Books & Literature

Last April, Merchant Marine Capt. Richard Phillips became the first American seaman to be captured by pirates in two centuries. After attempting to escape, Phillips was beaten and bound by his Somali captors. Five days later, Navy SEAL snipers killed the pirates and rescued Phillips. His new memoir, A Captain's Duty, recounts the ordeal.

So Much For That, Lionel Shriver's new novel, is about a middle-aged man forced to give up his dream of retirement on a tropical island when his wife falls ill and he's forced to go back to work to keep his employee health insurance. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the novel "acknowledge[s] the dramatic depth that fiction can bring to the debate over current events."

How do Hollywood studios make money? Journalist Edward Jay Epstein goes looking for answers in The Hollywood Economist, explaining the complicated relationship between distributors and studios — and revealing why the humble cup holder may be the greatest technological advancement in the history of Hollywood.

Writer Judith Shulevitz started observing Shabbat because of her own ambivalence about the traditional weekly day of rest. Her own experiences with the ritual -- as well as its larger historical context -- are examined in her new book, The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.

The Iranian-American journalist was imprisoned in Iran, interrogated, tried and eventually released. But the controversy continues. Saver says she confessed to her crimes in order to get out of jail but asserts she did nothing wrong. Her new book Between Two Worlds is an account of her time in captivity.

Jane's Fame, Claire Harman's book about the author of Emma and Sense and Sensibility, reveals the gap between her legacy -- modest, indifferent to fame and devoted to her characters -- and her ambition.

The book by the conservative strategist is called Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. Rove tells Fresh Air the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 was not based on wrong information from the Bush administration, but was based on wrong information from the intelligence community.

Melissa Febos graduated from college with straight A's and a prestigious internship. She also led a secret life as a dominatrix. Her new memoir, Whip Smart, details her time working in a sex dungeon in midtown Manhattan. She describes what it was like to work for four years at the upscale S&M house.

The latest novel from John Banville throws a handful of Greek gods into the household of a glum human family to explore sex, love, faith and mortality. Reviewer Maureen Corrigan says The Infinities puts Banville's literary gifts on prominent display.

Novelist Barry Hannah died earlier this week. A native of Mississippi, Hannah won the William Faulkner Prize for his 1972 novel Geronimo Rex. Today, we remember the Souther author, who appeared on Fresh Air in 2001.

After Hustvedt suffered several unexplainable seizure-like episodes that defied medical diagnoses, she decided to chart her experiences -- and the murky intersection between mind, brain and body -- in a new book, The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves.

Maureen Corrigan reviews "36 Arguments' Poses Questions Of Faith."

The Routes of Man is the new book by Ted Conover, a Pulitzer Prize nominee for Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. Reviewer Maureen Corrigan says Conover's newest effort, about how roads shape the world in which we live, has "vivid armchair travel" appeal.

Attorney David Dow has spent his career representing inmates who have been sentenced to death. Despite his efforts, many of his clients have been executed — and most of them were guilty. In his new memoir, The Autobiography of an Execution, Dow details what it's like to become emotionally involved with the people living on death row.

Temple Grandin is one of the world's greatest animal behaviorists. She is also autistic — and has put that to work for her. Grandin has written several books on animals, including Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior. This weekend, HBO will premiere a made-for-TV movie based on her life.

Mare's-urine cocktails? Do-it-yourself forceps? Randi Hutter Epstein's new book Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank is full of delightful — and sometimes disturbing — anecdotes about the history of pregnancy and childbirth.

In 1967, mathematician Ed Thorp revolutionized Wall Street with a method of using math and computers to predict the future of the stock market — and his hedge fund has been profitable ever since. Thorp's story, and those of many other market-driven math whizzes, is told in Scott Patterson's new book The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It.

Back when Theodore White did his groundbreaking book The Making of the President 1960, it was easy to write about elections. Most Americans didn't know very much about how campaigns actually worked. These days, we're all experts on push-polling, NASCAR dads, and those oddball Iowa caucuses. For an election book to register now, it must offer something new, something hot. It has to dish.

Have you ever wondered about the personal life of the man who developed the theory of evolution? On today's Fresh Air, the conservationist Randal Keynes — Charles Darwin's great-great grandson — talks about the man behind the science: his relationship with his wife, Emma, and how they handled the death of their daughter. In 2002, Keynes wrote a book on the subject called Annie's Box, which shares personal letters and diaries documenting how Darwin cared for his daughter in the last months of her life. The book is the basis for the new film Creation.

It was in 1967, on her first day in New York, that 20-year-old aspiring poet Patti Smith met fellow artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Their friendship, romance and creative collaboration began on that day and lasted until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989.