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  • Atlantic writer Hanna Rosin has expanded her cover story on women's new economic dominance into a full-length book. Reviewer Annalee Newitz says it's a good snapshot of a major cultural shift — but frustratingly contradictory in its approach.
  • In his new book, Ascent of the A-Word, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg looks at how the term took root among griping World War II GIs — and how its meaning evolved in the '60s and '70s. He tells Fresh Air that crude words are "wonderfully revealing."
  • Michael Chabon's eighth novel, Telegraph Avenue, delves deeply into issues of art, race and sexuality. The book started with a "very tiny world," Chabon says, a vinyl record shop not unlike a Berkeley store that inspired him in the late '90s.
  • Michael Chabon's eighth novel, Telegraph Avenue, delves deeply into issues of art, race and sexuality. The book started with a "very tiny world," Chabon says, a vinyl record shop not unlike a Berkeley store that inspired him in the late '90s.
  • When author Lauren Groff found herself anxious and unable to work, she needed a book to get lost in. Elizabeth and Her German Garden, with its great, hidden depths, consoled her through her darkest time. Has a book ever gotten you out of a tough moment? Tell us about it in the comments.
  • Years before Jack Johnson and decades before Muhammad Ali, a man named Joe Gans was blazing trails as the first African-American boxing champion. Gans is mostly forgotten now, but a new book uncovers the story of his epic 42-round title defense against a white boxer in 1906.
  • Reading The Sun Also Rises as a 12-year-old, author Ben Mezrich realized he wanted to be just like the main character — an alcoholic. Not that he knew what that meant. The book also helped him find his true calling. Have you wanted to be like a character in a book? Tell us about it in the comments.
  • In Karen Thompson Walker's first book, climate change makes the Earth's rotation grow more and more sluggish, but this melancholy page-turner is more than just a disaster plot.
  • 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.
  • A vacation in the remote English countryside brings all sorts of family tensions to a boil in Mark Haddon's latest novel, The Red House. Haddon says the poetic language in the book is as much a part of the narrative as any of the characters.
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