NPR Staff

History has largely forgotten the lives and thoughts of the black chefs who helped define American cooking. But there's a tantalizing glimpse in food writer Toni Tipton-Martin's cookbook collection.

Gotta grab a reader with the first sentence? Here's one from Fredrick Forsyth: "We all make mistakes, but starting the Third World War would have been a rather large one."

Forsyth has written masterful thrillers for more than 40 years, from The Day of the Jackal to The Dogs of ...

City on Fire, the new novel from Garth Risk Hallberg, bears a price tag that may give some people pause. Not the listed $30 purchase price on the store shelf — the $2 million advance he received to write his first novel.

The book is mammoth, a sprawling novel over ...

Russia's intervention in Syria's civil war could end up helping Islamic militants, the secretary of state told NPR's Steve Inskeep. "That would be absurd, it would be a farce," Kerry said.

The new film tells the story of Agu, a young boy in an unnamed African country, who is conscripted into a regiment of child soldiers led by a coldblooded commandant played by Idris Elba.

Erik Booker now teaches middle school in South Carolina, but he also served in the Iraq War — just like the father of one of his former students, Jenna. She has a few important questions for him.

Stretching a meal over several days was once a necessity. And in the 1940s, leftovers were a culinary art. Historian Helen Zoe Veit dishes on America's complicated relationship with leftovers.

Meyer says "something fascinating and completely unfair" plagues the restaurant industry: Waiters' incomes have risen far faster than other staff. To balance salaries out, he'll charge more for food.

StoryCorps has an assignment as generations gather this Thanksgiving: Document the stories and voices of a grandparent or elder.

Throughout his memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Costello grapples with parallels to his father's life. "In the end, music was playing in the room when my father left this earth," he says.

Many people have experienced the magic of a wonderful teacher, and we all know anecdotally that these instructors can change our lives. But what if a teacher and a student don't connect? How does that affect the education that child receives?

Is there a way to create a connection where ...

From his roles in Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the Dick Van Dyke Show and, most recently, the Night at the Museum movies, actor Dick Van Dyke has been in our collective consciousness for a very long time.

Though he seems to be ageless, the Emmy, Tony ...

Judith Hill has sung duets with Michael Jackson. She's provided backup vocals for Stevie Wonder and Elton John. She competed on the show The Voice, and she was featured in the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, about backup singers who spend their lives at the margins ...

Colum McCann first won fans around the world with his bestselling novel Let The Great World Spin. The Irish author is now releasing a new collection of short fiction — a novella and three stories — called Thirteen Ways of Looking. They're tales that deal with parenthood, loss and just ...

The mercurial Apple co-founder helped shape the world and our daily lives. Still, director Danny Boyle says, while "he's made some of the most beautiful things imaginable, he is himself poorly made."

As the debate over gun ownership and gun control is renewed following the shooting deaths of nine people, including the gunman, at an Oregon community college earlier this month, there's a voice of an evangelical leader whose views might be different than some would expect.

Rev. Rob Schenck, president ...

When you think of a nuclear meltdown, a lifeless wasteland likely comes to mind — a barren environment of strewn ashes and desolation. Yet nearly 30 years after the disaster at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, in the former Soviet Union, a very different reality has long since taken root.

...

Ted Hughes left behind a path of personal tragedy and destruction — and also some of the most beautiful poetry in the English language. The British Poet Laureate was the husband of writer Sylvia Plath, who famously committed suicide following his affair with Assia Wevill. Just six years later, Wevill ...

Shemekia Copeland has blues in her blood: She is the daughter of the late great Texas blues musician Johnny Clyde Copeland, and a lot of her early music sounded like it. Now, at 36, she's doing things a little differently. Her latest record, Outskirts of Love, carries the ...

Perhaps the most enduring interpreter of the American popular song, Tony Bennett is now teaming up with jazz pianist Bill Charlap to interpret one of the 20th century's most influential songwriters. The two artists recently joined NPR's Scott Simon to discuss their new album, The Silver Lining: ...