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David Brooks examines the age-old pursuit of happiness in his book The Social Animal, which follows a pair of fictional adults throughout their conveniently instructive lives. Using the characters as mouthpieces, Brooks uses a range of philosophy, humor and research to explore the human unconscious.

In Ben Ryder Howe's funny new memoir, My Korean Deli, the author explains how he helped his wife's family buy a Brooklyn bodega — and then spent his nights working there, while trying to balance his day job as an editor at The Paris Review.

When Cokie and Steve Roberts married in 1966, they faced a choice familiar to many mixed-faith couples: practice no religion, pick one or the other, or find ways to observe both. In Our Haggadah, the couple describes how they celebrate Passover with family and friends of all faiths.

In She Walks In Beauty, Caroline Kennedy collects poems that have inspired her at various milestones, as a daughter, a woman and a wife. Elizabeth Alexander's work appears several times in the collection. She joins the conversation to talk about the relationship between the poet and the reader.

In the aftermath of Liberia's brutal civil wars, Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna hosted a radio show in which former child soldiers apologized, women who were raped forgave their tormentors, and former warlords admitted crimes — on-air. She shares those stories in And Still Peace Did Not Come.

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch explains why she was once an early advocate of No Child Left Behind, school vouchers and charter schools — and what changed her mind.

In his new book, Doug Saunders explores how urban immigrant centers function in increasingly subtle ways, and how governments succeed and fail in managing them.

Jerusalem has many identities — some real, some imagined. It's known as "the city of peace," but author James Carroll identifies it as the "home base of religious violence." In his new book Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Carroll traces the history of this holy city and how it has shaped the modern world.

Twenty years ago, Italian food was regarded as cheap, peasant food. Now it's served on menus worldwide and considered to be one of the healthiest cuisines. Esquire Magazine's food critic John Mariani chronicles the story of pizza, macaroni and red sauce in How Italian Food Conquered the World.

African journalist Peter Godwin returned to his native Zimbabwe in 2008 to follow the presidential election. He writes about President Robert Mugabe's refusal to give up power — and Mugabe's torture campaign against opposition supporters — in The Fear.