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Drillers pumping oil on the Great Plains are also producing a lot of natural gas. But the state doesn't have the infrastructure to transport or store it, so much of that gas isn't being sold — it's being set on fire.

North Dakota's oil sector is booming, but agriculture remains the state's largest industry. And while many farmers and ranchers are profiting from the oil beneath the prairie, others complain that drilling is interfering with their business — and changing rural life as they know it.

Rough-and-tumble towns have popped up in areas once dominated by sleepy farming hamlets. Black gold has brought big-money jobs, but housing is expensive, crime has spiked, and water is running out.

A new book explores the ways melting Arctic ice yield new shipping channels, new oil and gas resources — and potential profits. Journalist McKenzie Funk delves into the "booming business of global warming" in Windfall.

Cokie Roberts' new children's book tells the stories of women who contributed to the success of the American Revolution — women like Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. She tells NPR's Steve Inskeep, "These were very, very politically passionate women. ... They were utterly devoted to the patriot cause."

Prickly relations between the U.S. and Islamabad are becoming even thornier because of one issue: the case of Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden in 2011. Afridi is seen as a hero by many Americans, but that didn't deter Pakistan from jailing him for alleged militant ties. The U.S. Congress is withholding $33 million in aid to Pakistan until the doctor is freed. But Afridi's lawyer fears this tactic will antagonize Islamabad. He urgently wants Afridi freed, warning that the doctor is at severe risk of being killed by fellow prisoners.

Rebecca Mead was 17 the first time she read Eliot's Middlemarch, and the book has remained a favorite ever since. But critic Meg Wolitzer says you don't have to read (or re-read) Middlemarch to love Mead's new book, My Life in Middlemarch, which is a mash-up of literary criticism, memoir and biography of Eliot.

In spite of the robotic persona they've cultivated for years, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo elected to make their new album, Random Access Memories, in a real studio, with real musicians. Hear the elusive electronic duo in conversation with All Things Considered's Audie Cornish.

In The Empire of Necessity, historian Greg Grandin tells the story of a slave revolt at sea. The 1805 event inspired Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, and Grandin's account of the human horror is a work of power and precision.

It's commonly thought that the Catholic Church fought heroically against the fascists in Italy. But in The Pope and Mussolini, historian David Kertzer says the church actually lent organizational strength and moral legitimacy to Mussolini's regime.