Author Interviews

Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy are reporters for The Boston Globe.

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Arts

Whitey Bulger Bio Profiles Boston's Most Notorious Gangster

1:29pm May 31, 2013

Reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, who covered Bulger for years for The Boston Globe, have a book out about the career criminal. Bulger was wanted for 19 murders when he was captured by the FBI in 2011. Jury selection for his trial begins June 6.

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How OxyContin's Pain Relief Built 'A World Of Hurt'

12:40pm May 30, 2013

New York Times reporter Barry Meier's new e-book explores opiate painkillers and the consequences that come with long-term use. He focuses in particular on OxyContin, how it came to be prescribed for chronic pain, what the consequences have been, and how it became a street drug.

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Nadeem Aslam's other books include Season of the Rainbirds and The Wasted Vigil.

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Novel Examines Afghanistan War From A Pakistani Perspective

8:43am May 29, 2013

by NPR Staff

Nadeem Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden explores the consequences of Sept. 11 through the story of two young brothers who go to Afghanistan in late 2001 to help wounded civilians. Aslam says he wrote the book over four and a half years, part of which was spent in total isolation.

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Books

Marking The Moment With A Meaningful 'Exit'

2:14pm May 27, 2013

Exits are ubiquitous; grand or modest, we've all left something, from resigning from a job to waving goodbye to a friend. In Exit: The Endings That Set Us Free, author Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot explores goodbyes through the stories of people in transition. (Originally broadcast June 11, 2012.)

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Chongqing Municipality Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai attends the opening ceremony of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People on March 3, 2012, in Beijing, China.

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From A 'Death' To A Crisis, Tracing China's Bo Xilai Scandal

5:25pm May 26, 2013

by NPR Staff

Murder, corruption and political intrigue all feature heavily in A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel, by Pin Ho and Wenguang Huang. It chronicles an episode that's still reverberating through China's Communist Party.

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Russian soldiers take their position near the village of Shatoy, Chechnya.

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Transcending Hardships By Saving Others In 'Constellation'

12:05pm May 26, 2013

by NPR Staff

In his debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra takes readers to the war-torn republic of Chechnya. People disappear, informers betray and those with humanity endure great hardships.

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'Steal The Menu': A Chronicle Of A Career In Food Coverage

1:19pm May 25, 2013

When Raymond Sokolov began writing about food, it was considered a specialty portfolio. Today, celebrity chefs abound in the U.S. and Britain, with cookbooks, TV shows and groupies. Host Scott Simon speaks with Sokolov about his new book, Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food.

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Arthur Fiala, shown here in 1918 and 2005, was a private in the 26th Company of the 20th Engineers Regiment during World War I.

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A Race Against Time To Find WWI's Last 'Doughboys'

6:27am May 25, 2013

by NPR Staff

In 2003, Richard Rubin set out to talk to every American veteran of World War I he could find. With help from the French, he tracked down dozens of centenarian vets and recorded their stories in a new book called The Last of the Doughboys.

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Books
Arts

Fictional 'Mothers' Reveal Facts Of A Painful Adoption Process

4:38pm May 22, 2013

After years trying to conceive, novelist Jennifer Gilmore and her husband decided to adopt. What they thought would be a relatively simple process was instead a long and painful one. In her latest novel, Gilmore channels these autobiographical experiences into fiction.

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Climate Change Takes Flight in New Novel

3:11pm May 21, 2013

Writer Barbara Kingsolver is one of a handful of novelists with a science background, and she puts it to use in her new novel Flight Behavior. Kingsolver discusses the book and why she chose to look at the the issue of climate change in a fictional work set in rural Tennessee. This interview was originally broadcast on November 9, 2012.

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