NPR's Book of the Day

For chef Erin French, a meal is about a lot more than the food on the table. Her new cookbook, Big Heart Little Stove , provides not only recipes from her family and famed Maine restaurant The Lost Kitchen, but also her philosophy for sprucing up a table setting or presenting a particular dish in a way that elevates the meaning of the entire experience. In today's episode, French speaks with Here...

Mark Kurlansky's new book The Core of an Onion is part cookbook, part culinary history. Kurlansky gives readers dozens of facts about this rich vegetable that is able to grow in nearly every climate. In today's episode, Kurlansky gives Here and Now's Scott Tong a few onion fun facts and context about the onion's rich history. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of pers...

Chef and Food Network personality Marcela Valladolid combines her joy of cooking, appreciation of community, and love of Mexican cuisine in her new cookbook Familia: 125 Foolproof Mexican Recipes to Feed Your People . In today's episode, Valladolid speaks with Here and Now's Deepa Fernandes about the online cooking class she and her sister started during the pandemic. This pandemic cooking class o...

The new cookbook The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z shows home chefs how to transform their forgotten leftovers into beloved meals. In today's episode, chef Tamar Adler talks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about how replenishing leftovers helps reduce food waste – and she shows her how to use an empty nut butter jar to create a delectable noodle dish. See pcm.adswizz.com for information ab...

The Cookie That Changed My Life is a new cookbook by world-renowned baker Nancy Silverton (written with Carolynn Carreño). Silverton is the founder of LaBrea Bakery and has been a professional baker for more than 50 years; now she's sharing some recipes of baking perfection. In today's episode, Silverton talks with Here and Now's Robin Young about how to perfect not only peanut butter cookie recip...

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Books We Love season! In today's episode, Pop Culture Happy Hour host Linda Holmes and our own Andrew Limbong sit down to chat about some of the best books they read in 2023. From Ringmaster — a biography of former WWE chairman and CEO Vince McMahon — to Prom Mom , a thriller about teenage exes looking back on their very dangerous past, Linda and Andrew fi...

In the new book Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education , author Stephanie Land juggles single parenthood and going to college. Land is the author of the Netflix miniseries hit Maid , a story where a single mother cleans homes to make ends meet. In today's episode, Land speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about this next challenge of going to college as a single parent to fulfill h...

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America re-tells American history from the experiences of Black people. In today's episode, political commentator and author Michael Harriot speaks with Here & Now's Celeste Headlee about how revisiting American history in the context of the Black perspective shows the country's story as one of triumph and survival. See pcm.adswizz.com for information...

When author Caitlin Shetterly saw an influx of license plates from Massachusetts and New York arrive in her home state of Maine during the pandemic, inspiration struck for her debut novel. Pete and Alice in Maine follows a couple that moves the family out of New York City during the initial COVID-19 scare — but finds the baggage from Pete's affair and Alice's questions about her purpose follow the...

Vauhini Vara started writing some of the stories in This Is Salvaged when she was still in her 20s, two decades ago. From the complicated tension between two sisters to the way one mother chooses to selectively share information with her daughter, the stories in the book focus on the way people — primarily women — can struggle to connect with one another despite their best efforts. In today's epis...

The novel The Rachel Incident is rooted around a wonderful, messy friendship. Rachel and James live together, party, and get themselves into a peculiar situation with an older married couple. In today's episode, author Caroline O'Donoghue speaks with NPR's Miles Parks about how abortion and sexual repression in Irish society play a large role in Rachel's early adulthood. O'Donoghue also shares why...

This year, the novel Fear of Flying — which broke all sorts of unwritten rules around marriage, sex, and women's bodily autonomy when first published — turned 50 years old. So for today's episode, we dug up a 1973 interview with author Erica Jong and NPR's Steven Banker where Jong speaks frankly about the constraints women felt at the time about making art, and how their husbands would be perceive...

Today's episode takes us inside the kitchen of Washington, D.C. Michelin-star restaurant Maydān. There, owner Rose Previte walks NPR's Asma Khalid through several recipes in her new cookbook, Maydān , which focuses on family dishes from a diverse array of influences. Previte and Khalid get to talking about how growing up in a Lebanese-Italian home in a small Ohio town — and later traveling across...

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 w...

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 . See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal d...

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...

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...

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 da...

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. See pcm.ads...

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 b...

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. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorsh...

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....

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...

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...

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 Sám...