How's this for a novel premise? Owen Lerner is a pediatric psychiatrist. One day, he's struck by lightning. He survives but he has a new obsession -- with barbecue. That's the premise behind Mary Kay Zuravleff's novel, "Man Alive!" She talks about its inspiration and the book's themes.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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The scientific genius Kurt Godel is on our minds this week. So Anne Strainchamps talks with the French writer, Yannick Grannec, about her novel, "The Goddess of Small Things," which is based on Godel's relationship with his wife, Adele.
About a year ago, independent producer Karen Michel moved from Brooklyn to Pleasant Valley, New York, near the Hudson River. She prepared this piece as a way of getting to know her new neighbors
Gram Rabbit is a rock band whose members live in the Joshua Tree Desert. Their CD is called "Music to Start a Cult to."
Mark Barrowcliffe wasted his youth playing Dungeons and Dragons. Now he's turned his obsession into a book.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi is a poet and English professor who writes crime novels set in his native Kenya. He says the crime genre lets him write truthfully about race, class and violence in cities like Nairobi.
Paul Berman has written for The New Republic and the New York Times Magazine. His new book is “Terror and Liberalism.” He says that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is the intellectual heir of traditional fascist movements
Historian Michael Oren talks with Steve Paulson about how the Barbary Pirates brought the Marines to the shores of Tripoli and why they went into the Middle East six times during the 19th century.
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