Search results for

German Catholics are facing a stark choice: Pay a church tax or forget about receiving the sacraments, including baptisms, weddings and funerals. Germany taxes registered Catholics, Protestants and Jews. In 2011, the tax raised $6.5 billion for the Catholic Church alone. Many progressives and conservatives are up in arms over the German bishops' decree.

In November, Maine voters will decide on a ballot initiative that would legalize same-sex marriage. Canvassers are trying to drum up support for the initiative, though opponents say they are sure they have enough support to vote it down.

Graphic novelist Chris Ware's latest, Building Stories, is a collection in many formats, following the (mostly) sad and lonely lives of the inhabitants of a Chicago brownstone. But reviewer Glen Weldon says the work is colorful, intricate and ultimately beautiful.

The vast web of geometries traced out in light shows you cities as a kind of infestation. They're like living networks spreading across the planet.

Colin Meloy, best known as the Decemberists' front man, is also a novelist. His newest book is the second in a series for young readers, called Wildwood Chronicles. The book catches up with its precocious protagonist, Prue, who leaves the seventh grade to return to the magical world of Wildwood.

When an aspiring writer agrees to look after his old friend's flat, enduring an absent homeowner's passive-aggressive notes isn't the worst that will happen. In his first novel, Care of Wooden Floors, Will Wiles follows a housesitting job gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Round 9 of Three Minute Fiction is currently underway. Readers from more than a dozen graduate programs are plowing through the nearly 4,000 entries received. Host Guy Raz shares one of the favorite picks so far, The Generous Application of Grease by Stephen Fratus of Walnut Creek, Calif. You can read the full story below along with other stories at www.npr.org/threeminutefiction.

Mark Helprin's sweeping midcentury novel, In Sunlight and In Shadow, describes a postwar New York in limbo. Helprin borrowed from his own experiences to write this tale of love and familial obligations. "It's all based on what I know and what I knew," he says.

A new study from the Kauffman Foundation shows that the number of immigrant entrepreneurs in the country has fallen slightly. But according to Vivek Wadhwa, an author of the study, the drop is especially steep in Silicon Valley.

The latest poll by NPR and its bipartisan polling team shows President Obama with a 7-point lead among likely voters nationally and a 6-point lead in the dozen battleground states where both campaigns are spending most of their time and money. But battleground voters were also more downbeat about the direction of the country.