Books & Literature

A review of Thomas Hardy: The Time-torn Man, the new biography of the 19th century poet and novelist by Claire Tomalin. Tomalin has distinguished herself in the field of literary biography by her celebrated biographies of such figures as Mary Wollstonecraft and Samuel Pepys.

Writer Emily Rapp's left foot was amputated when she was four years old, and she has worn a prosthetic device ever since. Her book is Poster Child: A Memoir.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz advises politicians on the language they should use to win elections and promote their policies. Although he works on one side of the aisle, he says that what he does is essentially nonpartisan, seeking clarity and simplicity in language. His critics disagree, and have accused him of using language that misrepresents policies to "sell" them to the public. Frank Luntz is the author of Words That Work.

Singer, guitarist, and author Alex Kapranos is the frontman for the Glasgow-based indie rock quartet Franz Ferdinand. The band, best known for its single "Take Me Out," has produced two hit CDs. Kapranos has a new book about eating on tour, called Sound Bites. The book is compiled partly from his column in London's Guardian newspaper about his gastronomic adventures.

Novelist Robert Stone has written a new memoir that begins with a stint in the Navy in the late 1950s, continues through his work as a journalist in Vietnam and then includes his counterculture years in the 1970s, taking hallucinogenic drugs, cross-country road trips, and hanging out with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. His memoir is, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties. Stone's novels include Dog Soldiers (which was adapted into the film Who'll Stop the Rain), and Outerbridge Reach.

New York Times reporter Alex Kuczynski's new book is Beauty Junkies: Inside our $15 Billion Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery. No stranger to "beauty maintenance," Kuczynski has had botox, an eye-lift, and liposuction, but gave it up after a bad experience with lip augmentation.

Richard Powers recently won the National Book Award for his book The Echo Maker. Part mystery and part science, the novel is about a 27-year-old man who falls into a coma after a car crash and wakes up with a rare brain disorder. Powers' previous books include The Gold Bug Variations and The Time of Our Singing.

Our book critic continues her list of the year's best in books. This time, she tells us about her favorites in mysteries and nonfiction.

Maureen Corrigan runs down her list of the year's best fiction, including a series of books set in post-Sept. 11 New York City, Richard Ford's last installment in the Frank Bascombe trilogy and fiction by two Alices.

Short story master Alice Munro would be justified in resting on her laurels at this point in her career — she's won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award three times, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. But in her new collection of stories, called The View from Castle Rock, Munro veers off into a fresh direction — exploring family history through fact and fiction.

Kiran Desai's novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Her mother, Anita, has been short-listed for the prize three times. Her books include Fire on the Mountain, Clear Light of Day and In Custody. Kiran was born in New Delhi and moved to the United States as a teenager.

Nicholas Proffitt, who covered the Vietnam War for Newsweek magazine and wrote the book Gardens of Stone, died Nov. 10 at age 63. Gardens of Stone was later made into a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. This interview originally aired on May 25, 1987.

Daniel Mendelsohn's new book is The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. As a child, his old Jewish relatives told stories of family members killed in the Holocaust. Mendelsohn undertook a worldwide search for surviving members of his family's town. During his investigation, Mendelsohn discovered letters from the family begging their relatives in the United States to help them get out of their Ukrainian town.

Comedian Harry Shearer has a new book called Not Enough Indians, a novel about Native Americans and gambling. He also has a role in the new film For Your Consideration, directed by Christopher Guest. Shearer is a voice actor on The Simpsons, playing the roles of Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner and many more characters. Shearer is also the host of the weekly public radio series Le Show.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Styron died Wednesday of pneumonia at the age of 81. Styron's books include Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner (which won the Pulitzer) and Sophie's Choice, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Meryl Streep. His memoir Darkness Visible detailed his struggles with depression and suicidal impulses. This interview originally aired on Sept. 19, 1990.

Richard Gilman, who died Saturday at age 83, was a writer and professor at the Yale School of Drama. Ben Brantley of The New York Times writes, "Mr. Gilman was one of a breed of philosopher-critics... who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. They located in modern drama the elements of abstraction, alienation and absurdity that had long been at the core of discussions of other forms of art and literature." In this archive interview from 1987, Gilman recounts his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism and then to atheism.

Richard Ford, author of The Sportswriter and Independence Day, has written a new novel entitled The Lay of the Land. Independence Day was the first book to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum.

Kenya political activist Wangari Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Her new memoir is called Unbowed. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which has planted over thirty million trees across Kenya. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's parliament, and in 2003 was appointed assistant minister for the environment.

In The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, author Daniel Mendelsohn unearths and reconstructs the lives of six people in his family who died in the Holocaust. Maureen Corrigan has a book review.