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Michael Charry's new biography captures the power Szell brought to the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as his tempestuous personality.

The rare daytime astronomical event, in which Venus can be seen as a tiny black dot crossing the sun, won't happen again until 2117. Andrea Wulf, author of Chasing Venus, explains how 18th-century astronomers used the event to calculate the distance between the Earth and the sun.

As Britain celebrates Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee, marking 60 years for her as monarch, Newsweek editor Tina Brown recommends readings on the history of the queen's reign and her enduring popularity.

Jarhead author Anthony Swofford's second memoir recounts a war much closer to home — a private one waged with his father in the years following the success of his book.

In her hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking semi-autobiographical novel, Toronto author Sheila Heti chronicles her struggle to interact with people.

The journalist turns to fiction to tell Pakistan's hardest truths. His first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, investigated the death of dictator Zia-ul-Haq; and his latest, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, looks at the fate of women and minorities in the country.

In just a few weeks, the world will descend on London for the Olympic Games. NPR's Scott Simon talks with London Mayor Boris Johnson about his city and his new book, Johnson's Life of London: The People Who Made the City That Made the World.

Did Abraham Lincoln subvert the Constitution? That's the startling premise of a new novel from Yale Law School professor Stephen Carter, in which Lincoln survives that terrible night at Ford's Theatre, only to face an impeachment trial two years later.

In a new autobiography, survivalist and television host Bear Grylls charts his journey from recalcitrant schoolboy to a spot in Britain's elite special forces, the SAS, and addresses the controversy surrounding his Discovery Channel show, Man vs. Wild.

In some of the dirtiest places on Earth, author and environmentalist Andrew Blackwell found something worth looking at. His book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, tours the deforestation of the Amazon, the oil sand mines in Canada and the world's most polluted city, located in China.