'Wave' Tells A True Story Of Survival And Loss In The 2004 Tsunami
On Dec. 26, 2004, Sonali Deraniyagala was vacationing with her husband, her two sons and her parents in Yala, Sri Lanka. The day was just beginning when she and a friend noticed that something strange...
View ArticleHow Ellen DeGeneres Helped Change The Conversation About Gays
In 2008, during the brief window when it was legal for same-sex couples to get married in California, perhaps no couple drew more attention than Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.After their wedding,...
View ArticleMcCann's 'TransAtlantic' Crosses Fiction And Fact, Ireland And U.S.
About five years ago, Colum McCann stumbled upon a small piece of history he had never known: In 1845, Frederick Douglass, then an escaped slave who was already famous for his anti-slavery writings and...
View ArticleWhat Kids Are Reading, In School And Out
Walk into any bookstore or library, and you'll find shelves and shelves of hugely popular novels and book series for kids. But research shows that as young readers get older, they are not moving to...
View ArticlePreserving The Season's Fruits With A Canning Evangelist
Shopping at a farmers market on a weekend morning can turn bittersweet if your eye for just-picked summer fruit is bigger than your refrigerator and appetite.That's a crisis first-time cookbook author...
View ArticleBest Of The Summer: 6 Books The Critics Adore
There is no one definition of a summer book. It can be a 1,000-page biography, a critically acclaimed literary novel, a memoir everyone is talking about — or it might be your favorite guilty pleasure:...
View ArticleHow Scholastic Sells Literacy To Generations Of New Readers
Chances are you have had contact with Scholastic Publishing at some point in your life: You might have read their magazines in school, or bought a book at one of their book fairs, or perhaps you've...
View ArticleE-Books Strain Relations Beween Libraries, Publishing Houses
E-books have changed the world of publishing in fundamental ways. The business model that encouraged publishers to support the work of public libraries has changed to such an extent that this...
View ArticleCrime Novelist Elmore Leonard Dies At 87
Transcript DAVID GREENE, HOST: Elmore Leonard, sometimes called the Dickens of Detroit, created some of the most memorable characters in modern crime fiction. The 87-year-old writer died after...
View Article'Winter's Bone' Author Revisits A Tragedy In His Ozarks Hometown
The Ozarks mountain town of West Plains, Mo., is the kind of town where a person can stand in his front yard and have a comfortable view of his past."My mom was actually born about 150 or 200 feet that...
View ArticleNational Book Awards Look To Raise Profile ... And It's Not The First Time
You may be hearing a lot about the National Book Awards this week — at least that's what the National Book Foundation hopes. That's because they've made some changes to the awards that they hope will...
View ArticlePolitical Violence, Uneasy Silence Echo In Lahiri's 'Lowland'
Earlier this month, Jhumpa Lahiri rejected the idea of immigrant fiction. "I don't know what to make of the term," she toldThe New York Times. "All American fiction could be classified as immigrant...
View Article'Quiet Dell' Revives A Depression-Era Murder Story
The Quiet Dell murders were among the first big, sensational crime stories of the Depression: A serial killer corresponded with vulnerable widows he met through lonely hearts clubs, then lured them to...
View ArticleBrick-And-Mortar Bookstores Play The Print Card Against Amazon
When it comes to book publishing, all we ever seem to hear about is online sales, the growth of e-books and the latest version of a digital book reader. But the fact is, only 20 percent of the book...
View ArticleA Panorama Of Devastation: Drawing Of WWI Battle Spans 24 Feet
Joe Sacco is a cartoonist, graphic novelist and journalist; he's best-known for his dispatches from today's regions of conflict, like the Middle East and Bosnia, in cartoon form. But for his latest...
View Article50 Years After Assassination, Kennedy Books Offer New Analysis
In the 50 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the public has never tired of books about the charismatic young president and his tragic death.This year, the market has been...
View ArticleDon't Call It Fanfic: Writers Rework Their Favorite Stories
When writers finish a book, they may think they've had the last word. But sometimes another writer will decide there's more to the story. Bertha from Jane Eyre and the father in Little Women are just...
View ArticleIn An Age Of Slavery, Two Women Fight For Their 'Wings'
Sue Monk Kidd's new novel is a story told by two women whose lives are wrapped together — beginning, against their wills, when they're young girls. One is a slave; the other, her reluctant owner.
View ArticleThe Annual Awards For Children's Books Are Out
Transcript STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK, the Grammy Awards are behind us. The Oscars are around the corner. And now, we have another award that also gets a lot of attention this time of year, from people...
View ArticleWhat Wakes B.J. Novak Up In The Middle Of The Night?
Transcript DAVID GREENE, HOST: When we talk about a triple threat we're often talking about a versatile athlete. Think about a basketball player who can score, defend, and rebound. In show biz, B. J....
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