of migrating diseases.

‘The Panama Papers’ Book: Inside The Ping Heard ‘Round The World
NPR’s Scott Simon speaks with Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier, authors of The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the World’s Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money.

Learn To Make Korean Food With A Charming Graphic Cookbook
Robin Ha’s Cook Korean! uses brightly colored illustrations to break down the process of making dishes like acorn jelly salad or kimchi stew.

Credibility Concerns Overshadow Release Of Gay Talese’s New Book
NPR’s Kelly McEvers speaks with Paul Farhi of the Washington Post about Gay Talese’s new book, The Voyeur’s Hotel. The credibility of the book, which follows a self-proclaimed sex researcher who bought a hotel to spy on his guests through ventilator windows, has been called into question after Farhi uncovered problems with Talese’s story.

Gay Talese Disavows His Disavowal Of His New Book
Talese had told The Washington Post he wouldn’t promote his new nonfiction book, The Voyeur’s Motel, after the paper found flaws in its story. But now he says the book will go ahead as planned.

A Personal History Of L.A. Punk: ‘It Was A Free-For-All For Outcasts’
John Doe, Exene Cervenka and Dave Alvin of the band X discuss punk’s early days. “Anybody could belong to punk that wanted to be there,” Cervenka says. Originally broadcast May 2, 2016.

Mislabeled As A Memoirist, Author Asks: Whose Work Gets To Be Journalism?
Suki Kim wrote Without You, There Is No Us after working undercover as a teacher in North Korea. She says the response to her book is also a response to her identity as Korean and a woman.

Me, Tarzan: Get To Know Your Friendly Neighborhood Ape Man
To help you prepare for this weekend’s new Tarzan film, we offer this primer on the many lives of the world’s very first Vine celebrity.

Encore: ‘Future Shock’ 40 Years Later
Future Shock by Alvin Toffler was a huge sensation when it was published in 1970. The book perfectly captured the angst of that time and prepared society for more changes to come.

‘A Hundred Thousand Worlds’ Might Be A Few Too Many
Bob Proehl’s sprawling novel follows actor Valerie and her son Alex on an epic road trip, punctuated by stops at comic conventions. It’s a charming but messy debut that crams in too many ideas.

Pack These Pages: Three Must-Reads For Summer
Harriet Logan, owner of Loganberry Books in Shaker Heights, Ohio, recommends a graphic novel about trash, a George Eliot classic and a children’s book about a bear pianist.

‘They May Not Mean To, But They Do’ Is A Sparkling, Sad Family Affair
Cathleen Schine’s new novel explores how one character’s physical and mental decline ripples out to affect his whole family. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a mix of “fun and bad behavior.”

‘The Big Sheep’ Plays Hardboiled Sci-Fi To The Hilt
It’s not hard to parse the two main influences on Robert Kroese’s new novel The Big SheepL Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler. But Kroese’s knack for humor helps elevate their gonzo grimness.

‘The Innocent Have Nothing To Fear’ Echoes Real-Life Republican Race
NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks with Stuart Stevens, a former strategist for Mitt Romney, whose new novel, The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear, tells the story of a neck-and-neck Republican primary campaign that ends up at a brokered convention.

In ‘Hustling Hitler,’ A Jewish Vaudevillian Scams The Third Reich
It seems everyone has one: the eccentric relative much gossiped about. For Walter Shapiro, it’s his great-uncle, Freeman Bernstein. The vaudeville manager, boxing promoter, card shark and stock swindler managed to scam the Third Reich. Shapiro writes about this in his new book, Hustling Hitler.

‘Nobody Is Immune’: Bracing For Zika’s First Summer In The U.S.
Author Donald. G. McNeil Jr. predicts that 2016 will be the worst year for Zika transmission in the U.S. “After this year, a fair number of people will be immune, and … immunity will grow,” he says.

‘Icon’ Keeps The Shutters Clicking And The Danger Growing
We first met diplomat Suyana Sapaki in Persona; she was a C-lister in a world where statecraft and celebrity are interchangeable. But now she’s on the rise — and the stakes are getting higher, too.

Human Or Machine: Can You Tell Who Wrote These Poems?
Can a computer write a sonnet that’s indistinguishable from what a person can produce? A contest at Dartmouth attempted to find out. With our online quiz, you too can give it a try.

Broadway Chanteuse Barbara Cook: ‘My First Memories Are Of Singing’
After starring in Broadway shows like The Music Man and Candide, Cook struggled with addiction, then staged a successful second career as a cabaret singer. Her new memoir isThen and Now.

A Toast To The Toast — The Site That Was Just For You. Yes, Even You.
The Toast — the funny, literary feminist website, gleeful kneecapper of high culture, center of cheerful misandry, and habitat of the courteous commenter — is closing. We have an appreciation.

‘The Mandibles’ Is Financial Dystopia With A Bite
Lionel Shriver’s newest novel is a work of speculative fiction: A national debt crisis leads to a systematic civil breakdown, bringing a once-prosperous family

A Mystery Novel Is The Mystery At The Heart Of ‘Blockbuster!’
Lucy Sussex’s new book is a history of 1886’s runaway bestseller: The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Why was it such a hit? Who was involved with it? And why was author Fergus Hume left without a dime?

Beautifully Alien ‘Ninefox Gambit’ Mixes Math And Magic
Yoon Ha Lee’s new novel is hard to sum up — in an alien world so dissimilar to ours its technology seems like magic, reality is a consensus that requires intense, rigid belief to function.

Michael Herr, Whose Vietnam War Reporting Became Iconic, Dies At 76
Herr’s book Dispatches redefined the genre of war reporting. “I was there to watch,” he wrote. “I went to cover the war and the war covered me; an old story, unless of course you’ve never heard it.”

‘Good As Gone’ Doesn’t Quite Get To Greatness
Larry Watson sticks to what he knows and loves in his latest novel: The cinematic badlands of Montana, and a tough, taciturn Western hero. But none of his characters truly rise above ciphers.

The Case For 1971 As Rock’s Greatest Year
That year, music journalist David Hepworth argues, offered an explosion of talent from David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Al Green, John Lennon and more. He discusses his new book,Never a Dull Moment.

‘Devil’s Rock’ Is An Atmospheric, Gut-Twisting Descent
Things are not what they seem in Paul Tremblay’s new novel; a simple search for a missing child becomes a dizzying emotional vortex as ominous new details and old tragedies surface.

Forgotten History: How The New England Colonists Embraced The Slave Trade
American slavery predates the founding of the United States. Wendy Warren, author of New England Bound, says the early colonists imported African slaves and enslaved and exported Native Americans.

Hot Dogs Against Conformity In ‘Taste Test’
If you’re the kind of person who’d wear a hot dog costume to a princess party, you’ll love Lisa Hanawalt’s lushly illustrated, off-the-wall diary/food meditation/travelogue Hot Dog Taste Test.

Fizzy ‘Vinegar Girl’ Tames Shrewishness To Sparkle
Anne Tyler’s latest is part of a series of Shakespeare plays-turned-novels; she’s turned The Taming of the Shrew into a modern screwball comedy about an absent-minded scientist and his daughters.

Terry McMillan’s Latest: Revisiting Past Loves, Rediscovering Yourself
In her new novel, I Almost Forgot About You, McMillan’s heroine confronts midlife malaise by reconnecting with men from her past.

Harry Potter Inc. Hopes To Re-Create The Magic, Hogwarts And All, With ‘Cursed Child’
Lynn Neary wonders if the latest “Harry Potter story” (technically the script of a new play) merits the marketing push it’s getting.

A Festival For Mixed-Race Storytellers — And Everyone Else, Too
The Mixed Remixed festival isn’t just for folks who are multiracial. It’s about connecting people from all over the world who aren’t always seen as belonging together.

Fish Have Feelings, Too: The Inner Lives Of Our ‘Underwater Cousins’
Jonathan Balcombe, author of What A Fish Knows, says that fish have a conscious awareness — or “sentience” — that allows them to experience pain, recognize individual humans and have memory.

Harry Potter Stage Audiences Have An Edge Over ‘Cursed Child’ Readers
The play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” is in previews in London. A book version comes out at the end of July, and J.K. Rowling hopes theatergoers will keep the plot secret till then.

‘The Familiar Vol. 3’ Will Re-Wire Your Brain
Mark Z. Danielewski’s proposed 27-part saga about a girl and her very strange cat rolls on in volume 3, Honeysuckle and Pain — in which all the different voices and stories start to find a groove.

Why My Mom Left Me Out Of Her Book
Frank and Lucky Get Schooled author Lynne Rae Perkins wrote a book about her son Frank and their dog Lucky. But she left one important person out — her daughter Lucy.

‘An Abbreviated Life’ Memoir Captures Lasting Impact Of Childhood Emotional Abuse
NPR’s Rachel Martin speaks to Ariel Leve about her new memoir, An Abbreviated Life. It tells the story of her growing up in a difficult dysfunctional family.

Annie Proulx’s ‘Barkskins’ Is Lovely, Dark, and Deep
Annie Proulx’s epic new novel is a multigenerational, multi-century epic about the fall of forests before human depredation — just don’t think about how many trees went into its 700-plus pages.

Nevermind The White Dress, Turns Out Emily Dickinson Had A Green Thumb
Archaeologists are working to unearth the poet’s original gardens and bring the homestead back to its natural state. The hope is to revive the plants and flowers she vividly described in her poetry.