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One day after the government sold off its stake in General Motors, the automaker announced a new CEO Tuesday. Mary Barra will become the first female head of a major auto company.

Nina Borg, the heroine of Death of a Nightingale, is a Red Cross nurse on a mission to save the dispossessed. But she neglects her own family as she rescues those in need in Agnete Friis and Lene Kaaberbol's elaborately plotted page-turner.

These albums might be strange bedfellows, but that's how we listen. This is the music that shook us up, sucked us in, commanded our respect and kept us dancing this year. Get in there.

Malala Yousafzai is widely viewed as a heroine in the West, for her brave stand against the Taliban's violent repression of girls' right to education. But the 16-year-old is the subject of fierce debate at home in Pakistan, and some worry that she is being exploited for ideological purposes.

Novelist Delia Ephron says that losing her older sister Nora was like "losing an arm." But for all their collaboration and closeness, Delia writes about the complications of sisterhood in her new collection of autobiographical essays, Sister Mother Husband Dog (etc.).

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in 2007. Heraldo Munoz, who led the United Nations investigation into her death, portrays the tense political climate that surrounded Bhutto's return to politics and the circumstances of the killing in his new book.

In December 1993, President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law. Presidential candidate Ross Perot predicted Americans would hear a "giant sucking sound" as Mexico vacuumed up U.S. jobs. Economists say that the worst of Perot's fears never materialized. But opponents still see downsides.

Goli Taraghi writes about life in Iran — about love, loss, alienation and exile. She is particularly equipped to the task, as her own exile from the country began in 1980 at the outset of the Iranian Revolution. She discusses her latest collection of short stories, The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons.

Amid the flurry of retrospectives prompted by Nelson Mandela's death, writer Kevin Roose reminds readers not to forget the social context within which Mandela struggled. Roose suggests reading the novel, Cry the Beloved Country, to understand the systematic racial oppression of South Africa under apartheid.

It's worth pausing to consider not only the legacy and achievements of former South African president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, but also the rich musical associations of his life.