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Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love, which chronicles a year she spent in Italy, India and Indonesia. During the stay in India, her struggles to quiet her mind came to a head one warm summer evening.

The world economy has created a new class of global engineers. AnnaLee Saxenian, the dean of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, has written a new book about this group. Deborah Amos talks to her about The New Argonauts.

NPR's Scott Simon talks to former Clinton advisor Lanny Davis about his new book, Scandal: How 'Gotcha' Politics is Destroying America. Davis says the midterm elections represented a revolt against the divisive, take-no-prisoners political approach of both Republicans and Democrats.

In September 1957, a high school in Little Rock, Ark., became a flashpoint in the fight for civil rights. A number of heroes emerged there — not least the students themselves. But another figure, largely forgotten today, played a crucial role in the school's integration.

As Shanghai undergoes a radical facelift, tens of thousands of residents are forcibly displaced from their homes each year. Many say real-estate developers are conspiring with officials to seize property for little or no compensation.

In Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal policies, Ayn Rand saw the makings of a fascist nation. The author of a new biography of the conservative icon says Rand would have seen Obama's stimulus plan, bank bailout program and health care initiative as "a gigantic power grab."

All Things Considered producer Melissa Gray describes her adventures in baking — and the staff's adventures in eating — in All Cakes Considered. Gray brings a new cake into the office every Monday. She says she loves to see the staff's childish joy at seeing her latest confection.

At first glance, Lev Grossman's new novel looks very much like a Harry Potter story — with older characters and an American setting. But a heap of moral ambiguity surrounds the use of magic and there is no villain, giving the tale many shades of gray.

Author Tracy Kidder recounts the story of a refugee from the war-torn African country of Burundi in the new book Strength in What Remains. When Deogratias "Deo" Niyizonkiza arrived in New York City in 1993, he had little beyond the clothes on his back.

John Keats' famous 1816 sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" celebrated the recent discovery of Uranus — the first new planet to be found in more than a thousand years. In fact, says author Richard Holmes, the scientific discoveries of the Romantic age inspired generations of great artists and their work.