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Author and screenwriter Nick Hornby joins Fresh Air host Terry Gross to discuss his novel, Juliet, Naked, and his screenplay for the movie An Education.

Octavius Catto led the fight to desegregate Philadelphia's horse-drawn streetcars, raised all-black regiments to fight in the Civil War, and pushed for black voting rights — all before the age of 32. Despite all that, he's barely remembered today. But a new book sheds life on his groundbreaking work.

In middle age, most of us get forgetful and easily distracted. But new research finds that our minds improve in some ways as we age: We're better at seeing the big picture and comprehending complexity. Writer Barbara Strauch details how the middle-aged brain grows and changes in The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain.

Buck's The Good Earth depicted life in a Chinese village. Anchee Min first heard of Buck at age 14, during the Cultural Revolution, when Buck's novel was condemned by Chinese authorities. Nearly 40 years later, Min's novel Pearl of China imagines Buck's young life in China.

Comedian Mike Birbiglia has a disorder that makes him sleepwalk. He recounts his worst episode — as well as other painfully embarrassing moments — in his comedic memoir, Sleepwalk With Me.

Only one woman made the top 10 in Sports Illustrated's 2000 list of the 100 greatest athletes of the 20th century. Don Van Natta Jr. tells her story in Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias..

The singer's new memoir reveals a man who has packed enough life for 10 people into his 84 years.

In the summer of 1893 and at the beginning of an economic depression, President Grover Cleveland disappeared for four days to have secret surgery on a yacht. Author Matthew Algeo recounts the episode, and the lengths Cleveland went to to cover it up, in The President Is a Sick Man.

Journalist Joshua Foer set out to write about mental athletes — and ended up becoming one himself. At his prime, Foer could memorize the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds. These days, he has trouble remembering where he put his keys.

Journalist Annia Ciezadlo covered the Iraq War and the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict for major newspapers. While abroad, she absorbed local recipes and the culture of food, and stories like the bravery of a mother driving across Baghdad for her 11-year-old daughter's birthday cake.