Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel The Committed follows the same unnamed character we met in his Pulitzer-winning thriller, The Sympathizer. The character is now in Paris; having become disillusioned with the revolution he was a part of when we last saw him, he hasn't given up on the idea entirely. Nguyen told NPR's Scott Simon the book is also about colonization: He "wanted it to be set in a Paris that was not the tourist Paris or the romantic Paris. [It's] a novel about French ideas and French Revolution and French colonialism, but it's also a crime thriller set in these immigrant neighborhoods."
In 1970, a cyclone tore through Pakistan and the political lines that existed, leading to genocide and very nearly a nuclear war in the country. Author Scott Carney was curious about this catastrophe but also how these extreme weather events, which are only becoming more common, have political consequences. Carney told NPR's Steve Inskeep that we will almost certainly face similar problems in the future, so we should be wary of today's unstable political systems.
Author Karen Joy Fowler thinks John Wilkes Booth craved attention – and that gotten his fair share of it. So her new novel, Booth, instead focuses on his family. Their history might surprise you, given how John turned out. His grandfather was a part of the Underground Railroad. Fowler told NPR's Scott Simon that because of all we know about Booth's family, the path that John took is one of life's great mysteries. And, no, she hasn't solved it.
In the United States and Britain in the 19th century, there was a competitive activity that might have been the most popular sport in either country.
Tens of thousands of people would show up to witness it live and the top athletes got endorsement deals and had their own trading cards, and tremendous amounts of money was wagered.
However, it wasn’t football, baseball, cricket, or boxing.
It was competitive walking.
Learn more about pedestrianism, aka competitive walking, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Writer John Schu and illustrator Veronica Miller Jamison are out with a new picture book that asks the question what exactly is school...for? Test prep? Socialization? This Is A School makes the case that it's a place for community and trying new things. Schu and Miller Jamison told NPR's Ailsa Chang that their own elementary school experiences were not like the ones in their book, but they hope kids today get to have diverse experiences.
What did the first Chinese Emperor Qin, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Gengis Kahn, the Queen of Sheba, and all their contemporaries who lived when they did have in common?
None of them ever ate a potato.
The potato is a rather new addition to the diets of the old world, and one which revolutionized civilization.
Learn more about the potato and how changed world history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
