Accessibility links
Books: Book Reviews, Book News, and Author Interviews NPR's brings you news about books and authors along with our picks for great reads. Interviews, reviews, and much more.

Books

Chancellor Angela Merkel's last dance
Simon & Schuster

NPR's Book of the Day

Chancellor Angela Merkel's last dance

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is stepping down after 16 years. Author and former NPR correspondent Kati Marton has written a new biography of Merkel titled, appropriately, The Chancellor. Marton told NPR's Sarah McCammon that Merkel's upbringing in East Germany before the wall fell prepared her for a future as a politician. But it also created some blind spots in her governing; allowing the far right movement, centered in former East Germany, to gain a foothold in the German Parliament.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's last dance

Listen · 8:59
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1060081091/1061293652" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
2 cousins celebrate their childhood neighborhood in 'Dream Street'
Anne Schwartz Books

Picture This

2 cousins celebrate their childhood neighborhood in 'Dream Street'

Meet Mr. Sidney, who's always sharply dressed. Belle, who catches butterflies in jar. And the Hat Lady, Ms. Sarah. They're just some of the residents of Dream Street, the best street in the world.

2 cousins celebrate their childhood neighborhood in 'Dream Street'

Listen · 8:08
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1061346712/1061483691" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Jane Goodall Says There's Hope For Our Planet. Act Now, Despair Later!
Damian Dovarganes/AP

Short Wave

Jane Goodall Says There's Hope For Our Planet. Act Now, Despair Later!

Jane Goodall is a renowned naturalist and scientist. She's made a career studying primates and chimpanzees. But lately — something else has been on her mind: climate change. It might feel like there's nothing we can do, but in her new book, The Book of Hope, co-authored with Douglas Abrams, Jane reflects on the planet and how future generations will fight to protect it.

Jane Goodall Says There's Hope For Our Planet. Act Now, Despair Later!

Listen · 7:42
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1061020936/1061092609" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Louise Erdrich and Kevin Brockmeier are not writing campfire ghost stories
Harper Collins/Penguin Random House

NPR's Book of the Day

Louise Erdrich and Kevin Brockmeier are not writing campfire ghost stories

There are all different kinds of ghost stories and types of ghosts. Maybe the ghost is a malicious spirit out for revenge, or a marshmallow man parade float come to life, or maybe it's truly a friendly ghost — Casper, here to be pals. In today's first featured interview, Here & Now's Robin Young talks with Louise Erdrich about her novel The Sentence which is set in a haunted bookstore in Minneapolis. Then NPR's Ailsa Chang interviews Kevin Brockmeier about his book of short spooky stories The Ghost Variations.

Louise Erdrich and Kevin Brockmeier are not writing campfire ghost stories

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1058307402/1060868941" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
These NYC kids have written the history of an overlooked Black female composer

Three of the student authors of Who Is Florence Price? (left to right: Sebastián Núñez, Hazel Peebles and Sophia Shao), joined by their English teacher, Shannon Potts. Courtesy of Special Music School hide caption

toggle caption
Courtesy of Special Music School

Music

These NYC kids have written the history of an overlooked Black female composer

A group of sixth, seventh and eighth grade students realized there was no children's book about the composer Florence Price. So they wrote, illustrated and published their own.

NPR's Short Wave: 'An Outsider's Guide to Humans'
Penguin Random House

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR's Short Wave: 'An Outsider's Guide to Humans'

Camilla Pang talks with NPR's Short Wave host Emily Kwong about her award-winning memoir, An Outsider's Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me About What We Do And Who We Are. Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age 8, the scientist and writer pairs her favorite scientific principles with human behavior and navigating daily life.

NPR's Short Wave: 'An Outsider's Guide to Humans'

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1058306967/1060184013" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
'All That She Carried' weaves together generations of Black women
Penguin Random House

NPR's Book of the Day

'All That She Carried' weaves together generations of Black women

All That She Carried is the history of a single bag. Historian and author Tiya Miles used what few historical records she could find to tell the stories of three generations of Black women with ties to that sack dating back to 1850. Miles' journey started because of a simple message embroidered on the bag by one of its owners, Ruth Middleton. She told Here & Now's Scott Tong that people have emotional reactions to seeing the sack, because it means the families survived to pass it down to future generations.

'All That She Carried' weaves together generations of Black women

Listen · 11:02
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1058305839/1060181096" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Using Math To Rethink Gender (encore)

Mathematician Eugenia Cheng's book X+Y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender uses category theory, her field of research, to re-examine the role of gender in society. Basic Books hide caption

toggle caption
Basic Books

Short Wave

Using Math To Rethink Gender (encore)

Gender is infused in many aspects of our world — but should that be the case?

Using Math To Rethink Gender (encore)

Listen · 13:56
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1060042060/1060054553" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Alice Sebold apologizes to the man exonerated in the rape that her memoir focused on

The Lovely Bones author Alice Sebold said in her statement, "I will continue to struggle with the role that I unwittingly played within a system that sent an innocent man to jail." TINA FINEBERG/ASSOCIATED PRESS hide caption

toggle caption
TINA FINEBERG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Arts & Life

Alice Sebold apologizes to the man exonerated in the rape that her memoir focused on

"I am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you," the author wrote in a statement. A judge exonerated Anthony Broadwater of the crime last week.

Famed author Jodi Picoult novelizes the pandemic in new book 'Wish You Were Here'

Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult Ballantine Books hide caption

toggle caption
Ballantine Books

Famed author Jodi Picoult novelizes the pandemic in new book 'Wish You Were Here'

Picoult's pandemic-inspired story focusing on a character stranded in the Galápagos Islands highlights how events can change us — and offer perspective.

Famed author Jodi Picoult novelizes the pandemic in new book 'Wish You Were Here'

Listen · 6:12
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1060015365/1060023300" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
'From Staircase to Stage': Raekwon on growing up in N.Y. and the Wu-Tang Clan

Steve Inskeep spoke to Raekwon about the new book, the difficulties of his upbringing and the trappings of success. Sebastian Duncan/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

toggle caption
Sebastian Duncan/Courtesy of the artist

Music Interviews

'From Staircase to Stage': Raekwon on growing up in N.Y. and the Wu-Tang Clan

In his new memoir, From Staircase to Stage, rapper Raekwon recalls watching as that relatively serene New York City neighborhood rapidly declined, succumbing to the wildfires of the crack epidemic.

'From Staircase to Stage': Raekwon on growing up in N.Y. and the Wu-Tang Clan

Listen · 7:12
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1059876175/1060004181" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
'Chouette' is part owl part human baby. Fine. But how to raise her?
Harper Collins

NPR's Book of the Day

'Chouette' is part owl part human baby. Fine. But how to raise her?

Claire Oshetsky's new novel Chouette is... pretty strange, but also kind of wonderful? Oshetsky says the story is a parable about motherhood, in which a woman gives birth to an owl baby. The mother finds this strange not because the baby is an owl, but because she only had intercourse with the owl parent in a dream, and that owl was a woman. Still with us? Good. Oshetsky talked with NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben about how her own daughter consulted on writing the book, and what she learned from raising an autistic child.

'Chouette' is part owl part human baby. Fine. But how to raise her?

Listen · 9:26
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1058302815/1058981689" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Mario Vargas Llosa explores 1954 Guatemalan coup in new novel

Harsh Times: A Novel, by Mario Vargas Llosa Farrar, Straus and Giroux hide caption

toggle caption
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Author Interviews

Mario Vargas Llosa explores 1954 Guatemalan coup in new novel

Harsh Times, set in the 1950s, is historical fiction centering on events of a CIA-backed coup to overthrow Guatemala's democratically-elected government led by Jacobo Árbenz.

Mario Vargas Llosa explores 1954 Guatemalan coup in new novel

Listen · 5:01
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1058047557/1059746021" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Browse archive or search npr.org