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If you've ever hummed "Camptown Races" or "Oh! Susanna," then you're familiar with 19th century songwriter Stephen Foster. But the lyrics in Foster's songs often contained condescending racial ideas. Music historian Ken Emerson, the author of a Foster biography, has annotated many of the songwriter's lyrics in a new book, Stephen Foster & Co.

Novelist Tim O'Brien served in Vietnam as an infantryman in 1968. He wrote about the war in several novels, including Going After Cacciato and If I Die in a Combat Zone. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1990 about his classic book of short war stories, The Things They Carried.

Private Life, the new novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley, centers around the marriage between a small-town girl and an eccentric astronomer in the first years of the 20th century.

Daniel Clowes' new comic, Wilson, about a middle-aged misanthrope who lives for the sound of his own voice, will be familiar territory for the author's fans. But Glen Weldon says that Clowes' dark humor is as lacerating as ever.

When does collecting cross the line and become a disorder? And why do some people save every newspaper? Researchers Randy Frost and Gail Steketee examine compulsive hoarders in their new book, Stuff — and explain what we know about the causes of and treatments for the compulsive disorder.

Julian Baggini, the author of the book Should You Judge This Book by Its Cover?, attempts to prove the old proverb: You can lead people to an understanding of why they're misusing common sayings, but you can't make them think.

Peter Carey's new novel Parrot and Olivier in America is a retelling of the life of historian Alexis de Tocqueville in which a French aristocrat and his reluctant working-class companion travel to a young United States to research American penitentiaries and escape political upheaval in France.

In The War Lovers, Evan Thomas tells the story of how a few men, led by future President Theodore Roosevelt, helped to provoke in the American public a fervor for combat that led to the 1898 Spanish-American War.

This week, basketball star LeBron James won his second MVP trophy in a landslide vote, but he's been a star since he was a teenager. Now 25, James looked back on his youth in the memoir Shooting Stars, which he co-wrote with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger.

Just what is a summer book, anyway? Does it have to be a big, fat, juicy page turner to earn the right to be packed away in the luggage (or downloaded on the e-reader)? We put that question to several book reviewers to find out what they like to take along on summer getaways.