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It's time for an end-of-summer poetry treat: NPR's Tom Cole reads "Blackberry Picking," from Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, found in Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996.

Author Loung Ung tells NPR's Liane Hansen about her new book, Lucky Child. The memoir describes how Ung escaped the violence of the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian conflict known as the Killing Fields, and how she and her sister reunited after a 15-year separation.

Hamid Karzai is favored to win next month's Afghan presidential elections, but he could use the support of Afghan refugees. Millions of refugees in neighboring Pakistan and Iran hope to vote in the election. NPR's Philip Reeves reports.

NPR's Scott Simon talks to historian Steven Englund about his new book Napoleon, A Political Life. England says the diminutive conqueror was more of a poker play than a chess player.

Afghan officials continue to gather ballot boxes spread throughout the country from Saturday's presidential vote. Apart from President Hamid Karzai, all candidates in the country's election have declared the process illegitimate. NPR's Philip Reeves reports.

Novelist Junot Diaz's first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao explores the complexities of living in two cultures at once. Set in both the United States and in the Dominican Republic, the novel follows the story of Oscar Wao in prose that frequently mixes Spanish and English in the same sentence.

Fresh Air's book critic reviews Run, the latest novel from best-selling Bel Canto author Ann Patchett. Run, about a Boston family, a disputed legacy, and the aftermath of an accident on a snowy night, is Patchett's fifth novel.

Five months after David Halberstam's death in a car accident, some of the journalist's close friends and colleagues band together to publicize his final book: The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War.

Author Tom Perrotta's novels Election and Little Children were made into rather successful movies. He has another novel out this fall: The Abstinence Teacher. Is it worth reading before it hits theaters?

Is it possible to know the mind of China, a country with more than a billion people? Mark Leonard, executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, has attempted to do just that in his recent book What Does China Think?