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What's wrong with the field of psychiatry? Psychiatrist Daniel Carlat says some American psychiatrists are too busy prescribing drugs to actually talk to people. Carlat talks about the forgotten art of therapy and the influence of drug companies on the profession in his new book, Unhinged.

What actually happened on Independence Day? Did the rebels really wait until they saw the whites of British eyes at Bunker Hill? Historian Ray Raphael helps us debunk some of America's most popular — and believed — national creation myths.

City kids learn a lot of valuable tools for survival, like how to ride subways and push the buttons on elevators. But a lot of city kids think that green is just the color of a streetlight. Not Annie and Veda, two 5-year-old girls living in Washington, D.C., who now know that fresh vegetables don't just come from the market.

Nicholas Carr asks us to look up from our laptops long enough to appreciate the way multitasking and technology are changing the way we think. In his book The Shallows, he laments all that we are losing in exchange for our dynamic, interconnected, Internet-fueled world.

Slaughter is a master of the thriller genre; her latest book, Broken, is full of twists and turns and technical details. In the latest installment of our "Thrilled to Death" series, Slaughter talks with NPR's Michele Norris about the stories that keep her in suspense.

Sonia Shah's The Fever is a compelling account of a disease that remains out of sight — and out of mind — for most Americans, even as it slowly tightens its grip on other parts of the world. The treatable disease was eradicated in the U.S. 60 years ago, but it still kills about 1 million people around the world each year.

It may be graphic, it may be violent, but author and humorist Mishna Wolff has purchased no less than three copies of Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn. As much as she is revolted by the characters' flaws, she is inspired by their courage.

Post-modern wunderkind David Mitchell pulls off an old-fashioned yet action-packed tale in The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob de Zoet, a novel set in early 19th-century Japan. The story follows Jacob, a bookkeeper at an outpost of the Dutch East Indies Co., as he falls for a local midwife.

Megan Stack hadn't planned on becoming a war correspondent. But then Sept. 11 happened, and she found herself in the Middle East — the beginning of a seven-year stint of wartime reporting. In Every Man in This Village Is a Liar, Stack reflects on the experience of reporting from war-torn countries.

Jessa Crispin reviews Hilary Thayer Hamann's debut novel, Anthropology of an American Girl, which Hamann self-published in 2003. Now out in a new edition from a major publisher, the novel retains much of its unedited bloat, but also an amateurish charm.