Books

On his podcast, Marc Maron (pictured here in Los Angeles in 2013) often asks guests what their parents do. "It's a very defining thing," he says.

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Arts

Marc Maron On Robin Williams, Barack Obama And Learning To Be A Good Listener

10:52pm October 10, 2017

by David Greene

NPR interviewed Maron in the cramped garage where he tapes most of his podcast, WTF. When he's the interviewer, he says, "I generally don't have a page full of questions, like you have there."

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Marvin Kalb driving near St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square.

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'The Year I Was Peter The Great': A Young American In Soviet Russia

4:50pm October 10, 2017

by Robert Siegel

Marvin Kalb's new book is about a very interesting year — 1956 — that he spent on a diplomatic mission to what was then the U.S.S.R. It's part memoir, part context for understanding the Cold War.

Why Periods Are Political: The Fight For Menstrual Equity

12:40pm October 10, 2017

On any given day, more than 800 million girls and women around the world are menstruating. And for many of them, in the U.S. and elsewhere, it's a problem — sometimes with life-or-death consequences.

Cover detail from The Obama Inheritance, edited by Gary Phillips

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Collection Puts A Playful, Pulpy Twist On Preposterous Stories About Obama

12:00pm October 10, 2017

by Maureen Corrigan

Fifteen writers riff on various wild conspiracy theories generated about President Obama over the years. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the sly short stories in The Obama Inheritance pack a punch.

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Hirschfeld: The Biography, by Ellen Stern

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There's Good Stuff In 'Hirschfeld,' Despite Style Stumbles

10:00am October 10, 2017

by Heller McAlpin

Like a hidden NINA, there are great moments in Ellen Stern's hefty new biography of cartoonist Al Hirschfeld — but they're obscured by her off-puttingly glib tone and perpetual present tense.

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'Rules Of Magic' Blends The Charm Of The Familiar With New Enchantments

7:00am October 10, 2017

by Amal El-Mohtar

Alice Hoffman returns to the world of her best-selling Practical Magic in this new book, a prequel dedicated to the early lives and loves of the first volume's elderly aunts Francis and Jet.

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Arts

'Red Famine' Revisits Stalin's Brutal Campaign To Starve The Peasantry In Ukraine

1:33pm October 09, 2017

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum explains how Stalin killed millions in the '30s by orchestrating a famine to suppress the nationalist movement and strengthen Russian influence in Ukraine.

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"The Sun And Her Flowers" is Rupi Kaur's second collection of poetry.

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Poet Rupi Kaur: 'Art Should Be Accessible To The Masses'

7:27am October 09, 2017

by Rachel Martin

Rupi Kaur came to Canada from India when she was four years old and didn't learn English well for years; she says her raw, minimalist poems are tailored for readers like her, with limited English.

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USPS Honors Beloved Children's Book With New 'Snowy Day' Stamps

6:14pm October 08, 2017

The U.S. Postal Service has unveiled a "forever" stamp collection featuring illustrations from the 1962 children's book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.

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Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado

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'Her Body And Other Parties:' Be Your Own Madwoman

10:00am October 08, 2017

by Annalisa Quinn

Carmen Maria Machado's new collection takes young female online culture — LiveJournal and Tumblr, ghost stories and urban legends — and reinforce the uncanny power and reach of those stories.