NPR's Book of the Day

Nailing the balance between humor and heavy, dark topics is a difficult feat. Night of the Living Rez by author Morgan Talty meets the mark. His collection of interconnected short stories tell the story of a Native American woman and her son who return to their reservation island in Maine. The two start living with a volatile alcoholic and the stories chronicle what that life looks like as the son grows up. Debut author Talty sat down with Melissa Block on Weekend Edition Saturday to talk about his work.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Today we have two nonfiction books that touch on a bygone era of Hollywood some refer to as its "Golden Age." First, George Stevens, Jr., talks to Scott Simon about his book My Place in the Sun, a memoir about growing up as the son of a movie director, learning the family's craft, and striving for his dad's respect. Then, author Mark Rozzo speaks to Ailsa Chang about the untold story of Brooke Hayward and Dennis Hopper's relationship, the focus of his new book: Everyone Thought We Were Crazy. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hiroo Onoda was a Japanese intelligence officer during World War II, stationed on a small island in the Philippines. When the Japanese army evacuated, Onoda stayed and fought for 29 more years, living in the jungle and resisting all attempts to convince him the war was over. Renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog tells a fictionalized account of this story in his first novel, The Twilight World. In an interview on All Things Considered, Herzog told Ari Shapiro that he's always been a writer and that this book is finally putting into words a story he had in him for two decades.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Life expectancy in the U.S. has always been different for people of color. And since the pandemic, that gap has widened. In her new book, Under the Skin, journalist Linda Villarosa uncovers the hidden toll of racism in America and how racial disparities impact all aspects of healthcare. In an interview with Karen Grisby Bates on the podcast Code Switch, Villarosa talks about the biases that lead to worse care for communities of color and how medical students are pushing against them.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In Sudhir Venkatesh's The Tomorrow Game, two teenagers on Chicago's South Side face each other in a story that conveys the pressures and motivations boys face when buying guns. Venkatesh, a professor of sociology and African American studies at Columbia University, tells a true story (with names changed to protect privacy). In an interview with Weekend Edition Saturday, Venkatesh tells Susan Davis about the systemic and cultural challenges that kids face in poor neighborhoods, and says that if we want to solve the problem of gun violence, we must include them in the conversation.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Beach resorts are a favorite when it comes to travel destinations. But behind the infinity pools and the all-inclusive deals, these massive resorts are taking a toll on the environment and on local communities, says Sarah Stodola, author of The Last Resort. On one hand, they've proven to raise the standard of living for local communities, help create jobs and grow the economy. On the other hand, these communities have lost big parts of their culture and autonomy, and the impact they have on the environment is hard to miss. What is the tipping point in the growth and development of a place?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

Author Charmaine Wilkerson's new novel, Black Cake, is all about identity; who we are and how we fit into this world. Estranged siblings, Benny and Byron are left a recording by their late mother after she dies. The recording is full of secrets about their family that force Benny and Byron to reevaluate everything about their lives. Wilkerson told NPR's Kelsey Snell that even though Benny and Byron didn't know everything about their mother, she is still their mother who loved them very much, and that's also a part of their identity.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Patriarch Leo Chao is murdered at his restaurant at the beginning of Lan Samantha Chang's new novel The Family Chao. Eventually family secrets and bitterness reveal themselves — much like a Dostoyevsky novel, from whom Chao took a lot of inspiration. But NPR's Scott Simon points out that even though this novel is about a murder, it's quite funny. Chang told Simon that she just enjoyed writing it so much that humor became part of it.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Author of the wildly popular and, at times, controversial A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara, is out with a new novel. To Paradise is an epic – in three parts – sprawling over 700 pages and 200 years about a make-believe New York City. Yanagihara was mostly through writing her story, which features pandemics prominently, when COVID-19 first hit in early 2020. But Yanagihara told NPR's Scott Simon that she was able to keep her story and her fears about the pandemic in reality separate.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy