Books

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with professor Leonard Cassuto and former university administrator Robert Weisbuch about their new book.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks to Maurice Chammah, staff writer for the Marshall Project and author of a new book, Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty.

Evan Osnos talks about Joe Biden's enduring quest to become president. He says Biden has a different mindset today than he once had: "He's a man who is at peace." Originally broadcast Oct. 27, 2020.

Historian Janice P. Nimura tells the story of America's first and third certified women doctors and the role these sisters played in building medical institutions.

Paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman says the concept of "getting exercise" is relatively new. His new book, Exercised, examines why we run, lift and walk for a workout when our ancestors didn't.

Gorman's debut poetry collection and an illustrated kids' book are first and second on the list — on the strength of pre-orders, since both titles won't be out until September.

Poetry helps us express feelings that don't fit neatly into sentences; confusion and fear but also hope and joy. Here's the second installment of our look ahead at the most exciting poetry of 2021.

Tyler Stovall writes white freedom is "the belief (and practice) that freedom is central to white racial identity, and that only white people can or should be free" — noting nations were built on it.

Nnedi Okorafor's multi-faceted new novella follows a young girl in a near-future version of Ghana who becomes the Adopted Daughter of Death — but she can't quite figure out how that happened.

NPR's Noel King talks to Tyler Stovall about his book: White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea. It traces the complex relationship between freedom and race starting in the eighteenth century.

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman in America to earn her medical degree. Her sister Emily followed in her footsteps. Janice Nimura tells the story of the "complicated, prickly" trailblazers.

After the Capitol was cleared of insurrectionists on January 6, there was work to be done — and it wasn't lost on many that cleaning up the mess would fall largely to Black and Brown people.