Skip to main content
Author Muriel Spark writing

Books & Literature

Filter by

Select Topics

Select Air Date

to

Select Segment Types

Segment Types

5,209 Segments

Sort:

Newest

21:23

Garry Kasparov, Carefully Planning His Next Moves

Always politically minded, chess master Garry Kasparov is now running for president of Russia. He's the leader of an opposition coalition known as The Other Russia. He's also published a new book, called How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom.

Interview
51:17

'Fair Game' Tells Plame Saga from Her Viewpoint

In July 2003, newspaper columnist Robert Novak published the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame — shortly after Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote an op-ed piece contradicting President Bush's contention that Saddam Hussein had tried to procure yellowcake uranium from the West African nation of Niger.

06:58

March on the Pentagon, 40 Years Later

The three-day March on the Pentagon in October 1967 inspired Norman Mailer to write Armies of the Night and stirred many to action. While the march 40 years ago cannot be considered a turning point in the anti-war movement in the 1960s, it did serve to galvanize opposition to the Vietnam War.

Commentary
38:05

'Wondrous Life' Explores Multinationality

Novelist Junot Diaz's first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao explores the complexities of living in two cultures at once. Set in both the United States and in the Dominican Republic, the novel follows the story of Oscar Wao in prose that frequently mixes Spanish and English in the same sentence.

Interview
42:37

Peter Sagal, Exploring 'Vice' So We Don't Have To

As host of the NPR news quiz Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, Peter Sagal spends a lot of time reading the newspaper.

Lately, though, he's also spent many an hour going to strip joints, a swingers club, a porn-movie set and casinos — among other dens of what some call iniquity.

All research, of course, for his new project, The Book of Vice. He wanted to get a perspective on the indulgences of others, and report back to the rest of us.

Interview
44:03

Alice Sebold's Bleak 'Almost Moon'

Author Alice Sebold has produced difficult books before: Her novel The Lovely Bones, soon to be filmed by director Peter Jackson, centers on a 14-year-old looking down from heaven after her own rape and murder.

Now comes Sebold's latest fiction, The Almost Moon: Its narrative involves a middle-aged woman who murders her ailing elderly mother.

Interview
05:36

'Bridge of Sighs' Captures Life in Small-Town USA

Richard Russo's novel, Bridge of Sighs, is a story about unexceptional people in an unexceptional upstate New York town. But the novel, Maureen Corrigan says, is anything but unexceptional; it's pound-for-pound the best new fiction on shelves today. Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls, a story about the relationships between people in a small town in Maine.

Review
51:27

Colbert Builds 'Report' with Viewers, Readers

Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report talks about his book I Am America (And So Can You!) and his successful television show.

The former correspondent and contributor to The Daily Show created his own Emmy-nominated late-night show to parody Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor.

In I Am America, Colbert targets race, religion, sports and the American family as well as more mundane topics like breakfast cereal.

Interview
18:46

Know-it-All Author A.J. Jacobs Tries 'Living Biblically'

He spent a year reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica and writing The Know-It-All, an account of what he learned.

Now author A.J. Jacobs has accomplished another annually retentive feat: Living life the way the Good Book says we should.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible chronicles Jacobs' attempts to follow every rule in the Bible — and considers the lessons he learned along the way.

Interview
31:26

Shalom Auslander, Voicing a Comic 'Lament'

In his memoir Foreskin's Lament, author Shalom Auslander writes about his attempt to break free from the strict, socially isolated Orthodox Jewish environment of his childhood.

Auslander is the author of the short-story collection Beware of God. He's contributed to The New Yorker, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine.

Interview
05:57

"Run" by Ann Patchett

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews “Run” (HarperCollins) the new novel by Ann Patchett.

Review
21:31

Bliss Broyard: 'One Drop' and What It Means

A new family memoir from the daughter of famed literary critic Anatole Broyard bears the subtitle My Father's Hidden Life — A Story of Race and Family Secrets. Bliss Broyard, raised as white in Connecticut, was 24 when she learned that her father had concealed his black heritage.

Interview
37:57

Edwidge Danticat, Dealing with Birth and Death

Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat's memoir Brother, I'm Dying details the complicated emotions surrounding the deaths of her father and uncle — and the birth of her daughter — all in the same year.

Danticat's uncle raised her in Haiti until age 12, when she moved to New York to live with her immigrant parents.

Danticat is the author of a number of novels, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, as well as the short-story collection Krik? Krak!.

A portrait of writer Edwidge Danticat
21:43

Philip Roth's 'Ghost' Returns

Philip Roth's newest novel, Exit Ghost, is his ninth and final Nathan Zuckerman book.

The series began in 1979 with The Ghost Writer; a compendium, Zuckerman Bound, is now available.

Roth won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for American Pastoral; his 28 novels have won him numerous other awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Fiction.

Interview
51:09

'Life Lessons' From a White House Plumber

When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, the Nixon White House tried to discredit him. Among other things, Nixon loyalists burglarized the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

On this edition of Fresh Air, we spend the entire hour with Bud Krogh, who went to prison for his role in the Ellsberg affair — and who has a new memoir. It's called Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House.

Interview
05:25

From Earlier Wars, Flight Through Fiction's Lens

Fresh Air's critic-at-large tells us about the wartime aviation novels of British writer Derek Robinson, who served in the Royal Air Force. His books include Goshawk Squadron, Damned Good Show, A Good, Clean Fight, and Piece of Cake.

Commentary
38:09

Jack Goldsmith on 'The Terror Presidency'

As head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith led the team of lawyers that advises the presidency on the limits of executive power. During his tenure, he battled the Bush White House on the now-infamous "torture memos," as well as on issues of surveillance and the detention and trial of suspected terrorists. Goldsmith resigned his post after nine months.

Interview
50:35

Rocker Alice Cooper, 'Golf Monster'

During his heyday in the early 1970s, shock-rock icon Alice Cooper dressed like a ghoul with a gaunt face and mascara-streaked eyes. His hits included "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "Welcome to My Nightmare." In a memoir — Alice Cooper: Golf Monster, he recounts how he used his obsession with golf to overcome his addiction to alcohol.

This interview was originally broadcast on May 17, 2007.

Interview

Did you know you can create a shareable playlist?

Advertisement

There are more than 22,000 Fresh Air segments.

Let us help you find exactly what you want to hear.
Just play me something
Your Queue

Would you like to make a playlist based on your queue?

Generate & Share View/Edit Your Queue