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NPR host Scott Simon became a father for the first time at the age of 50, when he and his wife Caroline adopted the first of their two daughters from China. He describes how he felt becoming a father relatively late in life, how his family changed — and how his daughters continue to inspire him, in a new memoir, Baby We Were Meant For Each Other.

When Sam Hoffman and Eric Spiegelman's video of Hoffman's 60-something mother telling an off-color joke on YouTube went viral, they knew they had something special. The success of their subsequent website, OldJewsTellingJokes.com, and their upcoming book have proved them right.

More than 6 million African-Americans moved from the South to cities in the Northeast and Midwest between 1915 and 1970. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson documents the resulting demographic and social changes in her history of the Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns.

In the information age, the unexplored is hard to come by. Author Richard Harvell recommends three titles to take you back to a time when the unknown was a little more accessible — and to remind you of the power of wonder and imagination.

Catherine the Great wasn't really named Catherine, and she hated being called "Great." These and more intriguing facts about the dead are unearthed in John Lloyd and John Michinson's new book, "The Book of the Dead."

In How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu grafts the laws of theoretical physics onto the yearnings of the human heart. His time paradoxes are playful and clever — but he also describes a universe-wide emotional gap with a haunting, melancholic air.

Music infuses veteran novelist Kazuo Ishiguro's first collection of short stories and award-winning author Connie Willis views London's Blitz during WWII from the distant future while Alain de Botton watches the world pass by at Heathrow Airport — and more.

A house located on C Street in Washington, D.C., is home to many powerful conservative members of Congress who share both an ideology and an address. Jeff Sharlet details the house's mission in C Street:The Fundamental Threat to American Democracy.

Rebecca Traister's incisive analysis of misogyny and gender roles in the 2008 election takes on Tina Fey's satire, "Iron My Shirt" T-shirts and Hillary Clinton's "Night of the Imaginary Tears."

Rakoff doesn't often look on the bright side, and in his latest collection of essays, he explains why you shouldn't either. Thoroughly depressing subjects addressed in Half Empty include cancer, AIDS and Sept. 11.