Books & Literature

After 35 years as a Supreme Court justice, John Paul Stevens retired last year. His newly released memoir is about his time on the bench and the five Supreme Court chief justices he personally knew. He details his views of those justices and how his viewpoints on various issues evolved over the years.

Russell Banks' latest is an uneven effort to excavate and redeem the dregs of modern society. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the novel — about porn addiction and sexual predators — is compelling in a low-grade, nightmarish sort of way.

Jeffrey Eugenides' third novel, The Marriage Plot, charts the lives of three young adults as they finish college, fall in love and navigate the real world after graduating from Brown University in 1982. Eugenides, also a Brown alum, based some of the novel on his own experiences directly after college.

Dana Spiotta's third novel, Stone Arabia, is about an aging musician who never achieved the type of success he'd have liked. Rather than giving up, he chronicles an imaginary version of his life — as a successful rock star recording his career in a series of journals.

Roger Ebert tackles lowbrow and highbrow topics alike in his memoir; critic John Powers says the chronicle is sunny and hopeful — just like Ebert himself.

Bumble-ardy is a deeply imaginative tale about an orphaned pig who longs for a birthday party. Sendak, who is 83, wrote and illustrated the book while caring for his longtime partner, who died of cancer in 2007. "I did Bumble-ardy to save myself," Sendak says. "I did not want to die with him."

Stephen Greenblatt chronicles the unlikely discovery of Lucretius' poem "On the Nature of Things" — by a 15th-century Italian book hunter. The Swerve is a masterfully written meditation on the fragile inheritance of ideas.

What if the rapture actually occurred? That's the plot of Tom Perrotta's new novel Te Leftovers, which examines the aftermath of an unexplained rapture like even in which millions of people around the globe inexplicably disappear into thin air.

In Kevin Wilson's first novel, husband-and-wife conceptual artists stage elaborate public acts of "choreographed spontaneity" -- to the embarrassment of their children. Wilson's inventive energy makes The Family Fang a strange, wonderful and refreshing read in the summer heat.

Landesman, a songwriter and poet who wrote the words to the jazz standard "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," died on July 23. She was 83. Fresh Air remembers the iconoclastic lyricist with highlights from a 1988 interview.

Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. looks at the cultural legacy of African slaves brought to Latin America.

Donald Ray Pollock worked in a paper mill and meatpacking plant for 32 years before becoming a writer. His second book The Devil All the Time is set in his hometown of Knockemstiff, Ohio, where he says "nearly everyone was connected by blood through one godforsaken calamity or another."

Nik Worth is a failed musician who painstakingly documents his life and non-existent career, leaving his sister to worry about practical things like paying his rent. Dana Spiotta's new novel investigates the long-term costs of an artist's passion.

In December 2009, an al-Qaida mole believed to be a CIA informant detonated a suicide bomb inside a fortified military base in Pakistan, killing seven CIA employees. Reporter Joby Warrick writes about the man who pulled off the attack — and explains how he did it — in The Triple Agent.

Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano explains why our brains make mistakes when we try to remember long lists of information or add large numbers in our heads. Humans live "in a time and place we didn't evolve to live in," he says.

Dr. Jennifer White is a retired orthopedic surgeon diagnosed with dementia — who cannot remember whether or not she killed her friend. Alice LaPlante's debut novel is a fearless and compassionate investigation into the erosion of her main character's mind.

The physician and anthropologist has spent 30 years treating patients in Haiti. In Haiti After The Earthquake, he details what it was like on the ground in the days after the 2010 quake — and why the country is still struggling to recover.

Sally H. Jacobs' new biography, The Other Barack, follows the troubled life of Barack Obama Sr. — from Kenya to Hawaii and back. Jacobs believes that if Obama Sr. had played a larger role in his son's life, Obama probably wouldn't have become president.

It all started one morning in 1949, when White discovered a beautiful web in his barn, glistening with dew. In The Story of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims explores how White wrote his magical meditation on time, mortality and friendship — for children.