What Our Relationship To 'Junk' Says About America Through Generations
What to keep and what to throw away? Alison Stewart talks with NPR's Scott Simon about her new book "Junk: Digging Through America's Love Affair With Stuff."
Book Reviews
Healing And Horror Sit Side By Side In 'Little Red Chairs'
Edna O'Brien's new book is set in a little Irish village disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious stranger, a war criminal in hiding whose murderous hands can heal as well as kill.
Love, Sandwiches And Impulse Jewelry Purchases In 'Lust And Wonder'
Writer Augusten Burroughs has grown up on the page, in a series of unvarnished (and sometimes unhinged) memoirs. His latest is the story of a man trying to stay sober, stay in love and not blow it.
'Empire Of Things' Surveys How, What And Why We Consume
Frank Trentmann's sprawling new history looks at several centuries worth of consumerism. It's a huge, and hugely readable survey of all the ways we accumulate — and exhaust — material goods.
A Spanish Comic Book Exposes Franco's Orphanages
Carlos Giménez's graphic novel Paracuellos is an unflinching memoir of his time in the orphanages of Franco's Spain; it makes the experiences of a few boys in the 1950s inescapably universal.
Lurid And Ludicrous, 'Shock SuspenStories' Will Make Your Eyes Pop
A new collection reprints the first six issues of EC Comics' classic 1950s pulp horror series. Packed with gore and goofiness, these may, in fact, be the comics your mother warned you about.
Asking Questions Year By Year With 'Poems For The Twentieth Century'
What does it mean to exist in time or make art for the moment? In XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century, Campbell McGrath explores this question with a poem for every year between 1900 and 2000.
Murder And Crows In 'Taxidermist's Daughter'
Kate Mosse's new gothic thriller uses the concept of taxidermy as a clever skeleton on which to hang its scares. It's a dark and tangled tale that's definitely not for the squeamish.
Reading Between Worlds With Griffin And Sabine
Nick Bantock returns to his epistolary lovers in a new volume, The Pharos Gate. In an age of instantaneous digital communication, Griffin and Sabine celebrate the pleasures of paper and ink.
This 'Jane' Is Eyre's Steely Sister
Lyndsay Faye's new Jane Steele reimagines the classic Victorian heroine as a killer with a heart of gold, who refuses to settle for her historical lot and strikes out at men who try to abuse her.