Search results for

An inner-city Cleveland community is drawn closer together as it works to transform a dirty vacant lot into a lush communal garden in Seedfolks. Author Paul Fleischman says the title came from an old word meaning "ancestors."

The author of The Know-It-All — for which he read the entire encyclopedia to try to get smarter — Jacobs has gone on another self-improvement kick for Drop Dead Healthy. Scott Simon talks with Jacobs about avoiding the gym, unusual diets and breaking a sedentary lifestyle.

NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Vulture's Hershal Pandya about ethics in comedy following revelations that Hasan Minhaj fabricated material.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Kennedy says his best writing features his New York hometown. His latest book, Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes, is no exception. "There's a richness of Albany that I couldn't possibly exhaust," says Kennedy, who is now 83.

Who was Pat Nixon? Aside from being the wife of President Richard Nixon — and a very private person — she remains mostly a mystery. Now, a new novel by Ann Beattie blends fact and fiction in an effort to sketch the life of the former first lady.

By their own accounts, the former president and first lady weren't just spouses, but full partners who counted their relationship as their greatest achievement.

From 2008 to 2013, Nathan Deuel and his family lived in the Middle East. His new memoir about his experience is titled Friday Was the Bomb.

The stories in Stuart Dybek's latest collection concern themselves with strong feelings, and sometimes with crazed longings. Reviewer Meg Wolitzer finds them "a little alarming, a little wonderful."

Laurie Halse Anderson's latest young adult novel, The Impossible Knife of Memory, follows 15-year-old Hayley and her dad, who suffers from PTSD after serving in Iraq. Anderson says the book draws on her own experience of growing up with a World War II veteran father who still struggles with his war memories.

Still Life with Bread Crumbs follows a photographer who is no longer married, no longer needed as much by her grown son and no longer as successful as she used to be. When her funds start to dry up, she heads to a small, rural town for a fresh start.