NPR's Book of the Day
Episodes
'Misfire' takes an inside look at the corruption at the heart of the NRA
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The National Rifle Association is being sued. The nonprofit at the heart of the gun lobby is accused of diverting money from its charitable mission. N...
'Beautiful Country' looks back on a young Chinese girl's undocumented childhood
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Living as an undocumented immigrant means living in the shadows, says Qian Julie Wang. Her memoir Beautiful Country tells the story of her family's li...
SJ Sindu makes and unmakes a god in her new novel 'Blue Skinned Gods'
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Questioning religion can be a pretty common identity crisis. But what if your faith is based on... yourself? When Kalki is born with blue skin and bla...
'Hail Mary' sets the record straight on the history of the women's football league
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You're probably at least a little familiar with the WNBA, and even if you never actually seen A League of Their Own, everyone knows there's no crying ...
'Dear Memory' and 'Cokie' both look toward the future while remembering the dead
12 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In today's double episode, both books center people who have died. And they aren't just tributes to those who've passed, but to the people who remembe...
Amitav Ghosh turned to legends to write a story large enough for climate change
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Trying to decrease your carbon footprint can be complicated. You use metal straws, recycle your paper, and bring your own grocery bags to the store, b...
Grady Hendrix reimagines the horror movie sequel in 'Final Girl Support Group'
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Grady Hendrix LOVES horror movies, especially those old 80's slashers. And his new book is a tribute to that "final girl" at the end of so many of the...
Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks to a future living with COVID in 'World War C'
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We've all heard talk about "the new normal," whatever that even is. CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has his own ideas, and despite ...
Lucy Barton and her ex, William, are at the heart of Elizabeth Strout's new book
08 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Elizabeth Strout's new book, a familiar character - Lucy Barton - returns when ex-husband William asks for her help unraveling a recently discovere...
Tiphanie Yanique and Dawnie Walton on music, monsters, and family baggage
05 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There was a time when the kind of music you listened to could fully define the kind of lifestyle you led, says Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revi...
Nick Offerman ponders nature's patterns and chaos in Central Park
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Parks and Rec actor Nick Offerman is famous for playing an outdoorsman on TV, but it turns out he actually is one in real life, too — albeit conside...
In a powerful memoir, poet Joy Harjo talks about finding her voice and using it
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Poet Laureate Joy Harjo says she loved poetry as a kid, but didn't feel like it belonged to her. "It wasn't until I heard Native poets," she tells NPR...
Poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva dreams of Selena
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Queen of Tejano music is having a moment in pop culture once again, even 26 years after her murder. Selena Quintanilla's face not only adorns T-sh...
Jane Goodall doesn't want you to give up on the planet
01 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Amidst all the bad news (like, really bad news), it can be hard to hold on to hope — especially with the looming threat of climate change. But renow...
Zakiya Dalila Harris and Oliver Jeffers talk about different kinds of hauntings
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's almost Halloween, which means that we're in peak spooky season. So for today's episode, we bring you two books with two very different kinds of f...
How Drew Magary rediscovered himself after 'The Night the Lights Went Out'
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The humor writer Drew Magary was at a karaoke bar when his life changed in a flash: He collapsed and cracked his skull. By most accounts, the resultin...
Why Hillary Clinton wanted to write a political thriller about her greatest nightmare
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The bestselling author Louise Penny is a prolific writer of mysteries and thrillers — but for her latest book, she decided to bring a partner into t...
In 'The Matter of Black Lives,' generations of Black thinkers probe American racism
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Back in June 2020, during a summer of protests for racial justice, the New Yorker republished 'Letter from a Region in my Mind," a seminal James Baldw...
The zoo that history nearly forgot in 'When Two Feathers Fell From The Sky'
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you visited South Nashville today, you might not suspect that, over a century ago, it was home to a zoo and amusement park called the Glendale Zoo....
Food is a gateway to the new and familiar in 'Crying in H Mart' and 'Gastro Obscura'
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our relationship to food goes far beyond its nutritional value. What we eat can help us tap into something deeper, whether it brings up treasured memo...
Karl Ove Knausgaard didn't mean to write a 666-page book
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard gained an international reputation thanks to his breakout autobiographical series My Struggle -- but he actua...
Stephanie Grisham is — yes, really — taking our questions now
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham famously held no press briefings during her time in the White House — but now, she's ready to talk. H...
How Colin Powell Wanted The World To Remember Him
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Colin Powell died on October 18 at the age of 84 from COVID-19 complications, he left behind a long, decorated career in Washington and the U.S. ...
Amor Towles' new book is about a road trip that takes more than a few U-turns
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Amor Towles' new book is quite the joyride — The Lincoln Highway follows four kids in a 1948 Studebaker who set out along the real-life Lincoln High...
In song and poetry, 'Nina' and 'Just Us' offer ways to start a conversation on race
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After the protests last year, we heard the phrase "racial reckoning" a lot, as some groups of people struggled to catch up with what's just been reali...
Fiona Hill's new Trump-era memoir is less about Trump than it is about us
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In her memoir, Fiona Hill extends her riveting testimony from Donald Trump's first impeachment trial. And while she might not dish as much dirt as oth...
Humor, horror and social commentary blend in Percival Everett's detective novel
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Percival Everett's page-turning new detective novel The Trees is at once gruesome and screamingly funny. A racial allegory rooted in southern history,...
What Maggie Nelson Means When She Talks About Freedom
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Since her childhood in 1970s San Francisco, critic and poet Maggie Nelson has been mulling the concept of freedom — particularly how we define, prac...
Myriam J.A. Chancy's historical novel about a Haitian earthquake hits on human truths
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Back in August, Myriam J.A. Chancy was preparing for the release of her novel What Storm, What Thunder when the news broke: a magnitude 7.2 earthquake...
The Realities Of Abortion Politics In 'Family Roe: An American Story' & 'Red Clocks'
08 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Authors Joshua Prager and Leni Zumas each explore the real world implications of abortion politics, through fiction and non-fiction. First, in a conve...
Hearing Voices From 'The Book of Form and Emptiness'
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If these walls could talk... what might they say to the chairs? In Ruth Ozeki's novel The Book of Form and Emptiness, 13-year-old Benny Oh starts hear...
The trailblazing Black football players that history books forgot
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You've likely heard the names of Ruby Bridges, Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall — the first African Americans to desegregate public schools, ...
'Cloud Cuckoo Land' by Anthony Doerr
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Following the success of his previous novel All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr's latest book is an ambitious epic about the power and immortal...
From silence to cacophony, here's how your brain makes sense of the world
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It can be hard enough to answer the question, "what kind of music do you like?" But how about "why do you like it?" That's one of the many questions a...
What A Detective Novel And A Memoir Both Have To Say About Black American Life
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At first glance, journalist Dawn Turner's book Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood and detective no...
To Understand Humanity, You Have To Understand Water
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, the author and scientist Giulio Boccaletti has studied the substance that's come to define life as we know it: water. And in his book W...
Colson Whitehead Finally Gets To Flex His Comedy Muscle
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning books The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, author Colson Whitehead needed a change of pace. So for h...
NPR's Book of the Day: Hand-picked Great Reads, Everyday From NPR.
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Want to find a good read? Or just keep up with the books everyone's talking about? NPR's Book of the Day gives you today's very best storytelling in a...