Books & Literature

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Hal Needham worked as a Hollywood stuntman for over 40 years. He details some of his most death-defying feats (and why he can't stand modern special effects) in his new memoir, Stuntman!

J.D Salinger died a year ago this Thursday, and in time for that anniversary, there's a newly published biography called, simply, J.D. Salinger: A Life. Book critic Maureen Corrigan says readers who revere Salinger will find a lot that's surprising in his early background.

Reynolds Price, the acclaimed writer known for his evocative novels and stories about rural North Carolina, died in Durham on Thursday. He was 77. Fresh Air remembers the writer with excerpts taken from several interviews he gave over the past 20 years.

Wilfrid Sheed, the satirical British essayist known for bringing his trademark wit to a wide range of novels, reviews and nonfiction books, died this week. He was 80. Fresh Air remembers the writer with excerpts from a 1988 interview.

Chris Nowinski has made a crusade of fighting head injuries in football. The Harvard-educated former pro wrestler had to leave the ring after suffering multiple concussions. He now educates others — including the NFL — on what head injuries can do to players' brains years later.

Debut author Siobhan Fallon writes about the lives of soldiers and their families in her new short story collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone. Families, she says, take the strangeness of deployment and learn how to create a new normal.

Amy Chua, a professor of law at Yale, has written her first memoir about raising children the "Chinese way" — with strict rules and expectations. Maureen Corrigan predicts the book will be "a book club and parenting blog phenomenon."

Writer Mira Bartok's memoir, The Memory Palace, is in part about the car accident that left her with traumatic brain injury and about her relationship with her schizophrenic mother. She explains how her brain injury helped her understand — and reconnect with — her mother.

William Trevor has been writing for more than 50 years and has won more literary awards than we have time to list. A volume of selected stories has recently been published, and Fresh Air's book critic Maureen Corrigan has an appreciation.

Composer Allen Shawn's twin sister, Mary, was diagnosed with autism and sent to an institution when they were 8 years old. He writes about his relationship with Mary — and his feelings of survivor's guilt — in a new memoir, Twin.

Well, no, we're not going to tell you. No, no, no. Not even if you ask politely. But here's a hint: It's a "primordial one-word response" that perfectly encapsulates the aura -- no, make that the prevailing zeitgeist -- of 2010.

Fresh Air's resident book critic selects her favorite reads from the year, including Patti Smith's moving memoir, a feminist slant on election season, a new history of labor unions.

Novelist Walter Mosley explains how watching his mother's experience with dementia helped him craft his latest novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, which asks: Would you repair your failing memory if it meant your life span would also be significantly shortened?

Laura Hillenbrand -- the award-winning author of Seabiscuit -- has returned in fighting form with her latest nonfiction biography, Unbroken. The story of a pilot who survived a crash against all odds speaks to the indefatigable human spirit and our collective will to overcome.

100 years after his death, Mark Twain's autobiography was published the way Twain himself wished. Fresh Air's David Bianculli talks with Robert Hirst, of the Mark Twain Project, about editing and publishing Twain's work.

For most readers, the beauty of Jane Austen's style lies in her elegant syntax and punctuation. Now, an Oxford scholar has created a furor by suggesting that the credit for Austen's style should really be given to the man who edited her novels. But linguist Geoff Nunberg remains skeptical.

Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air is an unsentimental meditation on the immigrant experience and the illusory idea of asylum. With lyrical prose, he reassesses the by-your-bootstraps mythology associated with American mobility.

The musical-theater titan tells the stories behind some of his most famous work, from West Side Story to Gypsy. And he offers some surprising criticisms of other theater greats, including his mentor Oscar Hammerstein.