NPR's Book of the Day

The Risk It Takes To Bloom is a new memoir by journalist and activist Raquel Willis. In 2014, Willis navigated post-college life as she grappled with the "dehumanization" of Blackness and the importance of transgender visibility. Willis examined how to support the Black trans community and helped organize one of the largest marches for Black trans lives in 2020. In today's episode, Willis speaks with NPR's Brittany Luse about her journey as a Black trans woman emerging into adulthood and the intersectional framework that shapes her activism.

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Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror is a collection of scary stories curated by horror filmmaker Jordan Peele. In today's episode, Peele speaks with NPR's Brittany Luse about the Black horror stories in this collection and the unique motif of eyes in this genre, including in his own 2017 film Get Out.

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As this year's United Nations Climate Summit wraps up, today's episode examines what people often get wrong about climate change. David Wallace-Wells' 2019 book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming outlines three major misunderstandings: the speed, scope, and severity of climate change. Here, Wallace-Wells speaks with NPR's Rachel Martin back in 2019 about the worst-case scenario for human life in 2050 and the optimistic outcome we could expect if we take immediate action.

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In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, two teenagers form a tight bond at their Quaker high school in Manhattan. That's the premise for Idlewild, the debut novel by James Frankie Thomas. But while the girls share an intense common interest in gay culture and fan fiction, their friendship blows up in unexpected ways — something they must reckon with years later. In today's episode, Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes speaks with Thomas about his take on the prep school novel and discovering some giant truths about himself while trying to understand the lives of his characters.

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Today's episode finds two renowned authors who found solace in writing characters navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. First, NPR's Leila Fadel spoke with Sigrid Nunez about The Vulnerables, which follows a woman, a parrot, and a Gen Z college student unexpectedly taking care of another during lockdown in New York. Then, Michael Cunningham tells NPR's Scott Simon about Day, which chronicles three days — spread out over three years — in the life of a Brooklyn family, and how isolation and companionship changes them over that time.

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Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista traces the aftermath of the Philippines' war on drugs. After Rodrigo Duterte was elected in 2016, thousands of people were killed in extrajudicial killings. In today's episode, NPR's Juana Summers listens to journalist Evangelista reflect on her country's news coverage during this time and the importance of language in honoring humanity.

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TV writer and producer, Norman Lear, died this week. He was 101 years old. In today's episode, we revisit Lear's 2014 interview with NPR's Arun Rath about his memoir, Even This I Get to Experience. From Lear's upbringing with a father incarcerated for white collar crime to his struggle to get All In the Family on air, the two discussed some of the biggest challenges Lear overcame on the path to becoming a television visionary.

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The New Naturals follows a couple's journey from grieving their infant daughter to an underground utopia. In today's episode, literature professor Gabriel Bump tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe how his own personal loss led to the emotional stream of consciousness and acceptance of societal change in the novel.

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When former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney criticized Donald Trump's presidency, she says she didn't know the Republican party would turn on her. But after losing her leadership role in the party and her bid for reelection, Cheney had to reassess. Her new book, Oath and Honor, opens up about the House investigation into the January 6 attack, and her colleagues' ambivalence on impeaching Trump. In today's episode, Cheney tells NPR's Leila Fadel why she thinks it's important to talk about Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election, and how it can still pose a threat to democracy in 2024.

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Today's episode is a true story that takes place in Jerusalem. In 2012, a bus collided with a semi trailer. Six Palestinian kindergarteners and a teacher burned to death. Abed Salama,, who is the father of one of the children, has to navigate physical and bureaucratic barriers as he searches for his son. In A Day In The Life of Abed Salama, author Nathan Thrall revisits the journey and the vivid people, both Palestinian and Jewish, Salama encountered. Thrall and Salama speak with NPR's Leila Fadel about the emotional odyssey and the book's new reception after the Hamas attack on Israel in October.

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Donal Ryan's novel, The Queen of Dirt Island, centers its women characters. He tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that making the men peripheral wasn't his goal – "it just kind of happened." In today's episode, he explains how a childhood spent listening to his grandmother, sister and neighbors in his mom's kitchen inspired the voices in the book, and why he wrote with a strict word count in mind for each chapter.

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Today's episode features interviews with two authors whose works are 2023 National Book Awards finalists — one fiction, one nonfiction. Both broach the topic of climate realities, though their books take place hundreds of years apart. First, NPR's Scott Simon chats with Hanna Pylväinen about The End of Drum-Time, which opens with a startling earthquake and centers an 1850s community of native Sámi reindeer herders in the Scandinavian Arctic. Then, Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd asks journalist John Vaillant about Fire Weather, which covers the 2016 wildfires in Fort McMurray, Canada.

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Today's episode is a true story that reads like a novel. In 2006, author and labor organizer Saket Soni received a call from an Indian migrant worker. He was one of hundreds of men hired by Signal International to fix hurricane-ravaged oil rigs in Mississippi and asked to pay $20,000 under the impression it would go towards green card expenses. But as Soni explains in his new book, The Great Escape, that was far from the truth. He tells Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes about the harsh conditions workers were forced to live in, and how they eventually marched all the way to D.C. to demand justice.

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Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim follows a Korean-Argentinian teen's journey to understanding who she is. Through the comfort of her multicultural home in Queens to the hallways of her ultra-woke, elite prep school in Manhattan, Alejandra grapples with academics, the politics of school lunch, and even a microaggression from her own teacher. As author Patricia Park tells Here & Now's Robin Young, it's a story about how quickly the world is changing – and how conversations about race are, or aren't, keeping up.

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The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro is one of our favorite books of 2023. It focuses on a 15-year-old boy, Andy Aziza, who lives in Kontagora and uses the framework of superheroes and villains to grapple with the systemic issues in his home country of Nigeria and the African continent as a whole. In today's episode, Buoro speaks with NPR's Camila Domonoske about his protagonist's difficult feelings about his identity and country of origin, and how he balances the darkness of postcolonial violence with light-hearted, teenage issues like high school crushes.

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As Hollywood was warming up for a summer of labor strikes a few months ago, Vanity Fair's Maureen Ryan came out with a new book, Burn It Down, that exposed a lot of the abuses many writers, actors and crew members were coming forth about. When the book first published, Ryan spoke with NPR's Eric Deggans about how the set of Lost became a centerpiece of her research, and how her own experience speaking out about assault at the hands of a TV executive shaped her ability to report highly sensitive stories.

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In her new novel Loot, Tania James writes of a 17-year-old woodworker who's commissioned to build a tiger automaton for the Indian ruler Tipu Sultan in the 18th century. The story is inspired by the real-life Tippoo's Tiger, one of the most famous sculptures in London's Victoria and Albert Museum. James' tale of colonization, war, love and art stretches across India and Europe – and as she tells NPR's Ari Shapiro, it continues to raise questions about historical artifacts and who should own them.

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Today's episode features interviews with two highly accomplished artists who've written graphic memoirs about the intricacies of growing up as young men of color in the U.S. First, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Darrin Bell about The Talk, which chronicles how Black parents speak to their kids about race and policing, and how he experienced that as a son and a father. Then, NPR's Scott Simon asks Edel Rodriguez about Worm, which follows his family's journey from Cuba to Miami on the Mariel boatlift, and how it shaped his feelings towards Donald Trump.

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The new novel and National Book Awards finalist by Justin Torres, Blackouts, blurs the line between fiction and history to bring marginalized queer narratives to life. In today's episode, Torres speaks with NPR's Ari Shapiro about how he was inspired by the work of lesbian archivist and researcher Jan Gay — but when he hit a dead end trying to learn more about her, he used fiction to fill in the gaps. Torres also discusses blacking out text to get rid of the pathologization of LGBTQ people in testimonials, and finding new meaning in the remaining words.

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King:A Life, the biography by Jonathan Eig, provides a fresh perspective into the life of one of America's most important activists. From his upbringing in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward neighborhood to his path through university and the frontlines of the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s career and impact is explained through his faith and relationships. In today's episode, Eig speaks to NPR's Steve Inskeep about how Dr. King rose to prominence at such a young age, and how he maintained his spirituality through deep scrutiny and surveillance.

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The Covenant of Water follows three generations of a family in the coastal state of Kerala, India, where they're haunted by a devastating event, over and over: In every generation, someone in the family drowns. In today's episode, Dr. Abraham Verghese tells NPR's Ari Shapiro about the medical themes in the novel, and how his daytime occupation as a physician and professor at Stanford University informs his writing.

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Back for its 11th year, Books We Love curates NPR staff and critics' favorite books of the year. You can discover your next great read or find the perfect gift for a literary loved one using our interactive guide. With more than 380 books to choose from, you can filter your search with various tags, including "Book Club Ideas," "Seriously Great Writing," and "Staff Picks." In today's episode, Andrew Limbong speaks with All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro about some of the beloved books compiled in Books We Love 2023.

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Comedian Jamie Loftus has been eating hot dogs her whole life. But in her new book, Raw Dog, she takes a road trip across the U.S. to discover how they're prepared in different parts of the country, and does a deep dive into everything from the labor conditions in meatpacking plants to the social class implications of who eats hot dogs and why. In today's episode, Loftus speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about the immigrant roots of the baseball classic, the capitalist propaganda behind the hot dog as a symbol of America, and the ethical ways to still consume them.

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Today's episode features interviews with two giants in pop culture who get very real about the pitfalls in their personal and professional lives. First, NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Henry Winkler about his new memoir, Being Henry, and how his overnight stardom as The Fonz on Happy Days was followed by a long lack of acting roles. Then, NPR's A Martinez chats with Arnold Schwarzenegger about his book Be Useful, and the men in his life who taught him the importance of helping others.

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The Minecraft trilogy by Max Brooks is about two humans – Guy and Summer – who get trapped in the world of the video game Minecraft and have to find their way out. In today's episode, Brooks speaks with NPR's Andrew Limbong about how Minecraft is the perfect medium through which to teach kids about conflict, survival and adapting to change. But they also get to talking about how Brooks' first book, World War Z, landed him a gig at West Point teaching military preparedness, and how he thanks his mom, actress Anne Bancroft, for teaching him the value of being prepared.

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There are lots of things Curtis Chin, co-founder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, learned at his family's Chinese restaurant: how to be curious, how to be kind, how to create community. His new memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, recalls Chin's upbringing as a gay Chinese-American boy in 1980s Detroit, and how the family business served as the ultimate safe space – not just for him, but for everyone in the city. He tells NPR's Ailsa Chang about the diverse clientele that frequented the restaurant, and how it continues to shape his worldview today.

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The debut novel by E.J. Koh is short in length, but extensive in time and place. The Liberators follows several generations of two Korean families, and encapsulates how different individuals reckon with the legacy of war, love and betrayal within their lineage. In today's episode, Koh speaks with NPR's Ari Shapiro about the importance of zooming into people's ordinary lives to understand the impact of historic geopolitical events, and why understanding her own family's history influenced how she wrote her characters.

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Barbra Streisand spent 15 years working to get her directorial debut, the movie Yentl, made. She writes in her new memoir, My Name is Barbra, that people in Hollywood often told her the story was "too Jewish" to appeal to a mainstream audience. In today's episode, Streisand speaks with NPR's Brittany Luse, host of the podcast It's Been a Minute, about that experience. She also talks about why she feels like her book gives her control over her legacy – and how she approached it as kind of a "director's cut" of her life.

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Kerry Washington is well-known for her roles in Scandal, Little Fires Everywhere and Django Unchained. But in her new memoir, she reveals a LOT that the public doesn't know about her – and one big thing she didn't even know about herself until fairly recently. In today's episode, Washington sits down with NPR's Juana Summers for a two-part conversation about how a secret her parents kept for decades challenged – and strengthened – her relationship with them, and how she's managed the vulnerability that comes with sharing that journey with the rest of the world.

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Today's episode is a little different. NPR's David Folkenflik sits down with two writers – Walter Isaacson and Michael Lewis – to ask about their experiences writing biographies of Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried, respectively, and what it means to watch the person you're profiling become a villain in the public eye in real time. They discuss the process of getting close – or keeping their distance – from their sources for Elon Musk and Going Infinite, and confront the criticisms of how they do or don't address the wrongdoings of Musk and Bankman-Fried in their books.

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For the first few years that National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward was writing her new novel, Let Us Descend, she says she really struggled to tap into her main character. Annis is an enslaved Black woman who faces unsurmountable hardships – but she also finds deep comfort in the spirits and elements that surround her. In today's episode, Ward tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe why she needed to incorporate spirituality into the Southern hellscape Annis faces; and why as hard as it can be to read about slavery, it's also an act of memory and resistance.

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Hugo Contreras, the protagonist of Raul Palma's new novel, is a babaláwo; he can cleanse evil spirits. Except he doesn't really believe in the whole thing. So when he's able to strike up a deal with a debt collector – get rid of the ghosts in his house in exchange for a clean slate – he assumes he can mostly fake it. In today's episode, Palma joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens, and how the concept of debt – not just financial, but personal, too – stirs up a lot of trauma for Hugo.

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Abraham Lincoln's leadership is often remembered for reaching across the aisle – he tried to find compromises even in the most divisive times. But as successful as he was in saving the union, Lincoln also spent a lot of time agreeing to disagree with those around him. In his new book, Differ We Must, NPR's Steve Inskeep examines Lincoln's life through 16 such confrontations. In today's episode, Inskeep chats with NPR's Scott Simon about how Lincoln strategically positioned himself on issues like slavery, abolition and democracy – even when his own best friend opposed his stances.

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Today's episode is all about artificial intelligence and its ever-growing role in our society. First, NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with tech entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman about his new book, The Coming Wave, and why – as someone who's deeply involved in the world of AI – Suleyman insists it begs for regulation. Then, NPR's Chloe Veltman speaks with New Yorker cartoonist Amy Kurzweil about her new graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, which recounts how the artist and her dad used her late grandfather's songs, photographs and documents to create a chatbot that resembles him.

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Ola and Michael are, by all means, a power couple. They're both high-profile journalists, engaged to be married in a month, who wake up one morning to find Michael's name on an anonymous list of predatory men in media. In today's episode, author Yomi Adegoke discusses her new novel, The List, which was inspired by a similar document published online during the #MeToo Movement. She tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe how Ola and Michael's Blackness, online anonymity, and social media complicate – and challenge – Ola's personal and political convictions.

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The new novel by Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors, is a project of historical fiction immersed in the culturally rich island of Penang in the 1920s. A once revered, now flailing British writer arrives to visit a friend and find inspiration for a new book. What he uncovers – secret affairs, a murder trial, and deeply complicated relationships – proves to be more than he expected. In today's episode, NPR's Ari Shapiro asks the author about using the real writer W. Somerset Maugham as his protagonist, and about what writing from the perspective of the Brits reveals about imperialism.

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Since being named general secretary of China's ruling Communist Party, Xi Jinping has exerted his power to control historical narratives in China. But in his new book, Sparks, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ian Johnson profiles the people who've fought back to record – and report – the country's full history, including famines, virus outbreaks and ethnic conflicts. In today's episode, Johnson speaks with NPR's John Ruwitch about how the advancement of technologies like PDFs, digital cameras and VPNs have allowed journalists, filmmakers and artists to correct China's collective memory.

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Roman Stories, the new collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, captures the tensions of a rapidly-changing Rome, Italy. In today's episode, Lahiri speaks with NPR's Leila Fadel about how growing up as the daughter of immigrants in the U.S. and later moving to Italy as an adult has complicated ideas of home and belonging for her – and how ultimately, home might be of a mental state rather than a physical place.

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Today's episode is about two books that examine the United States' relationship with other countries during contentious moments in history. First, Here & Now's Robin Young speaks with Daniel James Brown about his book, The Boys in the Boat, which profiles the American rowing team that beat Germany during the 1936 Olympics. George Clooney's film adaptation comes out later this year. Then, NPR's Frank Stasio chats with Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin about American Prometheus, the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer behind this summer's blockbuster.

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We can't do a week about books turned into films without speaking with John Grisham. In today's episode, the author of The Pelican Brief and The Innocent Man speaks with our host Andrew Limbong about writing a follow-up to his hit The Firm after three decades. The Exchange follows lawyer Mitch McDeere's work across the globe – and on a pro bono case. Here, Grisham gets frank about how his trust in the justice system has changed, and how his views on Hollywood have, too.

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The Color Purple is about the survival of Black women in a male-dominated world. Author Alice Walker said that she just wrote what happens in the real world. The book has been made into a film and a Broadway musical already – now it's being turned into a new musical film. In 1982, Walker told former NPR reporter Faith Fancher that "one of the reasons I wanted to have strong, beautiful, wonderful women loving each other is because I think that people can deal with that. [...] I think that the people who are uptight and bigoted and afraid in their own lives will have difficulty."

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Isabel Wilkerson followed her novel about The Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns, with another book that looks at why it happened. Caste – recently made into a film by director Ava DuVernay – argues that caste and not racism is actually what Black people were fleeing when they left the Jim Crow South. Wilkerson told Throughline's Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah that the term racism is rooted in hate but caste is about "power and how those other groups manage and navigate and seek to survive in a society that's created with this ranked hierarchy."

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This week, we're hearing from authors whose works have been adapted to the big screen. In this 2017 interview, NPR's Steve Inskeep asks David Grann about his nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon, which recounts how white settlers conspired to kill members of the Osage Nation in the 1920s in order to take over their oil-rich land in Oklahoma. The story – which also involves the FBI's first major homicide investigation – is at the center of Martin Scorsese's latest film.

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Poet Franny Choi knows that marginalized communities have been facing apocalypses forever. But in her new book, The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On, she uses their survival as a way to look forward. In this episode, she tells NPR's Leila Fadel how understanding that pain and resilience can ultimately be a source of hope. Then, former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins discusses his new collection of very short poems, Musical Tables, with NPR's Scott Simon – and gets into the complexities of how sometimes saying less can offer so much more.

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Charlayne Hunter-Gault is a trailblazing journalist. The first Black reporter for The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" section, she's spent more than a half-century reporting on the lives of Black Americans. Her newest book, My People, is a collection of pieces written throughout her career that provide a nuanced look at Black communities across the U.S. In this episode, she speaks to NPR's Michel Martin about how our country's understanding of race has changed since she first began working as a journalist, but how some things – like the bans on books by certain authors – kind of stay the same.

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Bora Chung's collection of short stories, Cursed Bunny, jumps across different characters and genres, but there's something a little sinister in nearly all of them. In this episode, Chung speaks to NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about how bodily autonomy, social stigma and cultural norms played a big part in one particular horror story – which is actually rooted in something the author experienced in real life.

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When Rabia Chaudry's family moved from Pakistan to the U.S., her parents fully embraced the processed foods lining the grocery store aisles. But as the author and attorney got older, she began to associate eating with shame and secrecy. Her new memoir, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, recounts how her outlook on food changed as she understood her own mom's eating patterns. In this episode, Chaudry tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe how she eventually started healing – so much so that she reclaimed her childhood nickname for the title of her book.

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Novelist Barbara Kingsolver loves living in the Appalachian hills of southwestern Virginia. But she says she feels that the region is often misconstrued by mainstream media. Her new book, Demon Copperhead, follows a young boy grappling with the consequences of loss, addiction and poverty – but also finding ways to survive through creativity and imagination. In this episode, Kingsolver speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about the Dickensian influences in the novel, the divide between urban and rural, and the idea that "the middle of nowhere is relative."

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Today's episode is all about two books that find parallels across long stretches of time. First, an interview with Barbara Kingsolver and former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro about Kingsolver's novel Unsheltered, which finds striking similarities between an 18th century "utopian" community and 2016 America. Then, NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Daniel Mason about his new novel North Woods, which follows the inhabitants of a plot of land across hundreds of years.

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In today's episode, Omekongo Dibinga walks Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes through several myths featured in his new book, Lies About Black People. From how the stereotype of "the welfare queen" came to be through how an enslaved Black man taught Jack Daniel to make whiskey, Dibinga breaks down the different ways Black people have been maligned and unacknowledged for their contributions in American history. He says that as he was writing and researching, he realized it wasn't only white people who needed to relearn that history – and he explains why it's important for Black readers, too.

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