NPR's Book of the Day Folgen

When Colin Powell died on October 18 at the age of 84 from COVID-19 complications, he left behind a long, decorated career in Washington and the U.S. Army. He spent much of his life in the military, eventually rising to the rank of four-star general, and went on to become the first Black Secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But, as he discussed in a 2012 interview with NPR's Robert Siegel about his memoir It Worked For Me, Powell's reputation was tarnished when he used faulty evidence to push for the Iraq War: "I'll never leave it behind."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Amor Towles' new book is quite the joyride — The Lincoln Highway follows four kids in a 1948 Studebaker who set out along the real-life Lincoln Highway, the first highway to cross the country. Two of them are trying to head for San Francisco to find their mother — the other two want to go the other way, looking for a promised inheritance. Needless to say, things don't go as planned. Towles talked to NPR's Scott Simon about the book — and also about the way the world moves so much faster now than it did in the 1950s, and how that affects the stories kids hear and see and create.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

After the protests last year, we heard the phrase "racial reckoning" a lot, as some groups of people struggled to catch up with what's just been reality for many others. This week we've got two books that might help you reckon with that reckoning, in two different ways: Traci Todd and illustrator Christian Robinson's bright and powerful picture book biography Nina: A Story of Nina Simone and poet Claudia Rankine's Just Us: An American Conversation, in which she puts together poetry, essays and images to bring readers into an uncomfortable but necessary conversation about race.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy