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Anjan Sundaram's new memoir Stringer chronicles his adventures as a budding journalist in one of the world's most chaotic spots: the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Reviewer and veteran journalist Ted Koppel says Stringer "is a book about a young journalist's coming of age, and a wonderful book it is, too."

Ishmael Beah was 12 when he was orphaned by Sierra Leone's civil war and recruited as a child soldier. He described the ordeal in his 2007 memoir, A Long Way Gone. Now, Beah's debut novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, tells the story of a shattered community struggling to rebuild itself after war.

When writer Lynn Darling found herself at a turning point in her life, she sought solitude and enlightenment in the woods of Vermont. Her new memoir, Out of the Woods, describes that midlife experience. Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan calls it "a compelling story of internal exploration, as well as outward-bound adventure."

Sue Monk Kidd, the author of the best-selling The Secret Life of Bees, takes on both slavery and feminism in her novel The Invention of Wings. It's a story told by two women: Hetty, a slave, seeks her freedom, while Sarah, her reluctant owner, rebels against her family to become an abolitionist.

Residents of Martin County, Ky., where President Johnson traveled to promote his War on Poverty in 1964, say they need jobs more than government aid.

According to Russian journalist Masha Gessen, the 2012 arrests were the start of a campaign by Vladimir Putin and his supporters against government critics. Gessen, who is also an LGBT rights advocate, recently moved to New York with her partner and their children in response to the anti-gay laws Russia passed in June.

Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson declared an "unconditional war on poverty in America." It was something he knew well, says historian Robert Caro. As a boy, Johnson and his family often had little food and were "literally afraid every month that the bank might take away" their house.

In 1964, President Johnson traveled to Martin County, Ky., to try to sell his "war on poverty" to the American public. What residents say they need now is steady work.

In Little Failure, the novelist recounts his emigration from the USSR to the U.S. when he was 7. For the first few years, he says, he would sit alone in the school cafeteria, talking to himself in Russian "in this gigantic fur hat and fur coat." It wasn't long before a teacher advised, "Children won't play with you if you have that much fur on."

John Rizzo, who guided the CIA through more than three decades of crisis and controversy, has written a new memoir called Company Man. He talks with NPR's Renee Montagne about the origins of the infamous "enhanced interrogation techniques" that emerged after the Sept. 11 attacks.