NPR's Book of the Day

Do you love what some people would consider 'low-brow culture?' Things like The Cheesecake Factory or the band Creed. Well then do we have the book for you! Author Rax King has written a collection of essays that are kind of like love letters to the things that give her pleasure, including but not limited to The Jersey Shore, in Tacky. She told NPR's Sam Sanders she thinks a lot about who gets to be tacky and the value of art and entertainment that might fall into the category.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

When author Suleika Jaouad was first diagnosed with leukemia, she felt isolated and like she didn't have control over anything. She told Life Kit host Beck Harlan that creative practices, namely journaling, helped her regain a narrative control of her own life. Jaouad details that struggle and her coping mechanisms in her book, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of Life Interrupted.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

When you think of an epic, what comes to mind? The Iliad, The Odyssey, maybe Beowulf? Well author Honoree Fanonne Jeffers points out that epics are almost always about white men. She told former Morning Edition host Noel King that she didn't want to tell that story because that story has already been told...many times. So, Jeffers set out to write a different kind of epic about heroic Black women in The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The US Postal Service has played a key role in much of American history - from the Declaration of Independence to more recent mail-in voting. It was conceived of by the founders as the way to create a united, informed and effective American democracy. But today, the postal service's future is in danger. Winifred Gallagher spoke to NPR's Rund Abdelfatah about how the postal service created the United States and the case for investing in this pivotal institution.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Today, two takes on stories we tell to make ourselves feel better and the consequences of believing them. First, author Danielle Evans' short story collection, The Office of Historical Corrections. The title story is about a fictional agency that fact checks in real time but, as she told former NPR host Noel King, it's less powerful than you might think. Then, the story of a Black woman's decision to pass as white and the decades-long fallout of that choice, in The Vanishing Half. Author Brit Bennett told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that the point of the story isn't to moralize.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the most recent public institution to announce that they are taking the Sackler name off of seven of their spaces due to their involvement with the opioid crisis. Author Patrick Radden Keefe wrote a book profiling the Sackler family called Empire of Pain: The Secret History Of The Sackler Dynasty that was one of the biggest of the year. It profiles the family that founded Purdue Pharma and their promotion of the drug Oxycontin.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Have you ever wanted to get stranded on a beautiful island? Maybe at the end of a vacation when you think you never want to leave. Well, that's what happens to the protagonist in Jodi Picoult's new novel, Wish You Were Here. It's a little less glamorous than what you might be picturing. It's March of 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic traps Diana O'Toole in the Galapagos Islands with very little wifi or cell service. Picoult told NPR's Scott Simon that this extreme isolation forced her main character to reevaluate how she really wanted to live her life.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Legendary rapper and integral member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Raekwon, is out with a new memoir called From Staircase to Stage. Born Corey Woods in Staten Island, Raekwon takes a look back at hating school, watching his neighborhood decline during the crack-cocaine epidemic, and then finding success with the Wu-Tang Clan. Raekwon told NPR's Steve Inskeep that success came with both big highs and deep lows.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Author Dave Eggars has written a new book, The Every, satirizing technology and it's ever-expanding hold on us. While publishing and distributing the book, which also happens to be about a tech giant overextending its reach, he tried to keep it out of the hands of one of today's tech giants. It proved to be a difficult task, Eggars told NPR's Audie Cornish, "...[it's] like taking not just the back roads but taking the dirt roads off the back roads off the highway."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From creating vertical gardens to breeding pigeons, the people living in the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan manage to "carve out a life worth living." Artist and architectural historian Azra Aksamija co-edited a book that looks at the ingenuity found within that camp called, Design To Live: Everyday Inventions From A Refugee Camp. Aksamija told NPR's Scott Simon that even though camps are supposed to be a temporary solution, lots of families end up staying for years at a time, so they find ways to make themselves at home in a place that's not meant to be hospitable.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy