A new book combines the memories and culinary skills of one Chinese political dissident who lived through the country's Cultural Revolution. Since food was rationed, Sasha Gong learned to cook with whatever she could find. "There's something about humanity," she says. "It's hard to suppress."

When it comes to learning an instrument, children have the edge in many respects. Using himself as a guinea pig, psychology professor Gary Marcus resolved to find out whether nonmusical adults have any chance of turning things around.

In 1897, S.A. Andree took an unlikely approach to exploring the North Pole: As other Arctic adventurers tried to march, sail or sled to the northernmost point on Earth, Andree decided to fly in a hydrogen balloon. Alec Wilkinson tells the story of the ill-fated expedition in his new book, The Ice Balloon.

Smart, scintillating reads are hard to find — especially when you like your protagonists nerdy. Author Lev Grossman offers three great reads for the geeks in all of us.

Noted novelist, essayist and biographer Edmund White has come out with a new work of fiction. It's called Jack Holmes And His Friend.

When Roya Hakakian moved from Iran to the U.S., she didn't think any poet in her adopted country could top the ones whose work she grew up with. But then she discovered a piece that blew away her prejudices. It was "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke.