Search results for

A new biography reveals that young Thoreau took quite a few detours on his path to Walden. A gossipy young man who loved eating popcorn, ice skating and listening to his music box, schoolmates and neighbors found him standoffish and regarded his fascination with plants and Indian relics as downright odd.

A new book argues that Tyson's system treats farmers like "modern-day sharecroppers." Author Christopher Leonard looks at Tyson's inner workings and the not-so-independent farmers who raise the birds.

The pianist's latest album features some of the most difficult etudes ever written for solo piano by the Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti.

Los Angeles chef Roy Choi helped launch the food truck movement. Now he wants to blend high and low cuisine to combat food deserts. He's challenging the tyranny of junk food in the inner cities, and is pushing other chefs to think about how they can contribute to food justice in their communities.

Obama said a proposal to have Syria give up its chemical weapons was a "potentially positive development."

With waters rising and their hospital on the verge of losing power, Memorial Medical Center staff were faced with an ethical question: Who to save first? Sheri Fink reconstructs their decisions — from hastening patients' deaths to evacuating the sickest last — in Five Days at Memorial.

Film director Haifaa Al Mansour comes from a small town in Saudi Arabia where, she says, there are many girls who have big dreams, strong characters and infinite potential. She's made a movie about one of them, titled Wadjda. Host Michel Martin speaks to Al Mansour about the film and being a female movie director in Saudi Arabia.

Art Spiegelman's new book, Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps, collects comics from a six-decade career, from his early, self-published works to his famous New Yorker covers. Spiegelman tells NPR's Scott Simon he knew in third grade that he wanted to be a cartoonist.

Jason Collins became the first openly gay male athlete to play in any of the four largest professional sports in the U.S. He joined the Brooklyn Nets in what many are calling a historic moment.

Steven Greenberg of the disco group Lipps, Inc. joins Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Loretta Lynn among artists currently trying to reclaim ownership of their work from labels, per a 1976 revision of copyright law. But the record industry is expected to put up a legal fight to retain the rights.