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Jean Thompson's The Humanity Project follows the fortunes of a number of hard-luck people — and looks at the bizarre, sad and funny ways we fail to help others.

Maya Angelou spent much of her childhood being raised by her grandmother in Arkansas, but as a young teenager, she returned to live with her mother, Vivian Baxter. Angelou's Mom & Me & Mom looks back on the long process of reconciliation with the woman who sent her away.

With books like Stiff and Spook, Roach has built a reputation for making unpalatable subjects entertaining. In her new book, Gulp, she tackles the human digestive system, from the mouth on down. Along the way, she gets a sedation-free colonoscopy and goes on location for a fecal transplant.

Athletes used to lead the charge for social change all the time, but as sports figures started making more in endorsement deals, their politics sometimes took a backseat to their pocketbooks. Sportswriter Dave Zirin's new book is about the uneasy confluence of sports and politics over the years.

Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for her last novel, Olive Kitteridge. Her follow-up, The Burgess Boys, is a sure-handed meditation on a family fractured by tragedy. Reviewer Lizzie Skurnick says Skurnick's "deft touch" comes through in the subtle betrayals of her characters.

Read an exclusive excerpt of Meg Wolitzer's new book, The Interestings. It's the story of a group of bright, talented kids who bond at summer camp in the 1970s — dubbing themselves the Interestings — and what happens to friendship and early promise as the years roll along.

Author Dana Becker says that Americans are obsessed with curing stress, rather than identifying and addressing the forces that cause it. Becker explains the origins of the concept of stress, how "stress inflation" is affecting society, and why just eating more kale isn't enough.

In 2011, Emily Rapp's baby was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease, a genetic, degenerative condition with no cure. He died just shy of his third birthday. In her new memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, Rapp writes about what it's like to care for a terminally ill child.

What makes some families stronger, more harmonious, and just plain happier than others? To find out, Bruce Feiler asked parents and experts from a wide variety of fields for advice that parents could apply to improve life at home.

William H. Gass' fiction has been a secret handshake among brainy readers for years. Critics universally adored The Tunnel, his 1995 opus, even though it was nearly impossible to read. With Middle C, Gass has given us another dense, suffocating novel about language and the self.