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A new children's book written and illustrated by a Brown University math professor makes complex ideas like prime and composite numbers easy (and fun) to understand.

For 20 summers, Mark Twain wrote novels in a small cottage on Quarry Farm in Elmira, N.Y. Now, 175 years after Twain's birth, NPR's Tom Vitale makes a pilgrimage to the author's grave in Elmira's rolling hills.

After Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn., the man who shot him, James Earl Ray, was able to evade the FBI during a two-month-long massive worldwide manhunt. Writer Hampton Sides traces the movements of both King and Ray in his book, Hellhound on His Trail.

Even in boom times, family conversations about politics, money and race tend to be explosive, and arguments get even more heated when times are tough. Consuming this year's feast of great nonfiction books will deepen your knowledge of our struggling world — and maybe guarantee victory at the dinner table.

Twenty-five percent of Americans believe vaccines could lead to development disorders in children. How can so many people be wrong?

Once upon a time, scenery and special effects were crafted entirely by human hands. NPR's Susan Stamberg reveals some of the surprising secrets behind Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Dr. Zhivago and other classics.

T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia, is one of the most well-known figures of World War I. But in Hero, Michael Korda argues he was more than just a colorful character. Korda believes his struggle to create solutions in the Middle East could have made a difference in today's conflicts.

The Roosevelts' unorthodox marriage was equitable, sexually open — and spanned four decades. Hazel Rowley profiles the uncommon union of a four-term president and his first lady in Franklin And Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage.

Curtis Wilkie is the author of The Fall of the House of Zeus, in which he chronicles the life of Dickie Scruggs, a trial lawyer who made millions in lawsuits targeting the asbestos and tobacco industries — and then wound up in prison for attempted bribery.

Literary Santa delivers his list of favorite fiction, nonfiction and poetry — a box of the best books from 2010 that he'd like to bring to your house on a snowy morning.