Book News

The study of World War II is part of every standard middle school and high school curriculum in the United States. The question is, how do you keep it interesting for these readers? These titles keep it mixed up, from a graphic novel recounting the incred...

This time around, our reviewers weigh in on new albums from Macy Gray and Madonna. While Gray covers classics in, well, Covered, Madonna may be creating some of her own on MDNA. I'm totally with our game reviewer-it's time for America's pastime, baseball!...

Like most good ideas I've gotten on the job, this one was inspired by failure—and by my savvy library director. Failure came in the form of dismal attendance at a summer video-game program. We didn't have the money to buy consoles or upgrade to gaming lap...

Technology, metaphysics and the art and science of putting together a broken heart and a nonfunctioning machine are central to Peter Carey’s novel “The Chemistry of Tears.”

In true book-club fashion, conversations about books I read with my dying mother led to conversations about our lives.

Herta Müller, the Nobel Prize-winning author, grew up German in Romania, always under surveillance. Her newest work is a collaboration with a writer whose background was similar, but whose life was shockingly different.

Artists and designers pay homage to Maurice Sendak.

By excluding the aesthetic dimension from our analyses of militant texts, we miss a crucial opportunity to confront the humanity of their authors.

It’s the invasion of the Can’t-Help-Yourself books.

An April spent in an Italian castle? Yes, please. The four women of Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April are lucky to have a grand adventure. But author Madeline Miller recommends the book even if you're stuck at home. Do you have a favorite book about exotic travel? Tell us in the comments.

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The paleontologist Richard Fortey searches out species that have endured hundreds of millions of years of planetary turmoil.

For Nancy Pearl, beach reading doesn't mean light reading. NPR's go-to librarian has dug up a diverse mix of titles old and new — a selection of mystery, memoir and more — that will leave you with some substantial summer reading.

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She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. Her son lay dying on the other side, his blue, pale skin in stark contrast to the bright red blanket on his bed. His gray eyes looked at her dully as she entered the room.

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The end of Round 8 of our Three-Minute Fiction contest has finally arrived. We've read through more than 6,000 stories, and now our judge for this round, novelist Luis Alberto Urrea, has picked his favorite.

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Travel writer Paul Theroux's latest novel, The Lower River, is about a former Peace Corps volunteer who returns to Malawi years later and finds the village he left much changed. Host Rachel Martin talks with author.

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When a bookmobile broke down last winter in rural Vermont, patrons, especially preschoolers, really missed it. Then a donor, who heard an NPR story about the rolling library's demise, came up with over $100,000 for a replacement. The town can't believe its good fortune. Vermont Public Radio's Charlotte Albright reports.

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Hugh Dancy, currently on Broadway in “Venus in Fur” and in the film “Hysteria,” wishes David Mitchell would match Philip Roth’s output.

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and, finally, decided to walk through the door. We didn't talk about her, after she left. It was as though her absence, painted gray against the vacated chair, took on a permanence of its own. A relic of her being that prevented any discussion, any mention, of her lack.

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She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. The sticky Georgia heat almost drove her back onto the worn motel carpeting. Back into hesitancy. But Annie reached across the threshold and pulled the door shut with unaccustomed intention.

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In his new book, journalist Jack Hitt says America's amateur spirit goes back to the nation's origins — and it's nothing to be ashamed of. The Europeans viewed the Americans as an "unfinished people," Hitt says. "We were amateur everything." And it's only made the nation better.

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