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As autoworkers' real wages fall, top executives at the Big Three carmakers continue to earn tens of millions of dollars each year — hundreds of times more than the median employee.

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen looks back on his life and asks: Could a family's constant movement — four countries in four generations — contribute to a mother's struggle with mental illness?

In the course of his career, Thornton Wilder wrote plays, novels and essays — but none as enduring as Our Town. Wilder biographer Penelope Niven attributes the play's success to its universal setting: a "mythical village" that "incorporates characteristics from every mythical village."

Nathan Wolfe travels to the viral hot spots of the world, where viruses first jump from animals to humans. The scientist spends his days tracking emerging infectious diseases before they turn into global pandemics.

The Casual Vacancy is worlds away from Hogwarts and Harry Potter. It's a dark comedy of manners, set in a small town in the aftermath of a local politician's death. Rowling says her experiences with poverty informed her gritty portrayal of English life.

Attica Locke was inspired to write her new novel after attending an interracial couple's wedding on a plantation. The Cutting Season tells the story of two murders set a century apart. The past, Locke says, "walks with us still."

In 1989, Iran's leader issued an edict that sentenced Salman Rushdie to death for writing the novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie reflects on the fallout from that order — from the years spent in hiding to the alias he created to avoid detection — in a new memoir called Joseph Anton.

Zadie Smith returns to old haunts in her latest novel, but it is a sobering homecoming. Where her first novel, White Teeth, was a wild ride into the diverse, vibrant rhythms of a city in transition, NW is a complex exploration of where the inhabitants of that world have landed.

Heart of a Samurai tells the true story of 14-year-old Manjiro, a boy who was shipwrecked, rescued by whalers and taken to America. It was the late 1800s, when Japan was cut off from the outside world — until Manjiro returned and influenced the shogun to open the country to diplomacy.

The Fish That Ate the Whale tells the story of Sam Zemurray, a Jewish immigrant who came to the U.S. as a teenager and became one of the biggest players in the banana business. "He's like the American dream in the shape of a single life," says author Rich Cohen.