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This week's paperbacks take on big questions: what it means to be Jewish; how a woman disfigured by polio became an iconic photographer; how medicine is blurring the boundary between life and death; and what we can do to improve America's schools.

Novelist Nicole Krauss artfully weaves disparate stories of love and loss into a devastating examination of the weight of memory on those left behind. Four narrators are connected by an antique desk separated from its original owner during the Holocaust.

The interview with the Daily Show host that was originally broadcast Oct. 4 has been re-edited for Friday's Fresh Air; it features material cut from the original broadcast because of time constraints.

Sonny Brewer did everything from selling cars to singing in a honky-tonk band before he became a novelist — and it turns out, he's not the only one. In Brewer's latest project, Don't Quit Your Day Job, authors write about how they made ends meet before pursuing their literary dreams.

What kind of force is religion in American life today? A new book by professors Robert Putnam and David Campbell seeks to examine some of the changes.

Bob Palmer, Chuck Vervalin, Tim McCoy and Gordy Cox were teenagers when the Japanese sank their submarine in World War II. No Ordinary Joes tells the story of their subsequent imprisonment, survival and loves.

A wise spiritual teacher (who also happens to be a bear) stars in Jon J. Muth's vibrantly illustrated picture books. Zen Ghosts combines the simplicity and elegance of a Zen teaching with the mystery and magic of a full-moon, Halloween ghost story.

The AK-47 was created by the Soviets after World War II and changed the way war is fought. Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent C.J. Chivers explains how the gun became the weapon of choice for insurgents, terrorists and child soldiers.

In Myla Goldberg's The False Friend, a woman revisits her hometown to atone for a crime that no one remembers. Ten years after Bee Season, Goldberg's compelling new novel examines the nature of childhood trauma, and just how subjective memories can be.

In Antonya Nelson's provocative novel Bound, the lives of two high school best friends tragically collide after years of estrangement. Nelson's prose captures the clamor of 21st century life, and the ways in which friends obligate, abuse and occasionally rescue each other.