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NPR's John Ydstie interviews Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief, a novel set in World War II Germany with Death himself as the narrator. The book tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a young girl who lives with a foster family in a tough, working-class neighborhood of Molching, Germany.

The new anthology Mexico, A Traveler's Literary Companion takes us deep inside the imagination of a country through its fiction. Many of the stories are translated to English for the first time. Editor and translator C.M. Mayo tells John Ydstie about the book.

Sometimes authors' best works are their first. The tale of an imaginary universe where elevators are really important and the story of the first giraffe in Europe are among librarian Nancy Pearl's selections of must-read literary debuts.

Mary Gordon's book Pearl is about a mother struggling to understand her daughter's public act of martyrdom. It's now out in paperback. Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments and The Company of Women and four nonfiction works (including The Shadow Man. (This interview was originally broadcast Jan. 31, 2005.)

President Bush is an enigmatic leader who uses an insurgent approach in reshaping policy and politics. That idea is central to Rebel in Chief, the new book by political writer Fred Barnes. Barnes is the executive editor of conservative magazine The Weekly Standard.

If a child's parents are of two races — particularly if the mother is a former Black Panther member and the father is white — growing up can be a unique experience. Writer Angela Nissel mines those experiences in her memoir, Mixed. Nissel is a writer and consulting producer for the NBC TV show Scrubs.

Concerns over energy resources aside, economists say a global shortage of water would curtail the world's ability to raise food — perhaps by 2025. Fred Pearce is an environmental and development consultant at New Scientist. His new book is When the Rivers Run Dry.

David Seymour chronicled wars and the lives they shattered from the 1930s to 1950s. He took pictures from his heart. And the photog who went by the nickname Chim somehow found a way to get close enough to capture the spirit of his subjects.

Washington Post reporter Michael Grunwald. His new book is The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise. The Everglades were once considered a wasteland, worthy of being decimated.

Commentator Elizabeth Gilbert, who is the author of the new book Eat, Pray, Love, recalls a trip to Naples, Italy that helped restore her love of pleasure after a painful divorce.