Books & Literature

Iranian-American journalist Farnaz Fassihi was stationed in the Middle East from 2002 until 2006, where she covered the Iraq war and the daily struggles of the Iraqi people. She recounts her experiences in her memoir, Waiting for an Ordinary Day.

Photographer William Claxton got his start taking photos of jazz musicians in natural settings instead of smoky lounges. His 1967 film Basic Black was considered the first fashion video. He died Oct. 11 from congestive heart failure.

Curtis Sittenfeld's new novel American Wife is about a kind, bookish, young woman who marries a wealthy charismatic young man who eventually becomes president. It's based on the life of Laura Bush. One reviewer calls it "a compassionate, illuminating, and beautifully rendered portrait."

In Francine Prose's new novel, Goldengrove, a sister's sudden death leaves a young girl adrift. Prose is the author of 15 previous novels, including A Changed Man and Blue Angel, as well as the nonfiction book Reading Like a Writer.

Radical bombers battle strikebreaking capitalists while Clarence Darrow squares off against the "American Sherlock Holmes" in this very popular history of a trial that mixed murder, politics and celebrity in 1910 Los Angeles.

An anti-social Goth gal-pal adds fun and a bracing feminist perspective to Stieg Larsson's witty, hard-boiled tale, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Crime novelist James Crumley's detective tales were filled with sex, drugs, violence and profanity, and inspired comparisons to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, among others. Crumley died Sept. 17 in Missoula, Mont. He was 68.

Brenda Wineapple's highly engaging biography White Heat examines the poet's enduring friendship with editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Marlin Fitzwater spent 17 years as a government employee before being appointed White House press secretary under Ronald Reagan. He also worked for George H. W. Bush.

A new novel three decades in the making features time travel, screwball hidden identity plots and lively background music. Reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls The Little Book by Selden Edwards an "an ideal late-summer reading getaway."

Record producer Jerry Wexler died on August 15. He was 91. Wexler created the careers of some of the greatest musicians of the time, including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin.

Theodore Solotaroff, founder of The New American Review, died Aug. 8 of complications from pneumonia. He was 79. An influential man in the publishing world, Solotaroff helped writers like Philip Roth achieve recognition.

There are 100,000 private military contractors in Iraq. Mercenary John Geddes explains why he thinks this is a good thing. His new book Highway to Hell is an account of his experiences in Iraq as a soldier for hire.

Hostile womanizer, crack addict, New York Times journalist — David Carr has been all of those, sometimes simultaneously. For his memoir The Night of the Gun, Carr put on his investigative-reporter hat — to reconstruct his various sordid lives.

On August 3, Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure at age 89. Solzhenitsyn exposed the atrocities committed by the Soviet Gulag in his work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Fresh Air remembers the Nobel Prize winner.

As a journalist, John Darnton spent 40 years at The New York Times. As a novelist, he writes colorful mysteries. His newest murder yarn, set in a big-city newsroom that seems awfully familiar: Black and White and Dead All Over.

As war continues and the economy sags, Maureen Corrigan recommends three historical works that provide insight into coping with trying times.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and the American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis. The book tracks the history of Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, an organization that promoted the development of new jazz styles.