Blues, jazz and gospel; a civil rights movement that began with the Emmett Till case; modern glass and steel buildings that dared the sky. In Third Coast, Thomas Dyja writes that "the most profound aspects of American Modernity grew up out of the flat, prairie land next to Lake Michigan."

Kojo explores the complexities of revenge, where it's appropriate and how it might be effectively deployed.

In 1839, Great Britain and Russia were playing the world map like a chessboard — and for no reason other than geography, Afghanistan got caught in the middle. In Return of a King, historian William Dalrymple tells the story of Britain's calamitous invasion.

The best-selling author and humorist has kept journals for 36 years. Those diaries have been the jumping-off point for the personal essays that appear in his collections, including Me Talk Pretty One Day and now Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls.

Once people figured out how to roast the seeds of the Coffea plant in the 1400s, coffee took over the world. In doing so, it fueled creativity, revolutions, new business ventures, literature, music — and slavery.

Is it naive to believe that improved Internet access can help open up truly autocratic regimes like North Korea? Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, authors of The New Digital Age, say the power of information is underrated.

A new book by Christopher Clark describes the series of events that precipitated one the most complex and catastrophic conflicts of modern times. "It seems to me that our world is getting more like 1914, not less like it," Clark says.