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Beloved chef Madhur Jaffrey prepared for a life on stage and screen as an actress — but her longing for the food of her childhood led her to her other career. She looks back on her days in film and in the kitchen with NPR's Renee Montagne.

In fiction, the old world of ex-pat print journalists in Rome beckons. If you'd rather face the facts, there's unconventional parenting advice or Atul Gawande's prescriptions for modern surgeons. Plus memoirs by novelist Siri Hustvedt and rocker Ozzy Osbourne, and a biography of Warren Beatty.

On Fresh Air, social historian Stephanie Coontz explains how the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963 helped women view themselves differently. But Coontz, author of A Strange Stirring, also critiques many aspects of Friedan's pioneering book, including its omission of minority women.

In Maf the Dog, Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagan imagines the life of Marilyn Monroe from the perspective of her white Maltese, and the results are odd and dazzling.

Literary critics have called him the British Philip Roth, but Howard Jacobson prefers to think of himself as a "Jewish Jane Austen." His books are renowned for their biting social commentary — and his Booker prize-winning novel, The Finkler Question, is no exception.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks' earliest and fondest memories are of fire — the coal fires of his childhood home, Hanukkah candles. Today he deals more with the firing of neurons, but he still gets his fix through flame-inspired literature like Hazel Rossotti's Fire, about the culture and science of fire.

A long-awaited biography examines the life of Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and his influence during 34 years on the Supreme Court. Stephen Wermiel's interviews with Brennan during his lifetime reveal a man who defies the stereotype of the liberal justice trying to impose personal views on the law.

Siobhan Fallon writes precise, powerful stories about the pain of separation that military families experience when deployment after deployment tears their intimacy apart. Her debut short story collection, When the Men are Gone, explores the emotional worlds of those left behind.

Arthur George Gaston overcame his humble beginnings to become a multimillionaire in the funeral home business and a huge financial backer of the civil rights movement. Biographer Suzanne Smith explains Gaston's lasting legacy on black entrepreneurship in America.

The Egyptian queen is most often remembered as a beautiful seductress. But in Cleopatra: A Life, biographer Stacy Schiff explains how the well-educated, enormously wealthy, powerful female pharaoh was actually a canny political strategist and tough negotiator.