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While Mama Had a Quick Little Chat, a new illustrated children's book, captures the frustration of a little girl who just wants her mother to get off the phone.

Love it or loathe it, domestic work is a common experience and it's celebrated in 'Sweeping Beauty — Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework.' The punch of divorce, the slam of wars at the dinner table, the shroud of a bed sheet; the poems of are peppered with harsh realities.

A new book explores Myanmar's people and brutal military junta by retracing George Orwell's path through Burma, where he lived as a young man in the 1920s.

The first lady of southern cooking, Edna Lewis, was laid to rest this morning in Unionville, Va., at the age of 89. Food writer John T. Edge helps Debbie Elliott remember a woman who helped change the image of southern food.

Students at Harvard University are flocking to a new class that they hope may provide hints to the secret to happiness. Psychology 1504, or "positive psychology," has become the most popular course on campus. It focuses on what makes people happy, rather than just their pathologies.

Who's Alan Smithee and why has he made so many movies? When is a martini not a martini? Camera operator and film industry veteran Dave Knox explains these terms and more. Knox is the author of an insider's guide to film slang, Strike the Baby and Kill the Blonde.

Who needs spinach? There are plenty of other interesting, tasty and healthful greens for your dinner table. Chef Patrick O'Connell offers up some spinach alternatives. He is the executive chef at the award-winning Inn at Little Washington in Virginia.

For six decades, Bertie Bowman has worked on Capitol Hill. He began as a 13-year-old sweeping the steps, and now he is the hearing scheduler for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In between, he forged friendships with some of the most prominent members of the Senate. Step by Step is his new memoir.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is set after World War II and follows a London writer who becomes enthralled with the stories of Nazi occupation of the island of Guernsey, off the British coast. Author Mary Ann Shaffer died before she could complete it, but her niece stepped in.

Returning to a childhood home as a grown-up is always loaded with emotion. These three books about homecoming are guaranteed to make even the most stoic readers nostalgic for the too-tight embrace of family.

The late Albert Shanker, a teachers union president, argued vigorously that the unions — which politicans have blamed for standing in the way of reforms — needed to prove their critics wrong. A new book examines why his ideas have had such a lasting impact on schools, unions and politics.

The book Beautiful Children starts as the story of a missing 12-year-old in Las Vegas, but it quickly unfolds into an interconnected tale of the boy's parents, street kids, comic book geeks and strip clubs. It took first-time author Charles Bock a decade to "unpack his head" and write the novel.

The future of our culture — and most business — lies in niches, according to author Chris Anderson. His new book, The Long Tail, references a statistical trend to suggest that the market for items that are not "hits" will always be larger than that for the most popular items.

Where do the ideas for today's political thrillers come from? Gone are the cloak-and-dagger lives of agents fighting the Cold War: Two recent novels make suspenseful plots out of the people and places in contemporary headlines.

In the 1970s, Gwen Roland decided to live off the land — and water — in the Louisiana swamp. She and her partner lived on a houseboat they built themselves; they had no electricity and no running water. Roland chronicles those years in her book Atchafalaya Houseboat.

Toni Morrison's 1987 work Beloved is the best American novel of the past quarter-century. That's according to a vote of writers and critics who were invited to weigh in with their choices by The New York Times Book Review.

Gabriel Byrne's latest film, Wah-Wah, opens this week. Later this month he may win a Tony nomination for his role in the Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Touch of the Poet. He talks with Jacki Lyden about his career.

An Israeli woman and a Palestinian man find lifelong friendship in a search for understanding. In The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan ties a story of two families and the house that connected them, to the history of the Mideast conflict.

Author Chris Offutt will read "A Good Pine," a short story set in his native Kentucky. In it, an old man raising his granddaughter alone is determined to get her a Christmas tree from the woods. But he has a problem — his axe is broken.

Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the first preachers to wed Christian fundamentalism with Hollywood-style theatrics and tabloid-worthy controversy. The charismatic Sister Aimee's story is told in a new book and PBS documentary.

Prohibition was meant to stop the sale of liquor, but it didn't. In New York City, which had as many as 32,000 speakeasies, the policy's failure was flagrant. In his new book, Dry Manhattan, Michael A. Lerner examines what happened.

Every generation of Americans reinvents Abraham Lincoln in its own image. Among the crush of recent Lincoln books, these three help us understand his personality, power and relationship to his times.

If reading a story is — as John Gardner said — like falling into a vivid and continuous waking dream, then is giving a book like giving someone a dream? Reviewer Alan Cheuse puzzles over the perfect books for your loved ones this year.

The Backseat Book Club returns from summer vacation with Anna Sewell's classic novel, Black Beauty. NPR's Michele Norris will talk with writer Jane Smiley who, in addition to winning a Pulitzer prize for adult literature, has written kids books starring horses.

From the hands of presidents have come a wealth of improvised drawings on White House stationery, memos and Cabinet agendas. A new book collects doodles created by commanders-in-chief going back to George Washington.