Search results for

Americans have the longest working days and shortest vacations of any of the world's industrialized nations. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates presents her literary equivalent of two weeks at the beach -- read her list of must-reads, and compare her list with other NPR literary contributors.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Americanization of Ben Franklin by Gordon S. Wood.

We present the first of our Lost & Found Sound Memphis trilogy with this portrait of the early years of Sam Phillips and his legendary Memphis Recording Service. This was before he recorded Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. Interviews with Sam, his family, Ike Turner and others are interwoven with the remote recordings he made of talent shows, funerals and proms to support his passion for recording the raw unrecorded music of the 1950s South.

Jack Mudurian loves to sing. He once claimed that he knew more songs than Frank Sinatra. So David Greenberger challenged him, and recorded the results on the back porch of the Duplex Nursing Home in Boston.

As the Academy Awards approached, the Lost and Found Sound archives from 1977 presented a home recording of 5-year-old Sofia Coppola. Coppola was being interviewed by her father, Oscar winner Francis Ford Coppola, who asked his daughter to talk to her future adult self. Coppola was up for two awards and was the first American woman nominated for best-director.

On July 5, 1954, Elvis Presley recorded "That's All Right," long hyped as the first rock 'n' roll record. It's not. By 1954, quite a number of records had been released that would qualify as rock 'n' roll. Even at Sun Studios, where Elvis recorded, the sound was nothing new. David C. Barnett of member station WCPN reports.

Lost and Found Sound looks at the Green Street Mortuary Band from San Francisco's Chinatown. More than 300 Chinese families a year hire the band to give their loved ones a proper and musical send-off through the streets of Chinatown. For more than 50 years, this amateur band performed for its community at nearly every big event.

Slate contributor Ben Williams presents a roundup of movie reviews of this weekend's major new film releases. Up this week: The Clearing, Spider-Man 2 and Before Sunset.

Increasingly, the American film industry is producing movies that target both English-speaking art house audiences and Spanish-speaking audiences in the United States. Among such films is Maria Full of Grace, shot in Spanish in the U.S. and Latin American with English subtitles. David D'Arcy reports.

A profile of Tony Schwartz, an innovative and inspired sound gatherer, recording the sounds of America since 1945. A man who will venture no further than his postal zone, Mr. Schwartz has made more than 30,000 home recordings in the streets, delis, cabs, playgrounds and stoops of his New York neighborhood.