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A new book combines the memories and culinary skills of one Chinese political dissident who lived through the country's Cultural Revolution. Since food was rationed, Sasha Gong learned to cook with whatever she could find. "There's something about humanity," she says. "It's hard to suppress."

Under current law, candidates' campaigns are not allowed to coordinate with superPACs, although they clearly benefit from their messages. As result, candidates have performed feats of verbal gymnastics in order to talk about them. Host Scott Simon speaks with NPR's Peter Overby about the role of superPACs in the presidential race.

Clemson University political scientist Dave Woodard has spent the past week polling South Carolina voters ahead of Saturday's primary. Host Scott Simon talks to the former Republican political consultant about South Carolina politics and the results of his Palmetto Poll.

In 1897, S.A. Andree took an unlikely approach to exploring the North Pole: As other Arctic adventurers tried to march, sail or sled to the northernmost point on Earth, Andree decided to fly in a hydrogen balloon. Alec Wilkinson tells the story of the ill-fated expedition in his new book, The Ice Balloon.

In 1897, S.A. Andree took an unlikely approach to exploring the North Pole: As other Arctic adventurers tried to march, sail or sled to the northernmost point on Earth, Andree decided to fly in a hydrogen balloon. Alec Wilkinson tells the story of the ill-fated expedition in his new book, The Ice Balloon.

Longtime Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman start their biography of Mitt Romney by examining his ancestors, many of whom played crucial roles in the development of the Mormon faith. The Real Romney also examines the candidate's political beliefs and his career in private equity.

Science has a way of getting inside our heads — especially when it comes to the powers of the mind. Author and neurologist Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa recommends three brilliant brain-teasing books.

Is 60 the new 40? In her new book, Patricia Cohen (age 51!) explores the origin and evolution of middle age. "I like to say that middle age is something of a 'Never Never Land,'" she says. "Younger people never want to enter it, and older people never want to leave it once they get there."

"If we want to make media better then we've got to start consuming better media," says open-source-Internet activist Clay Johnson. His new book, The Information Diet, makes the case for more "conscious consumption" of news and information.

The most anticipated collections of the year revisit the past and take us to the frontiers of language, borrowing from Twitter memes and overheard conversation, from the classics and bad movies.