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Stephanie Grisham is — yes, really — taking our questions now Oct 20, 2021

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Former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham famously held no press briefings during her time in the White House — but now, she's ready to talk. Her memoir, I'll Take Your Questions Now, is the latest tell-all from a former Trump staffer — and Tamara Keith, from NPR's Politics Podcast, hit her with some tough questions about whether the book is simply an image rehab project. "Too many books have been out there to help one person's reputation so they can be rehabilitated ... or to try to rewrite history," Grisham says. "I just want to tell my story and have people take what they want from it."
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How Colin Powell Wanted The World To Remember Him Oct 19, 2021

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When Colin Powell died on October 18 at the age of 84 from COVID-19 complications, he left behind a long, decorated career in Washington and the U.S. Army. He spent much of his life in the military, eventually rising to the rank of four-star general, and went on to become the first Black Secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But, as he discussed in a 2012 interview with NPR's Robert Siegel about his memoir It Worked For Me, Powell's reputation was tarnished when he used faulty evidence to push for the Iraq War: "I'll never leave it behind."
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Amor Towles' new book is about a road trip that takes more than a few U-turns Oct 18, 2021

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Amor Towles' new book is quite the joyride — The Lincoln Highway follows four kids in a 1948 Studebaker who set out along the real-life Lincoln Highway, the first highway to cross the country. Two of them are trying to head for San Francisco to find their mother — the other two want to go the other way, looking for a promised inheritance. Needless to say, things don't go as planned. Towles talked to NPR's Scott Simon about the book — and also about the way the world moves so much faster now than it did in the 1950s, and how that affects the stories kids hear and see and create.
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In song and poetry, 'Nina' and 'Just Us' offer ways to start a conversation on race Oct 15, 2021

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After the protests last year, we heard the phrase "racial reckoning" a lot, as some groups of people struggled to catch up with what's just been reality for many others. This week we've got two books that might help you reckon with that reckoning, in two different ways: Traci Todd and illustrator Christian Robinson's bright and powerful picture book biography Nina: A Story of Nina Simone and poet Claudia Rankine's Just Us: An American Conversation, in which she puts together poetry, essays and images to bring readers into an uncomfortable but necessary conversation about race.
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Fiona Hill's new Trump-era memoir is less about Trump than it is about us Oct 14, 2021

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In her memoir, Fiona Hill extends her riveting testimony from Donald Trump's first impeachment trial. And while she might not dish as much dirt as other Trump-era memoirists, the former senior National Security official writes movingly about Trump and about polarization and other threats to American democracy. She points to Russian history to suggest that distrust in government and political systems can lead to collapse. And while she describes Trump as the symptom of that division and distrust, she also says he put a spotlight on what needs fixing.
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Humor, horror and social commentary blend in Percival Everett's detective novel Oct 13, 2021

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Percival Everett's page-turning new detective novel The Trees is at once gruesome and screamingly funny. A racial allegory rooted in southern history, the book features two big-city special detectives with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation who are sent to investigate a small-town crime. The murders are hideous in detail, the language is rough, there are racial epithets of all kinds, and somehow the politically incendiary humor is real. Everett talks with NPR's Scott Simon about how — and why — he blended these styles.
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What Maggie Nelson Means When She Talks About Freedom Oct 12, 2021

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Since her childhood in 1970s San Francisco, critic and poet Maggie Nelson has been mulling the concept of freedom — particularly how we define, practice and experience it. She sat down with NPR's Ari Shapiro to talk about four areas in life — art, sex, addiction and climate change — and how we talk about freedom in regard to our collective wellbeing and individual rights.
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Myriam J.A. Chancy's historical novel about a Haitian earthquake hits on human truths Oct 11, 2021

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Back in August, Myriam J.A. Chancy was preparing for the release of her novel What Storm, What Thunder when the news broke: a magnitude 7.2 earthquake had hit Haiti. It was a "chilling and bittersweet" moment, she says; her soon-to-be-published book revolved around the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country, and its aftermath. In this episode, she talks to NPR's Scott Simon about the eerie similarities between the two quakes, how her characters speak to how international relief efforts have historically failed Haiti, and what the world can learn from the country's rebuilding efforts.
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The Realities Of Abortion Politics In 'Family Roe: An American Story' & 'Red Clocks' Oct 08, 2021

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Authors Joshua Prager and Leni Zumas each explore the real world implications of abortion politics, through fiction and non-fiction. First, in a conversation with Michel Martin, Prager talks through his book The Family Roe: An American Story, centered on the woman who was the baby at the center of the landmark Roe v. Wade trial. Then Leni Zumas and Scott Simon discuss Zumas' novel Red Clocks, set in a time where fetal personhood legislation has outlawed not only abortion, but also in-vitro fertilization.
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Hearing Voices From 'The Book of Form and Emptiness' Oct 07, 2021

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If these walls could talk... what might they say to the chairs? In Ruth Ozeki's novel The Book of Form and Emptiness, 13-year-old Benny Oh starts hearing things talk to him after the loss of his father. As he navigates his grief, it's his conversations with books that guide him through.
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