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November 14, 2012 The country-music star has enlisted the help of Merle Haggard, Elvis Costello and others to salute the man behind songs like "Make the World Go Away."

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November 14, 2012 In her memoir, Susannah Cahalan writes about the month she descended into madness, experiencing seizures, paranoia, psychosis and catatonia. At first, her family was frightened, and her doctors, baffled. The eventual prognosis? A rare autoimmune disease that was attacking her brain.

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November 14, 2012 The novelist has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award. His latest novel, however, earns the ire of critic Maureen Corrigan, who usually numbers among McEwan's fans but finds herself dismayed by this book's attitudes toward women.

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November 13, 2012 On Election Day, voters in Colorado and Washington cast their ballots in favor of legalizing marijuana for recreational use. In his recent cover story for Newsweek, journalist Tony Dokoupil reported on the booming cannabis business in Colorado and its prospects for regulated expansion.

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November 12, 2012 Andrew Solomon's new book is about families with children who are profoundly different or likely to be stigmatized. "We all love flawed children," says Solomon, "and the general assumption that these more extreme flaws make ... children somehow unlovable — it wasn't true of most of my experience."

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November 10, 2012 The famed neurologist talks to Fresh Air about how grief, trauma, brain injury, medications and neurological disorders can trigger hallucinations. John Schwartz and Jeanne Mixon talk about coming to terms with their son's sexual orientation and his suicide attempt in their memoir, Oddly Normal.

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November 9, 2012 Criminologist David M. Kennedy's strategy for reducing gang violence has dramatically reduced youth homicide rates nationwide. In his new memoir, Don't Shoot, Kennedy outlines how community meetings and interventions have worked to curb youth violence in more than 70 cities.

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November 9, 2012 ChesnuTT is the best sort of egomaniac: On Landing on a Hundred, he's preachy but delightful.

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November 9, 2012 Two of the year's most highly anticipated movies arrive this week. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and Skyfall, the third film starring Daniel Craig as James Bond 007, directed by American Beauty Oscar-winner Sam Mendes. Film critic David Edelstein has this review of both.

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November 8, 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum describes the tactics the Soviets used after World War II to take over and transform much of Eastern Europe. Her book Iron Curtain was recently nominated for the National Book Award.

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November 8, 2012 Yirga finds his way into Ethiopian standards, displays his flair for jazz over solo and ensemble pieces, and performs effortless homages to vintage soul. He holds everything together with voracious talent that helps him savor each musical flavor.

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November 7, 2012 President Obama has been re-elected. Democrats and Republicans have maintained their respective majorities in the Senate and in the House. So does this mean there will be more partisan gridlock? Fresh Air talks with political analyst Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

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November 7, 2012 Carter lived one of the most fulfilled lives any artist could wish for. What's sad about his death Monday at 103 isn't just that a whole era in music has come to an end, but that Carter was still composing, and on the highest level.

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November 6, 2012 The famed neurologist talks to Fresh Air about how grief, trauma, brain injury, medications and neurological disorders can trigger hallucinations — and about his personal experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs in the 1960s.

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November 5, 2012 From the time their son Joe was 3, John Schwartz and his wife, Jeanne Mixon, suspected he was gay. They supported him through troubles in school and when he decided to come out — but as a teen, Joe attempted suicide. Their memoir, Oddly Normal, chronicles their experiences.

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