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  • Two new children's books view the natural world as a site of personal growth

    Two new children's books view the natural world as a site of personal growth
    2025/04/18
    Two new picture books explore how the outside world can transform our relationships with our communities and ourselves. First, Kiese Laymon is out with a children's book about three Black boys who connect during a transformative summer in the South. With City Summer, Country Summer, Laymon says he wanted to explore the experience of getting lost as a kind of experimentation. In today's episode, the author speaks with NPR's Michel Martin about his wish to write a book about the emotional tenderness of Black boys. Then, The Littlest Drop is Sascha Alper's debut children's book, based on a parable from the indigenous Quechua people of South America. Brian Pinkney took over illustrations for the project after his father, Jerry Pinkney, died in 2020. In today's episode, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe brings Alper and Brian Pinkney together in conversation. The author and illustrator discuss the collaboration between father and son and Alper's desire to broaden the story beyond the climate crisis.

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    16 分
  • A new cookbook by Darjeeling Express chef Asma Khan was inspired by seasonal cooking

    A new cookbook by Darjeeling Express chef Asma Khan was inspired by seasonal cooking
    2025/04/17
    Asma Khan grew up in India, where late summer means monsoon season. But it wasn't until she moved to England in the '90s that she learned how to cook. At 45, after earning a PhD in constitutional law, she opened Darjeeling Express. The London restaurant made her into a celebrity chef and an authority on Indian food. Now, Khan is out with a new cookbook called Monsoon, which celebrates a seasonal approach to cooking. In today's episode, Khan speaks with NPR's Asma Khalid about making a big career change in her 40s, her commitment to an all-women kitchen staff, and the meaning of modular cooking.

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    9 分
  • Rex Ogle's 'When We Ride' is a novel-in-verse about a best friendship under pressure

    Rex Ogle's 'When We Ride' is a novel-in-verse about a best friendship under pressure
    2025/04/16
    Seventeen-year-old Benny is studying hard and working as a busboy, hoping to attend college. Meanwhile, his childhood best friend, Lawson, is on a different path, dealing drugs – and is always in need of a ride. Rex Ogle's When We Ride is a novel-in-verse about their relationship, which becomes strained as differences between the two young men come into focus. In today's episode, Ogle joins NPR's Ayesha Rascoe for a conversation about the book. They discuss friendship breakups, what we owe our oldest relationships and an unlikely high school romance between the author's own best friends.

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    9 分
  • 'Adventures in the Louvre' will teach you how to fall in love with the famous museum

    'Adventures in the Louvre' will teach you how to fall in love with the famous museum
    2025/04/15
    Elaine Sciolino has one mantra: "Never go to the Louvre on an empty stomach or with a full bladder." The former Paris bureau chief of The New York Times has written a guide filled with her best advice for enjoying the world's most-visited museum. Her new book, Adventures in the Louvre, is part journalism, part memoir and part art history. In today's episode, Sciolino speaks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about the contested origins of the museum's name, the staff's love-hate relationship with the Mona Lisa, and why some Louvre visitors might feel underwhelmed.

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    9 分
  • An obituary writer makes a grave error in John Kenney's 'I See You've Called in Dead'

    An obituary writer makes a grave error in John Kenney's 'I See You've Called in Dead'
    2025/04/14
    John Kenney's I See You've Called in Dead is about an obituary writer named Bud Stanely. One late night after a particularly bad date and too many glasses of Scotch, Bud drunkenly writes his own remembrance – and hits publish. The newspaper where he works wants to fire him, but can't legally terminate a dead person. But the error sets off a change in Bud's life as he begins to attend the funerals of strangers. In today's episode, Kenney joins NPR's Scott Simon for a conversation about the college journalism assignment that sparked the idea for the novel, the author's experience of male friendship, and a nugget of dark humor from Kenney's late brother.

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    9 分
  • Two new novels explore a world where technology has even greater access to our minds

    Two new novels explore a world where technology has even greater access to our minds
    2025/04/11
    Two new novels explore technology's increasing access to our most intimate thoughts. First, the protagonist in The Mechanics of Memory can't remember her last year. Hope has found herself in a too-perfect mental health facility where she participates in questionable treatment, some involving virtual reality. Audrey Lee's novel follows Hope as she slowly starts to recall pieces of her life and questions what to believe. In today's episode, Lee joins Here & Now's Scott Tong for a conversation about memory and identity – and the extent to which our memories are malleable. Then, a new book by Laila Lalami imagines a world in which dreams are surveilled through special implants designed to aid sleep. The Dream Hotel is about a woman who's pulled aside when her dreams indicate she's on the verge of committing a crime. In today's episode, Lalami speaks with NPR's Emily Kwong about coming face to face with the surveillance state and the author's efforts to untether herself from certain technology.

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    19 分
  • A new oral history of Lollapalooza recalls the alt-rock music festival's wildest days

    A new oral history of Lollapalooza recalls the alt-rock music festival's wildest days
    2025/04/10
    Lollapalooza is a popular music festival that takes place in Chicago's Grant Park each year. But it was conceived as a farewell tour for the band Jane's Addiction, kicking off with a series of chaotic performances across the United States in the summer of 1991. Lollapalooza, a new oral history by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour, documents the wild early days of the festival through interviews with bands like Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails and Green Day. In today's episode, the book's authors speak with NPR's A Martínez about the way the festival united genres and helped bring alternative music into the mainstream.

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    8 分
  • Emma Pattee's 'Tilt' imagines the aftermath of a life-changing earthquake

    Emma Pattee's 'Tilt' imagines the aftermath of a life-changing earthquake
    2025/04/09
    Annie is 37 weeks pregnant. She's shopping at IKEA in Portland, Oregon, when everything around her begins to shake. It's an earthquake – the big one. Unable to get in touch with her husband or anyone else, she starts to walk. This is the setup for Emma Pattee's new novel Tilt, which the author says was inspired by the major earthquake predicted to hit the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years. In today's episode, Pattee talks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about millennial disappointment, striving for scientific accuracy in the writing process, and what it means to prepare for disaster.

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    9 分