NPR's Book of the Day

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 th...

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 Fr...

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 Exchang e follows lawyer Mitch McDeere's work across the globe – and on a pro bono case. Here, Grisham gets frank about how his trust i...

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 w...

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...

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 m...

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 col...

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 Miche...

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 li...

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 NP...

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...

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 fo...

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...

After climate change has wreaked havoc on the planet – and its flora and fauna – delicious dinners are a memory of the past. But in C Pam Zhang's new novel, Land of Milk and Honey , a struggling chef looking for a job finds herself in an elite corner of the world where eating is about more than survival. In today's episode, Zhang tells NPR's Ailsa Chang how being a picky eater ultimately led her t...

The Big Myth , a new book co-written by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, details the rise of free market capitalism in the 19th century and its long-lasting impact on American democracy. In today's episode, Oreskes speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about how Little House on the Prairie , union busting, and Ronald Reagan all played a role in diminishing government regulation – and how the effect...

Nathan Hill's novel Wellness starts with a blossoming romance between two artists in Chicago's underground scene. Twenty years later, they're married, raising a kid, and running into all sorts of conflict, within themselves and with one another. In today's episode, Hill speaks with Here & Now 's Robin Young about how love and partnership changes over time, and how the start of the book – which he...

Today's episode features interviews with two authors whose books on trans and queer gender identity are facing challenges in school districts across the U.S. First, NPR's Steve Inskeep sits down with writer and photographer Susan Kuklin to discuss her book, Beyond Magenta , which features the photos and narratives of six trans and nonbinary teens around the country. Then, NPR's Rachel Martin asks...

Author and cartoonist Art Spiegelman is familiar with the hysteria surrounding certain library books. In today's episode, he tells NPR's Scott Simon about how comic book burnings during his childhood in the 1950s weren't all that different from book bans taking place across the country today. Spiegelman says that though they tackled difficult subjects, he found then – and continues to find today –...

Author George M. Johnson says they knew their memoir, All Boys Aren't Blue , would be challenged by school boards – but they didn't realize just how much controversy it would stir up. The memoir explores Johnson's upbringing as a queer young person of color in New Jersey and Virginia. In today's episode, they tell NPR's Leila Fadel that despite all the pushback the book has received, it's been ove...

Jordan Banks, the protagonist of New Kid , is a seventh grade student who loves to draw and hopes to one day become a cartoonist. But the graphic novel following Jordan's arrival at a predominantly white, elite, private school has been challenged numerous times in the state of Texas by people claiming it promotes critical race theory. In today's episode, author Jerry Craft tells NPR's A Martinez h...

Professor Ashley Hope Pérez's book Out of Darkness explores school segregation in 20th century Texas through a fictional love story between a young African-American boy and a Mexican-American girl. But the YA novel has been banned in a number of places and effectively pulled out of several school libraries. In today's episode, the author tells NPR's Rob Schmitz how sexual content is used as a scap...

Today's episode is all about figuring out the moment things went wrong between family members – and how the fallout has long lasting effects on everyone involved. First, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with author Hilda Blum about her novel How to Love Your Daughter , and what it means for a mother and daughter's bond to be tested over time. Then, Here & Now's Tiziana Dearing asks William Landay ab...

In today's episode, Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes and author Lang Leav bond over growing up in Australia, and navigating racism and anti-immigrant sentiments while also trying to find community as a young person. Leav's new novel, Others Were Emeralds , follows a Cambodian teen growing up in a small town of Asian immigrants near Sydney. While she's trying to make sense of the hostility that she fac...

As a physician, Sandeep Jauhar had a certain understanding of Alzheimer's. Then, when the disease was impacting his own father, more and more questions, confusion, and frustrations arose. In his new memoir, My Father's Brain , Jauhar describes how his immigrant family grappled with his father's new reality. He tells Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes how difficult and exhausting it can be to allocate th...

Phil McDaragh is a great Irish poet; he was also a lousy husband and father, abandoning his family to pursue his writing. In Anne Enright's new novel, The Wren, The Wren , three generations of women in the McDaragh family contend with the absent patriarch's complicated legacy. Enright spoke with NPR's Scott Simon about writing fiction about a great writer, and how the poet's bad behavior in his pe...