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Philip Short's new biography of French president Francois Mitterrand, A Taste for Intrigue, is a compelling, polished portrait of a slippery, contradictory figure who relished reinventing himself.

The Swedish Academy praised the Chinese writer's work, which "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." The award is a cause of pride for a government that disowned the only previous Chinese winner of the award, an exiled critic.

Alexis Ohanian is co-founder of the popular social news site Reddit. His new book, Without Their Permission, tells the story of the site, from startup to Internet giant.

Colonel Mustard, in the ballroom, with the ... Gouda? You may not expect a wheel of cheese to be at the center of a devious plot, but Michael Paterniti's The Telling Room manages to do just that.

Dylan Dethier took a year off between high school and college for an unusual quest: He wanted to play a round of golf in each of the 48 contiguous states. His new book, 18 in America, chronicles that year, and he joins NPR's Scott Simon on the putt-putt course to talk about it.

Sherman worked a tight niche: classic songs rewritten to tickle a Jewish audience's funny bone. A new biography, Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman, explains how the performer's 1960s crossover fell in line with a collective awakening to ethnic identity in America.

Who says books are doomed? Photos celebrate not only books but also the shelves we put them on.

Ecologist and "natural security expert" Rafe Sagarin thinks our systems for dealing with natural disasters and terrorist attacks need to be updated. The best place to turn for advice? Other organisms.

When Teddy Roosevelt became a New York police commissioner in 1895, he vowed to clean up the city's endemic vice and corruption. It didn't exactly work out. New Yorkers liked the idea of standing up to corrupt cops, but they rebelled when Roosevelt tried to enforce a ban on Sunday drinking.

In his latest novel, Thomas Mallon takes a fresh look at the scandal that brought down the Nixon administration, re-imagining it through the eyes of the cast of characters involved.