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The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books This week: Meg Wolitzer's latest, Charles Frazier returns to the Civil War, the pressures of being the only black person in the room, a new Macbeth, and marriage-saving tips from a divorce lawyer.
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Special Series

The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books

This week: Meg Wolitzer, Charles Frazier, Jo Nesbo, Nafissa Thompson-Spires and James Sexton.
WTC Provides Back Story For Colum McCann's 'Spin'
Brendan Bourke

WTC Provides Back Story For Colum McCann's 'Spin'

McCann's novel, Let the Great World Spin, won the National Book Award. He tells Steve Inskeep that his book — set in New York on the day a man walked on a tight-rope between the towers of the World Trade Center — is an attempt to reconstruct an event to find moments of grace and understanding in history.

WTC Provides Back Story For Colum McCann's 'Spin'

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Raymond Carver's 'Writer's Life' Poignantly Exposed

When writer Raymond Carver died in 1988, the Times of London christened him "The American Chekov." The epitaph has stuck. Author Susan Jane Gilman has the review of a new, 578-page biography entitled "Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life."

Raymond Carver's 'Writer's Life' Poignantly Exposed

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The 10 Best Cookbooks Of 2009

Best Books Of 2009

The 10 Best Cookbooks Of 2009

If you're the kind of person who's always believed that a book can teach you to do anything, this year's crop of cookbooks will prove you right. Cooks lacking confidence will find comfort in detailed instructions and comprehensive how-tos.

The 10 Best Cookbooks Of 2009

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Alan Cheuse's Book Picks To Warm A Winter's Night

Opinion

Best Books Of 2009

Alan Cheuse's Book Picks To Warm A Winter's Night

Book reviewer Alan Cheuse selects the highlights of this holiday season: futuristic dystopias; things that go bump in the night; portraits from Norman Rockwell's America; gay New York; a celebration of our immigrant adventures; one writer's journey to manhood; and, of course, Long John Silver.

Alan Cheuse's Book Picks To Warm A Winter's Night

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McCann, Stiles Win National Book Awards

The National Book Award Winners for 2009 include (from left) Phillip Hoose (young people's literature); T.J. Stiles (nonfiction); Colum McCann (fiction); and Keith Waldrop (poetry). Associated Press hide caption

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Associated Press

McCann, Stiles Win National Book Awards

The 60th annual National Book Awards were handed out Wednesday night in New York. Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, a novel about daring, luck and mortality in 1970s New York, won the fiction prize. T.J. Stiles' biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, The First Tycoon, was the nonfiction winner, and Keith Waldrop's Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy won for poetry.

McCann, Stiles Win National Book Awards

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Review

A Conservative Read On Palin's 'Going Rogue'

Sarah Palin may be the Republican party's next big hope, but commentator Rod Dreher says her new book, Going Rogue, does little to bolster her image. She may be the perkiest small-town American in the spotlight, but Palin is selling her personality, not a platform.

A Conservative Read On Palin's 'Going Rogue'

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A Haunting American Dream Set In 'Luna Park'

Writer Kevin Baker says he never thought he'd be "hip enough" to venture into graphic novels. But with illustrator Danijel Zezelj, he has created Luna Park — a ghostly graphic novel set in the decaying amusement parks of Coney Island. It profiles a Russian immigrant plagued by nightmares of the Chechen War.

A Haunting American Dream Set In 'Luna Park'

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'Mad Scientists,' Building The Future For 50 Years

If you've used a GPS system — or if you happen to be using the Internet to read this — you can thank DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. For 50 years, the smallish, somewhat secretive division of the Pentagon has been mostly off-limits to reporters. Now author Michael Belfiore has profiled the agency in a new book.

'Mad Scientists,' Building The Future For 50 Years

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In Essays, Author Zadie Smith Reveals Her Process

In the new collection Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, author Zadie Smith explores her writing process and the people who have influenced her. Smith tells NPR she doesn't write every day, though she wishes she did — and that she used writing as a way to mourn her father.

In Essays, Author Zadie Smith Reveals Her Process

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'The Red Book': A Window Into Jung's Dreams
Foundation of the Works of C.G. Jung

'The Red Book': A Window Into Jung's Dreams

The journal,16 years in the making, in which psychoanalyst Carl Jung documented his inner life was long hidden. After a painstaking translation and reproduction, it is finally available to the public.

'The Red Book': A Window Into Jung's Dreams

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