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Updated: 1 hour 40 min ago

Writing On The Sly, Nathaniel Rich's Secret Debut

October 5, 2013 - 7:13am

It took over five years for Nathaniel Rich to finish his first novel — maybe because he was writing The Mayor's Tongue secretly, first as a college student, and then while writing film criticism during the day.

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Sontag On Sontag: Journals Record A Writer's Birth

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In the first installment of her journals, Susan Sontag exhibits the fierce critical intelligence that distinguishes her work — along with a vulnerability that may surprise. The result is an absorbing chronicle of emotional and intellectual self-discovery.

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Amid Slumping Sales, Borders Replaces CEO

January 5, 2009 - 1:39pm

With holiday sales down almost 12 percent, Borders has replaced its CEO and it appears the bookseller might be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. The company has named Ron Marshall as its new CEO; he replaces George Jones.

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Novel Regards Slave Trade In Reverse

January 5, 2009 - 1:38pm

In British writer Bernardine Evaristo's new novel, Blonde Roots, African slave traders raid Europe. Evaristo wields language and messes with history and geography with the gusto of someone having a great time with a great subject.

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A Childhood Tragedy, Seen From The 'Periphery'

January 5, 2009 - 1:29pm

Fate is the protagonist in Patricia Ferguson's masterful Peripheral Vision, which examines the effects one unhappy accident has on a constellation of characters.

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'Voluntary Madness' Details Life In 'Loony Bin'

January 5, 2009 - 11:26am

Norah Vincent spent 18 months living disguised as a man. The experience led to deep depression and a stay at a mental institution. Once she left, Vincent decided to check back into institutions across the country. She tells her story in Voluntary Madness.

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Temple Grandin On 'The Best Life For Animals'

January 5, 2009 - 8:18am

In her new book, Animals Make Us Human, Temple Grandin examines common notions of animal happiness and concludes that dogs, cats, horses, cows and zoo animals — among other creatures — possess an emotional system akin to that of humans.

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Personal War Journal Becomes Gripping Memoir

January 5, 2009 - 6:15am

In 2005, Dana Canedy's fiance — Charles King — was deployed to Iraq. King started writing a journal to their infant son, in case he didn't make it home. After King lost his life in a roadside bomb attack, Canedy turned King's 200-page journal into a memoir, called A Journal for Jordan.

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The Wovel: Literary Alternative To Browsing Blogs

January 4, 2009 - 9:35pm

A Wovel is an on-line novel written serially, with readers deciding the turns of the plot. Publisher Underland Press is hoping people who already do most of their reading surfing the web will return each week to read the next installment.

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Civil Rights Poets Wrote Prologue For Change

January 4, 2009 - 8:15am

Langston Hughes and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper are prominent African-American poets who wrote about civil rights and whose work still resonates today. Host Liane Hansen speaks with poet E. Ethelbert Miller about Harper's and Hughes' work and what it means in this time of change in America.

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What We Don't Know About Sherman's March

January 4, 2009 - 6:16am

Author Noah Andre Trudeau's book, Southern Storm, is about Sherman's March and what actually happened during this famous Civil War event.

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Cataloging The Ever-Changing English Language

January 3, 2009 - 5:22pm

Language consultant Jeremy Butterfield, author of A Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, talks about the odd words he's come across and the Oxford English Corpus, an electronic database of more than 2 billion words.

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'Postcards' Charts China's Economic Rise

January 3, 2009 - 5:07pm

For the last two years, James Fallows has followed China's astounding double-digit growth in a series of quirky essays for the Atlantic Monthly. His stories are now collected in a new book, Postcards From Tomorrow Square.

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