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'Wuhan' analyzes China's management and response to the COVID-19 pandemic Apr 03, 2024

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It's been four years since the world went into lockdown mode as COVID-19 rapidly spread across the globe. But a new book by political scientist Dali Yang dives into the information about, and mitigation of, the disease in its earliest days in China. In today's episode, Yang speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about the research that went into Wuhan, the way local governments and medical officials abstained from disclosing crucial intelligence in the early days, and the strict lockdown that followed.
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'Whalefall' by Daniel Kraus is a thriller about diving, loss and new beginnings Apr 02, 2024

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Jay, the 17-year-old at the heart of Daniel Kraus' novel Whalefall, has an hour of oxygen left on his tank. He's been diving in the ocean off the coast of Monterey, California trying to recover a skeleton — but his mission is complicated when he's swallowed whole by a sperm whale. In today's episode, Kraus speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about how a book that's so enmeshed in death also reveals quite a lot about life, and how he conceptualized the pacing of his chapters to emphasize Jay's race against time.
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'Climate Capitalism' projects an optimistic future for environmental policy Apr 01, 2024

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Early in today's episode, Here & Now's Scott Tong poses what a lot of activists and listeners might think — that the two words titling Akshat Rathi's new book, Climate Capitalism, are at odds with one another. But Rathi says governments can play a role in shifting economic policy to prioritize both profit and environmental protections. In his book and in this interview, he explains how business leaders, students and politicians are already implementing ideas that connect the dots between the climate crisis and global markets.
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Don Paterson and Michael Ondaatje's new books meditate on poetry, time and memory Mar 29, 2024

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Today's episode features interviews with two poets whose new works look back in time, either in their own lives or those of their subjects. First, Don Paterson speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about his new memoir, Toy Fights, which recounts his childhood in Scotland. The two get to talking about Paterson's self-described "descent into madness" and the reason his poems go unmentioned in the book. Then, Simon speaks with Michael Ondaatje about A Year of Last Things, and how the Booker Prize-winning writer thinks about going back and forth between fiction and poetry.
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'Hard by a Great Forest' is a novel about returning home decades after fleeing war Mar 28, 2024

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The story of Saba, the protagonist of Leo Vardiashvili's novel Hard by a Great Forest, is much like the author's own. A young boy flees the Soviet Republic of Georgia with his father and brother as the country is ravaged by a war. Decades later, when his father goes back to their homeland and promptly disappears, Saba must face his family's past – and immense loss – in an effort to find him. In today's episode, Vardiashvili tells NPR's Scott Simon about being separated from his own family, and the feeling of time-travel he felt when he finally made his way back to Georgia.
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Charles Spencer's memoir 'A Very Private School' opens up about boarding school abuse Mar 27, 2024

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A new memoir by historian Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer and brother of Princess Diana, details a difficult childhood marked by alleged physical and sexual abuse at Britain's Maidwell Hall in the 1970s. In today's episode, Spencer tells NPR's Scott Simon how childhood naivete – thinking his parents were all-knowing authorities who must've known about the school's cruelty when they sent him there – prevented him and others from speaking up about what was happening, and why writing A Very Private School felt like an important reclamation of his boyhood.
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'Say Hello to My Little Friend' explores manhood, 'Scarface' and Miami stereotypes Mar 26, 2024

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In 'The Exvangelicals,' Sarah McCammon analyzes loving and leaving the church Mar 25, 2024

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NPR's Sarah McCammon grew up in the white evangelical church — and though she left the tradition as an adult, she's continued to cover its ties to Trump's politics closely as a journalist. Her new book, The Exvangelicals, chronicles why so many people like herself have removed themselves from evangelicalism. In today's episode, she speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about the different breaking points she heard from other defectors — from COVID to racial justice — and why a decline in people who identify as evangelical might actually explain the group's rising political profile.
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Percival Everett centers a new voice in 'James,' a retelling of 'Huckleberry Finn' Mar 22, 2024

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Percival Everett is a prolific author – his 2001 book Erasure was recently adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction. But his latest book, James, expands on a story readers around the world already know: Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. In today's episode, Everett speaks with NPR's Andrew Limbong about why he wanted to reframe the classic novel from the perspective of the enslaved titular character, why he doesn't think of his new work as a direct response to Twain, and why he doesn't buy into the controversy surrounding the original.
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'Feeding Ghosts' is a graphic memoir grappling with generational trauma Mar 21, 2024

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Tessa Hulls' grandmother, Sun Yi, was a dissident journalist in Shanghai who faced intense political persecution during the Chinese Communist Revolution; she suffered severe mental distress after fleeing to Hong Kong. In today's episode, Hulls tells Here & Now's Scott Tong that her grandmother's trauma often cast a shadow over their family – one she had been running away from for years, and one she decided to finally face in her new graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts. It's a reexamining of Hulls' matriarchal lineage, of Chinese history and of generational love and healing.
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