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Don Kroodsma records the unique, regional dialects of both birds and the people who love to listen to them. In his new book, he champions a theory: Like people, birds also have their own "accents."

The reviewer offers summer reading options, including fiction, poetry and short-story collections. He suggests titles from Jane Alison, Arthur C. Clarke, William Carlos Williams and more.

Gloria Hillard recently joined the growing ranks of self-published authors, and reports on the how self-publishing firms are answering a growing desire by writers to see their words in print — and get around the air-tight New York City publishing houses.

The Japanese director won the Academy Award for Spirited Away. His latest animated work is Howl's Moving Castle. He and others talk about making serious films for audiences young and old.

In Genius Factory, author and Slate columnist David Plotz traces the history of a so-called "Nobel Prize" sperm bank. Plotz tells Jennifer Ludden of his quest to find the bank's "genius" donors — most weren't what they were represented to be — and their offspring.

Robin Meloy Goldsby has spent decades making "pleasant and unobtrusive" background music as a cocktail lounge piano player. Now she steps front and center with a memoir called Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian.

Nasty generalizations from a series of 19th-century children's guides to the world form the basis of Todd Pruzan's book. He sees the work of Mrs. Mortimer as "a snapshot of Victorian prejudice."

Journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser are with The Washington Post. From 2001 to 2004, the pair, who are married, served as the Moscow bureau chiefs for the Post. The two have collaborated on a new book, Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution.

The cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan is soaring. The Afghan and U.S. governments are working to counter the drug trade.

Journalist John Allen has a book about the new pope, The Rise of Benedict XVI: The Inside Story of How the Pope Was Elected, and Where He Will Take the Catholic Church.