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The week of Thanksgiving, NPR Music producer Stephen Thompson completed a daunting task: He listened to nothing but new holiday CDs for an entire 18-hour drive. The trip yielded prizes and punishments, and even a minor Christmas miracle.

Whether it's a year of big losses or big profits, most companies still manage to hold a holiday party for employees. A Silicon Valley businessman offers some advice on avoiding the pitfalls of the season.

New Jersey food writer Laura Schenone set off on a quest to find her great-grandmother's hand-rolled ravioli recipe. Along the way, she reunites with relatives in Italy, and helps mend strained relations with others around the dinner table.

Novelist Geraldine Brooks, poet Robert Hass, Western essayist William Kittredge: from critic Alan Cheuse, an array of books to keep winter's chill and the ever-earlier dark at bay — at least in the circle of light by the reader's chair.

President Bush addresses the nation's housing downturn as the White House puts together a plan with lenders to help homeowners facing sharply higher mortgage interest rates.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to give a speech on the tradition of religious tolerance in America. He's expected to talk about how his Mormon faith would inform his presidency if he's elected. Polls show rival Mike Huckabee pulling ahead of Romney in Iowa.

Caroline Kennedy's new Christmas anthology opens with her 1962 letter to Santa. In it, she wished for skates, dolls and a "pet reindeer" for herself and "some noisy thing" for her brother John. But a family tradition shunned toys for oranges and walnuts.

Alabama native Michael Knight has published a timely book. His pair of novellas, collected under the title The Holiday Season, tell the story of families weathering Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Writer Tom Perrotta recommends Sherwood Anderson's classic Winesburg, Ohio — a collection of snapshots of lonely souls and thwarted dreamers who populate a seemingly quaint Midwestern town.

Primatologist duo Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth discuss their new book, Baboon Metaphysics. The husband-and-wife team spent years studying a group of baboons in Botswana to better understand the primates' complex social structure.