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In 2011, Jessica Buchanan, an aid worker in Somalia, was kidnapped by land pirates. For 93 days she fought off despair while her husband, Erik Landemalm, wondered if he'd ever see her again. In a two-part interview, Buchanan and Landemalm recall Buchanan's capture and her dramatic rescue by Navy SEALs.

Historian Rick Atkinson's new book completes his trilogy on the second world war. He tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that the events of the war may be 70 years in the past, but they're still very much a part of American culture.

The fourth volume in Robert Caro's monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson is The Passage of Power; it explores the period between 1958 and 1964 during which Johnson went from powerful Senate majority leader to powerless vice president to — suddenly — president of the United States.

Curse words change over time — back in the ninth century you could say the "s" word and no one would be offended. But we always need a set of words that are off-limits, and in her new book, author Melissa Mohr explains how the words that shock us reveal a lot about society's values.

In a new book, former U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe explores how to fix the gridlock in Congress. Earlier this year, the Republican from Maine left the Senate out of frustration with the partisan stalemate. "It has to change, for the country," she says. "People deserve ... better representation."

Salter's first book, in 1957, won the admiration of writers and critics alike. But he hadn't written a novel since 1979, until now. All That Is sets out to give a sweeping portrait of human experience, with a main character who appears suspiciously similar to Salter himself.

Anchee Min's new book, The Cooked Seed, picks up 20 years after the end of her bestselling memoir Red Azalea, as Min arrives in America with little money and no English. After persecution in China, Min describes art school in America as "a strange environment, very surreal."

Neal Thompson's new biography traces the life of the newspaper cartoonist who became an international celebrity and media superstar. Ripley's pioneering mix of the strange, the shocking and the barely believable shaped the way Americans saw the world.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest book tells the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, who fall in love as students in Nigeria but soon emigrate to different countries: Ifemelu to America and Obinze to England. Adichie tells NPR's Scott Simon that Ifemelu's discovery of racial identity mirrors her own.

Malmsteen is the king of the neoclassical shred guitar. The Swedish musician and composer has somehow bridged centuries, from Paganini to his own arpeggiated acrobatics. Here, the guitarist speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about being a family man and growing up on Bach and Jimi Hendrix.