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William T. Vollmann's 2005 novel Europe Central was a masterpiece. His latest work, a collection of ghost stories entitled "Last Stories and Other Stories" is flabby and cliched.

Actors in period garb are the usual denizens of the Strawbery Banke Museum campus in Portsmouth, N.H., which spans 250 years of history. To make ends meet, the museum has lured more modern dwellers.

In Missing Microbes, Dr. Martin Blaser argues that the overuse of antibiotics, as well as now-common practices like C-sections, may be messing with gut microbes.

A former prosecutor, federal judge Merrick Garland will visit Capitol Hill on Thursday to begin meeting with legislators, Obama said.

Historian Rick Atkinson's new book completes his trilogy on the second world war. He tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that the events of the war may be 70 years in the past, but they're still very much a part of American culture.

Verdi's Il Trovatore remains one of the most popular operas of all time, but it walks a fine line between tragedy and farce. Find out who threw which baby into the fire in this production from the Maggio Musicale in Florence, Italy.

An opera that's wound its way into a host of other works, from Anna Karenina to Martin Scorsese's The Departed.

From the Eastern Seaboard to the Pacific Northwest, there's a colorful and compelling roster of political contests on Tuesday. Many of them have national implications, including a gubernatorial contest in New Jersey and a special congressional runoff in Alabama.

Bonaire is a scuba diver's paradise in the Caribbean. But the invasive lionfish is gobbling up smaller fish that protect the reef. The island is now teaching divers how to spear the lionfish.

Dunham presents a charming, bumbling, confessional front in her new memoir, but critic Annalisa Quinn says it's only a partial portrait that skimps on revealing Dunham's true talent and ambition.

NPR's Melissa Block asks Annie Dillard about the celebrated author's "masculine mind," her decision to write less, and her baseball skills. Dillard's new collection of essays is called The Abundance.

Writing music for The Good Dinosaur was a seven-month journey for brothers Mychael and Jeff Danna, not all of it glamorous.