Search results for

More than a dozen rural communities have invested in co-operative groceries and department stores to fill gaps left by the absence of chain outfits. NPR's Howard Berkes examines examples like The Merc in Powell, Wyo., and the Wolf Den market in Arthur, Neb.

Commentator Katie Davis brings us another of her neighborhood stories. Meet Don Victor Zebina, who always has the last word at the community garden in Walter Pierce Community Park. You need a piece of land; you have to go to Victor. You don't go and your plants might get ripped out. Katie Davis maps the intricate boundaries and passions of the community garden in Adams Morgan -- the most diverse neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Recently, there has been a line of people asking for new plots. The tension among gardeners has even led to "garden wars."

Our summer reading series profiles Azar Nafisi, author of Lolita in Tehran. She is currently the director of the Dialogue Project at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. She has just finished Diane Ravitch's The Language Police, and lists Address Unknown by Kathrine Taylor as one of her favorite books. Nafisi also regularly revisits Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Jacqueline Winspear's debut novel, Maisie Dobbs.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan responds to Vivian Gornick's comments.

The Rare Book School at the University of Virginia is the only one if its kind in the United States. NPR's Jacki Lyden took a tour of the school's collection, and talked with elite scholars attending week-long sessions to learn more about the preservation and art of rare books.

NPR's Susan Stamberg continues a series on contemporary ethics in a talk with Walter Pavlo, a former finance manager at MCI, who recently got out of jail. Pavlo served two years for money laundering, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice. He says in the early, heady days of the telecom industry, he felt "bulletproof."

Filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini are the team behind American Splendor, which is a hybrid of fiction and documentary. Their previous documentaries are Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's and The Young and the Dead.

Guest host Steve Inskeep interviews Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of the group Steely Dan. They discuss the group's tour in New York and their music.

NPR's Linda Wertheimer talks with Jane Juska about her new book, A Round Heeled Woman, in which she tells the story of how, at age 66, she placed a personal ad stating her desire to have sex with a man she likes. She received more than 60 responses and had a number of encounters.