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A new biography of first lady Edith Wilson examines her political influence Mar 20, 2023

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Edith Wilson dated and then married Woodrow Wilson while he served as president of the United States in 1915. In her new biography, Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson, author Rebecca Boggs Roberts – daughter of the late NPR founding mother Cokie Roberts – explores Wilson's influential role in her husband's administration. But as Roberts tells NPR's Steve Inskeep, at a time when women didn't yet have the right to vote, Wilson often hid her political contributions from the spotlight.
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From the Astros to Colin Kaepernick, two books revisit monumental sports stories Mar 17, 2023

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Today's episode is all about sports. First, The Athletic reporter Evan Drellich speaks with NPR's A Martinez about his investigation into the Astros' 2017 World Series win and subsequent cheating scandal, which is closely examined in Drellich's new book, Winning Fixes Everything. Then, NPR's Juana Summers sits down with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick to discuss his new graphic memoir, Change the Game, which revisits how growing up idolizing Black football players led Kaepernick to pick that sport over his promising future in baseball.
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'Your Driver is Waiting' takes a modern spin on 'Taxi Driver' Mar 16, 2023

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Who would Travis Bickle– the protagonist of the 1976 film Taxi Driver – be today? That question sparked the new novel by Priya Guns, Your Driver Is Waiting. It follows Damani, a queer Tamil ride-share driver who is struggling to pay her bills while people on the street around her protest for cause after cause that she can't seem to keep track of. Then she meets Jolene, who is the epitome of the privilege Damani does not have. As Guns tells NPR's Scott Simon, it's a relationship that forces her protagonist to reckon with her own preconceptions of wealth and whiteness.
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Sparked by the pandemic, Katherine May searches for 'Enchantment' in nature Mar 15, 2023

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Katherine May, like so many other people, found herself submerged in anxiety and restlessness during COVID-19 lockdowns. But as cities reopened, she looked for new ways to immerse herself in the awe of the natural world around her. That journey is at the center of her new book, Enchantment. And as she tells NPR's Rachel Martin, her relationship with her faith, prayer and her definition of God played a big role.
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In 'What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez,' a family struggles with a child's disappearance Mar 14, 2023

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Ruthy Ramirez, the 13-year-old middle child of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island, vanished without a trace. But more than a decade later, as the family still feels the weight of her absence, one of her sisters spots a woman who she thinks might be her sister on a reality TV show. In her new novel, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez, author Claire Jimenez explores the way loss, violence and spectacle impacts the women in the Ramirez family. And as she tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, there's a big divide in the way reality tv treats white women and women of color.
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Margaret Atwood ponders aging, fantasy and George Orwell in 'Old Babes in the Wood' Mar 13, 2023

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Margaret Atwood has been writing for a long time – and as she tells NPR's Leila Fadel, the world looks very different today than it did when she started. Her new collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood, provides different approaches to the passing of time. There's a couple that's facing the realities of aging; there's a conversation with George Orwell, who Atwood says drastically changed her life; and there's even a parallel reality to the author's 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, where men are the ones being controlled.
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Two memoirs tell life-altering stories through illustrations Mar 10, 2023

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Today's episode focuses on two pretty different graphic memoirs. First, artist Kendra Neely – who survived the 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon – speaks to NPR's Juana Summers about processing the trauma and grief following that day's events in her new memoir, Numb to This. Through illustrations, Neely captures the oversaturation she still feels every time news of a shooting breaks. Then, NPR's Eyder Peralta asks Dan Santat about his memoir First Time for Everything, which recounts his coming-of-age trip across Europe with his eighth grade class.
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'A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs' is a memoir of the Uyghur experience Mar 09, 2023

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Describing home for journalist Gulchehra Hoja is complicated. She's from western China, in the Xinjiang province. But as she tells NPR's Steve Inskeep, she considers the Uyghur region –which was formerly free – her native country. Her new memoir, A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs, navigates the difficult and often painful reality of growing up proud of her heritage but under a Chinese nationalist mindset – and doing work that she says eventually led to her family's arrest.
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'All the Beauty in the World' is a museum guard's view on healing through art Mar 08, 2023

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Patrick Bringley worked in events planning at The New Yorker – until his older brother got diagnosed with cancer and passed away. That loss led to a reimagining of priorities for Bringley, who decided to seek solace in one of the most beautiful places he could think of: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. His new memoir, All the Beauty in the World, retraces his journey to becoming a museum guard and finding refuge in the works of art he saw each day. And as he tells NPR's Scott Simon, he also encountered a lot of joy in watching the people who visited.
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Beth Moore says misogyny pushed her to leave the Southern Baptist Convention Mar 07, 2023

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Beth Moore was raised in the Southern Baptist Convention. As an adult, she went on to become an evangelist, teaching Bible studies to women in arenas around the world. But as she recounts in her new memoir, All My Knotted-Up Life, she grew up feeling a deep shame – and surviving sexual abuse at home – that reached a breaking point with the surfacing of the Donald Trump "Access Hollywood" tape and the investigation into the SBC. As Moore tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, those events led her to eventually leave her denomination.
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