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Historically black neighborhoods were known for bringing people of different economic classes together — but that all changed during the civil rights movement. Eugene Robinson writes about how post-civil rights social mobility tore black communities apart in Disintegration.

President Biden announced that the U.S. killed a top al-Qaida figure in Kabul. Aside from the political and foreign policy implications, experts say such speeches can reveal a lot more about a leader.

Jim Shepard writes what he knows, but he also likes to write what he doesn't know. "I think literature is, in some ways, about the exercise of the empathetic imagination," Shepard says. "I'm always interested in stretching that capacity." You Think That's Bad is his latest collection of short stories.

Dr. David Ansell's experiences treating patients at Chicago's public hospital for 17 years turned him into a strong advocate for national health care reform. He details what it was like to work with Chicago's uninsured patient population in a new memoir and social history.

Scandinavian lit is getting a bad reputation. The days of fairy tales are over and a new wave of crime fiction has painted a grim picture of the Nordic countries. Author Heidi Durrow offers three books to take you inside the real Nordic world, where ordinary characters live and love in extraordinary ways.

Rachel DeWoskin's novel follows a gutsy 16-year-old girl navigating her way at a new performing arts high school. The book is a distinctive addition to the already packed library of coming-of-age stories.

In the media, Stanley Ann Dunham is often identified simply as "a white anthropologist from Kansas," or "a single mother on food stamps." But biographer Janny Scott argues that those descriptions don't do justice to the president's mother — a complex, intellectual woman who led an "unconventional" life.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton is known for helping to launch the American women's rights movement, but she sometimes also got in the way of that cause. Historian Lori Ginzberg says Stanton often prioritized white, middle-class women over others — and that has had a lasting effect.

Political commentator Sophia Nelson says it feels like "open season" on successful black women. In Black Woman Redefined, Nelson takes on the stereotypes that depict black women as angry and incapable of finding a man.

Fran Ross' Oreo is an uproarious look at American identity, through the eyes of a biracial girl. The funny, poignant novel was largely ignored when it was published in 1974 — but writer Mat Johnson says the time for the quirky novel is now.