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For the past 80 years, the Man of Steel has endured in books, movies, radio serials, comic books and cartoons. "Americans embrace Superman partly because he captured so many things that are part of our psyche and part of our sense of ourselves," says biographer Larry Tye.

Lynn Neary talks to three critics about books you shouldn't miss. One critic says it's a particularly rich literary summer because in election years, publishers release the juiciest books before fall.

NPR commentators favor Jennifer Close's look at women facing marriage and Amanda Hodgkinson's post-World War II family drama. There are also memoirs by actor Christopher Plummer and nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei, plus Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams re-evaluate universities for the digital age.

Prosecutors admit that the constitutional right to an attorney is inconsistently applied for indigent criminal defendants in some states. In Michigan, officials have repeatedly ignored pleas to change how it pays lawyers for the poor. But lawsuits and exonerations may be starting to change that.

A new book called Zoobiquity explores the diseases that humans and animals have in common. Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and journalist Kathryn Bowers explain how fainting fish, obese dragonflies, depressed gorillas and monkeys with heart failure can help inform human health.

Summer is a trying time for introverts, what with the barbecues and the graduations and the picnics by the pool. If you'd always choose a good book over a good party, critic Maureen Corrigan has a list for you.

One of the largest private health insurers said it will continue to allow young adults up to age 26 to stay on their parents' plans and will end lifetime dollar caps on claims, no matter what the Supreme Court decides. It's the first major insurer to make those promises.

English professor Natasha Trethewey has been named the 19th U.S. poet laureate. Poetry, she says, is something people can turn to for celebrating joys and mourning losses.

Southern food and culture expert John T. Edge sees the food truck craze as a great democratic portrait of America. His new cookbook highlights some of the most creative and cheap food cooked in trucks these days.

In the 2008 financial crash, a lot was written in newspapers and even books — but there wasn't much fiction out there to help those who like to view life through an imaginative lens. Now author John Lanchester's Capital can fill that void. It describes the crash as seen from London, and Lizzie Skurnick calls it "brilliant."