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February 17, 2013 Rock writer Jonathan Cott met John Lennon in 1968 and formed a working relationship with him, as well as with Yoko Ono, that would span more than two decades. Cott was the last journalist to interview Lennon, just three days before the singer was killed.

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February 17, 2013 What makes some families stronger, more harmonious, and just plain happier than others? To find out, Bruce Feiler asked parents and experts from a wide variety of fields for advice that parents could apply to improve life at home.

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February 17, 2013 George Mallory, famed mountaineer, perished in his attempt to be the first man to summit Mount Everest. Tanis Rideout's debut novel combines the tale of that famous climb with the lesser-known story of George's wife, Ruth.

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February 17, 2013 The money and mansions of the turn of the century provide rich fodder for some fabulous reads. Author Janet Wallach recommends three books that give a glimpse of Gilded Age houses. Do you have a favorite book that highlights architecture? Let us know in the comments.

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February 17, 2013 In honor of Presidents Day, NPR Books dove into the archives for some lesser-known stories about America's commanders in chief, including the tale of Teddy Roosevelt's perilous journey down the Amazon and Grover Cleveland's top-secret, mustache-preserving cancer surgery.

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February 16, 2013 Hey Jimmy, it's Kevin. Pick up if you're there. We just pulled up to your cabin. What? Oh. Ellen says hi. Annie too, but she's sleeping in her car seat. Anyway, it's pitch black. No lights on in the cabin. You said you'd leave the porch light on.

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February 16, 2013 A program that makes poems from our tweets / With rhyming lines and smooth iambic beats ... Ranjit Bhatnagar wrote a program to find tweets in iambic pentameter and retweet them in rhyming pairs. With NPR's Jacki Lyden, he shares some of the resulting couplets.

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February 16, 2013 In 1964, Napoleon Chagnon did what few other anthropologists had ever done: He went to the Amazon to study an isolated tribe. His findings cast him out from his profession as a heretic.

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February 16, 2013 Michael Hainey was 6 years old when he was told his father had died after "visiting friends." As he grew up, he began to suspect that the phrase was a euphemism.

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February 15, 2013 Karen Russell's new collection of short stories has dead presidents reincarnated as horses, girls turning into silkworms, and vampires who quench their thirst for blood with lemons. Reviewer Meg Wolitzer says that in Russell's world we aren't fixed in space and time but can change at any moment.

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February 15, 2013 Published posthumously, Maurice Sendak's illustrated elegy My Brother's Book debuts at No. 8.

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