NPR's Juana Summers talks with author Rachel Khong about her book Real Americans, a multi-generational new novel about coming of age and defining who you are.

In The Demon of Unrest, author Erik Larson chronicles the five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the start of the Civil War, drawing parallels to today's political climate.

Poet Iman Mersal's book is a memoir of her search for knowledge about the writer Enayat al-Zayyat; it's a slow, idiosyncratic journey through a layered, changing Cairo — and through her own mind.

NPR's Leila Fadel talks to Elizabeth Neumann about the rise of Christian extremism. Neumann served as a Homeland Security official in the Trump administration. Her new book is Kingdom of Rage.

'/>This week on the podcast, we're revisiting a conversation we had with Ava Chin about her book, Mott Street. Through decades of painstaking research, the fifth-generation New Yorker discovered the stories of how her ancestors bore and resisted the weight of the Chinese Exclusion laws in the U.S. – and how the legacy of that history still affects...

pictured above in New York in April 2007.'/>A leading figure in his generation of postmodern American writers, Auster wrote more than 20 novels, including City of Glass, Sunset Park, 4 3 2 1 and The Brooklyn Follies.(Image credit: Nicholas Roberts)