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Through his many New Yorker covers, Barry Blitt has become one of the pre-eminent satirical cartoonists of America's recent presidents. Now Blitt has trained his eye and pen upon our first president in a new children's book, George Washington's Birthday.

America's only unsolved airline hijacking happened the day before Thanksgiving in 1971. D.B. Cooper's demands — $200,000 and four parachutes — were met. He ordered the plane to take off again. When it landed in Reno, Nev., he was gone, along with the money and a parachute.

Wall Street Journal economics writer David Wessel's new book, Red Ink, lays out in unsparing terms the way the U.S. government spends money, who pays what in taxes, and why politicians can't seem to agree on ways to reduce the potentially catastrophic deficit.

Author Jeff Kinney is a rock star in the middle school literary scene. His Diary of a Wimpy Kid books follow the misadventures of sad-sack sixth-grader Greg Heffley, who just wants to fit in. Kids love the gross-out humor, but librarians and teachers say the books also help them laugh at the indignities of life.

In February, the young readers in NPR's Backseat Book Club read a pair of books: The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes and Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai. They were published 60 years apart but share similar themes about standing out, getting teased and being strong.

Thomas Mallon's new novelization of the infamous political scandal re-imagines the events through the eyes of the perpetrators. Critic Heller McAlpin says Mallon manages to capture both the metastasizing dishonesty and the ludicrousness of this great American tragedy of political ambition run amok.

Will a close mother-son relationship create another Norman Bates? Far from it, says author Kate Stone Lombardi in the new book The Mama's Boy Myth: Why Keeping Our Sons Close Makes Them Stronger.

The editor of Newsweek offers some required reading on the gap between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment — and talks about the "Yes We Cain" issue of Newsweek, featuring Republican Herman Cain. "Herman Cain is surprising everybody," Brown says.

In Intel Wars, historian Matthew Aid details how bureaucratic policies and a glut of raw data have weakened the intelligence community in its war against would-be terrorists.

When it comes to learning an instrument, children have the edge in many respects. Using himself as a guinea pig, psychology professor Gary Marcus resolved to find out whether nonmusical adults have any chance of turning things around.