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The payoff in Zadie Smith's book of essays, Changing My Mind, comes not from her discussion of her literary influences but in three essays about her "gentle, sentimental" father, Harvey Smith, a salesman who died at 81 in 2006.

More staff picks of standout books. This week, new nonfiction: Harold Evans traces his rise, while Mary Karr details her fall and redemption. Nina Totenberg reads the Scalia biography.

The Humbling blooms brightly in the extraordinary garden of Philip Roth's later work. Swift but piercing, uncluttered yet nuanced, the novel tells the tale of an actor who loses his talent and therefore his sense of self.

America's Finest News Source has released a book celebrating its 21 years of satire (with a wink). Onion editors Joe Randazzo and Joe Garden talk with Renee Montagne about the serious business of being funny. Also: See the fun The Onion has had at NPR's expense.

The protagonist of After, Amy Efaw's new novel for young adults, is a 15-year-old straight-A student and Olympic hopeful who winds up in jail, charged with trying to murder her newborn baby.

The Liar's Club, Mary Karr's memoir about her hardscrabble childhood in Texas, was named one of the best books of 1995. In her new book, Lit, Karr details her early adult years and her struggles with alcohol, depression and motherhood.

For a half-century, the literary journal's interviews, under the banner "The Art of Fiction," have unlocked the mysteries of writing and the eccentricities of writers. Critic Maud Newton reviews a new boxed set, The Paris Review Interviews, Volumes I-IV.

The gritty realism of the film Precious is even more intense in the novel Push, upon which the film is based. Author Sapphire discusses the inspiration for her work — and her initial reluctance to allow her work to become a film.

Working for Japan's Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper, reporter Jake Adelstein uncovered a world unknown to many of the Japanese public, let alone to foreigners: the world of organized crime. He details its landscape — and the dangers of covering it — in a new memoir.

The photographer, who died Oct. 27 at age 89, dedicated his decades-long career to capturing images of African Americans. Roy DeCarava's subjects ranged from daily life in his hometown of Harlem to the Civil Rights movement.