NPR Books

It took over five years for Nathaniel Rich to finish his first novel — maybe because he was writing The Mayor's Tongue secretly, first as a college student, and then while writing film criticism during the day.

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Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential candidate, is now a best-selling author. Palin's book, Going Rogue, made the best-seller list before it was released. She's planning a book tour that will only stoke her meteoric political celebrity. But to what end?

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Sarah Palin may be the Republican party's next big hope, but commentator Rod Dreher says her new book, Going Rogue, does little to bolster her image. She may be the perkiest small-town American in the spotlight, but Palin is selling her personality, not a platform.

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Just one day after its release, Sarah Palin's new memoir, Going Rogue, is already on its way to the bestseller lists. Pundits are combing the book for signs of the former vice presidential candidate's political ambitions — and prospects. NPR's Congressional correspondent Andrea Seabrook gave it a read.

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Before his death in June 2008, comedian George Carlin spent 10 years working on a memoir, Last Words, with his longtime friend Tony Hendra. Hendra, a writer and comedian, talks with Rebecca Roberts about Carlin's life and legacy.

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The history of literature is filled with authors who also performed surgery or scribbled prescriptions. Lynn Neary speaks with two doctors who are also fiction writers — Abraham Verghese and Terrence Holt — about the link between medicine and writing literature.

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This week's staff picks: Biographies from bad-boy Andre Agassi and 'Rogue' politician Sarah Palin. Stephen King returns to form in a new novel, Zadie Smith fascinates in collected essays, and science writer Nicholas Wade argues that God is just an evolutionary adaptation.

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The Booker Prize-winning author calls her new novel, The Children's Book, her "easiest to love." In it, the children of a bohemian turn-of-the-century couple discover the truth about their parents. Byatt is also the author of Possession.

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In a new book, journalist Joshua Kosman predicts a coming credit crisis, and assigns blame to private equity firms. While such firms make a fast profit from buying companies, improving them and reselling them, the companies take on the debt incurred from the purchase, leaving them in danger of financial collapse.

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When CBS correspondent Byron Pitts was 12 years old, he had a debilitating stutter and a terrible secret: he couldn't read. In his new memoir, Step Out On Nothing, Pitts describes how, with faith and family, he overcame illiteracy to become an award-winning correspondent.

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Writer Kevin Baker says he never thought he'd be "hip enough" to venture into graphic novels. But with illustrator Danijel Zezelj, he has created Luna Park — a ghostly graphic novel set in the decaying amusement parks of Coney Island. It profiles a Russian immigrant plagued by nightmares of the Chechen War.

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Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin launches a media tour Monday to promote her memoir, Going Rogue. What will the book — and book tour — mean for Palin's political future?

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If you've used a GPS system — or if you happen to be using the Internet to read this — you can thank DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. For 50 years, the smallish, somewhat secretive division of the Pentagon has been mostly off-limits to reporters. Now author Michael Belfiore has profiled the agency in a new book.

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