Search results for

In his book The Happiest Man in the World, Alec Wilkinson chronicles the life of Poppa Neutrino. In 1998, Neutrino sailed a raft made of junk across the Atlantic. Now he's preparing for a solo journey across the Pacific.

The back rooms at a Harvard University museum are filled with millions of items that will never be displayed. But curators just can't bring themselves to throw anything away.

The Silver Spoon has been a staple of Italian kitchens for five decades. A new translation reveals the best-selling cookbook's secrets to an English-speaking audience.

It's time for an end-of-summer poetry treat: NPR's Tom Cole reads "Blackberry Picking," from Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, found in Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996.

Melissa Block talks with Professor Sarah Binder about the history and tactics of Senate filibusters. Binder teaches political science at George Washington University and is co-author of Politics or Principle: Filibustering in the United States Senate.

In his latest novel, Bad Luck and Trouble, author Lee Child continues the adventures of dashing Jack Reacher.

Author Margot Livesey writes books about complicated subjects. Her latest, The House On Fortune Street, is divided into four parts, telling interlocking pieces of the same story.

Author Tom Perrotta's novels Election and Little Children were made into rather successful movies. He has another novel out this fall: The Abstinence Teacher. Is it worth reading before it hits theaters?

Robert Frank often wonders such things as: Why are milk cartons square? He solves the conundrums in everyday life using basic economics. Some of the findings are in his new book The Economic Naturalist.

Louis Eppolito was a decorated New York cop who came from a longtime mob family. Then he was convicted of working as a mob hit man. But his conviction was recently overturned on a technicality.

A young scientist achieves startling results. A colleague is suspicious. Allegra Goodman's novel Intuition, explores tense relations between researchers in a cancer lab, and the professional passions driving them.

Many whites in the post civil rights South had a nuanced reaction to a changing racial landscape. Historian Jason Sokol chronicles their lives in There Goes My Everything.

Japan's love for baseball has translated into an art form: baseball haiku. Cor Van den Heuvel has edited a new anthology called Baseball Haiku, including a poem by Jack Kerouac.

Frances Perkins was the first woman named to a U.S. president's Cabinet. As FDR's secretary of labor, she led the fight to establish Social Security. Biographer Kirstin Downey discusses The Woman Behind the New Deal.

Journalist Evan Wright has written about the lives of porn stars, anarchists and con artists in many mainstream magazines. He talks about a new collection of his stories: Hella Nation.

Joan Cheever, author of Back from the Dead, followed former death row inmates who were released when the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972.

A downturn in the maple syrup market is having harmful side effects for trees in northern New England. For the first time in decades, the maples remain untapped, with sometimes-dangerous results.

When Scott Simon got in the back of Will Grozier's London taxi, the conversation was so lively that Simon still turns to him for reading suggestions. Grozier offers a list of what he's been reading lately.

Farai Chideya concludes her two-part conversation with author Tananarive Due. Due talks about the inspiration for her civil rights memoir Freedom in the Family, which she co-authored with her mother.

Teddy Atlas got his start in boxing by brawling on the street. In his new memoir, the ESPN commentator recounts his career as a boxing trainer and his father's role in shaping that career.

We talk to people who knew him or have worked with the Illinois senator. They tell stories about Obama's personality and his character.

Philosopher, civil rights activist and professor Cornel West has described himself as a "bluesman in the life of the mind, and a jazzman in the world of ideas." He talks with Neal Conan about his memoir, Living And Loving Out Loud.

Hendrik Hertzberg, author of Obamanos!, assesses the year since President Obama's election. And former Ark. Gov. Mike Huckabee and NPR political editor Ken Rudin talk about gains Republicans made in the 2009 elections.

Commentator William Rhoden takes a closer look at the impact steroids have had on the sports world. Rhoden writes about sports for The New York Times.

Author Eboo Patel talks about the hate and rejection he sees in many young religious extremists, and why ignoring the faith line that divides us comes at a huge price.