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  • Sometimes, when walking Brooklyn's streets, it doesn't feel as if its literary past is haunting. Rather, its literary soul is still alive and pulsating. Brooklyn is a world unto itself and a writer's enclave. Journalist and critic Evan Hughes has written a literary biography of the leafy borough.
  • CNN's national security analyst Peter Bergen just returned from Pakistan, where he visited the town where Osama bin Laden was killed. He talks about the various conspiracy theories surrounding bin Laden's death — and how al-Qaida has changed in recent years.
  • Fifty years ago Norton Juster sat down and tried to remember the confusion and dislocation of childhood. His memories became a book, and The Phantom Tollbooth was born. In this essay, Juster looks back at his beloved novel, and the bored, disconnected child who grew up to write it.
  • After a meteoric rise, GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is now polling in the single digits. But she's still plowing ahead with her campaign, and this week she came out with a memoir. The Minnesota congresswoman talks with co-host Steve Inskeep about Core of Conviction and aiming to win the nomination.
  • The United Nations wants to finish a plastics treaty by the end of 2024. Almost every piece of plastic is made from fossil fuels, and the industry wants a big say in how it's cleaned up.
  • Scott Trepel of Seigel Auction Galleries describes the rare "Inverted Jenny" stamp that sold for a record $2 million.
  • Kamila Shamsie's tale of a young Englishwoman's entanglement with the people and mountains of Peshawar is an epic tale stretching from ancient Persia to the waning days of the British Empire.
  • Dr. Paul Kalanithi was finishing his residency in neurosurgery when he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. His memoir deals with the struggle and the joy of life as death drew near.
  • In a new memoir, Leon Panetta says he and other presidential advisers argued to leave some U.S. forces in Iraq after 2011. That might have left Iraq in better position to fight ISIS, he tells NPR.
  • Lynda Blackmon Lowery was still a child when she joined the legendary 1965 march. Now she's written a book for young readers about the experience, called Turning 15 On The Road To Freedom.
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