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Hal Needham worked as a Hollywood stuntman for over 40 years. He details some of his most death-defying feats (and why he can't stand modern special effects) in his memoir, Stuntman!

In his new book, the New York Times columnist explores how the U.S. fell from industrial, political and academic glory after the Cold War. "Just when we needed to be lacing up our shoes and running faster, we put our feet up," he says.

Washington Post national security reporter Dana Priest's book Top Secret America looks at the top-secret intelligence and counterterrorism network created after Sept. 11. "No one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, [or] how many programs exist within it," she says.

As a Marine in the Vietnam War, Karl Marlantes learned to fire an M16, to command a platoon, to fight and to kill. In What It Is Like to Go to War, he comes to terms with the experience of combat: the guilt, the thrill and the challenge of coming home.

Everything you wanted to know about bug sex (but didn't bother to ask) is explained in a new book. Insect expert Marlene Zuk describes how ants learn, why some crickets don't chirp and how various bugs mate in Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love and Language from the Insect World.

Fantine's light skin gets her mistaken for Algerian, Samoan and Hawaiian. It's her ticket to an independent jet-setting life. But when her godson gets in trouble, she's forced to go home. Host Michel Martin discusses Take One Candle Light A Room with author Susan Straight.

In December 2009, an al-Qaida mole believed to be a CIA informant detonated a suicide bomb inside a fortified military base in Pakistan, killing seven CIA employees. Reporter Joby Warrick writes about the man who pulled off the attack — and explains how he did it — in The Triple Agent.

Sometimes, when walking Brooklyn's streets, it doesn't feel as if its literary past is haunting. Rather, its literary soul is still alive and pulsating. Brooklyn is a world unto itself and a writer's enclave. Journalist and critic Evan Hughes has written a literary biography of the leafy borough.

Tom Wolfe wrote about Ken Kesey's LSD experiments in the book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In 1987, Wolfe spoke to Terry Gross about following Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter's debut novel Bright's Passage reads like a protracted folk song and features many of the form's perennial motifs: Biblical names, blazing fires, ghosts in white lace and a beatific baby.