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In their new book Willpower, psychologist Roy Baumeister and science writer John Tierney explore the science of self-control. Willpower is a limited resource, they say, but with practice and persistence, you can harness "the greatest human strength."

Middlesex is a hard act to follow, but Jeffrey Eugenides' latest is a sly, meta-fictional love triangle. Eugenides both satirizes and empathizes with his young intellectual characters' mix of pretentiousness, urgency and earnestness.

Brian Selznick's cinematic approach to storytelling is an artful experiment in narrative and illustration. Writing and drawing his books, he says, is "like going through a treasure map backwards."

In The Barbarian Nurseries, Hector Tobar explores the inconsistencies in the country's dependence on illegal immigrants even as some Americans persist in keeping them at arm's length.

"Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die," poet Marie Howe tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. One of Howe's most famous poems, "What the Living Do," was recently included in The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry.

Since 2006, 40,000 people have been murdered in Mexico as drug cartels battle each other and the Mexican military. Journalist Ioan Grillo traces how Mexico came to control drug trafficking in El Narco.

Bob Costas talks to Robert Siegel about his new book, the history of football, and what's really our "national pastime."

Somali writer Nuruddin Farah's latest novel, Crossbones, centers on a family's return to Somalia on the eve of the Ethiopian invasion. As war breaks out, each character looks for personal peace in a society rife with violence and tension.

A new book likens the reign of a football coach to a Greek tragedy — one filled with perils, flaws, and the burdens of expectations.

How do skyscrapers withstand 100-mph winds? How does air circulate inside tall buildings? And what happens when you flush a toilet on the 100th floor? Those questions and more are answered by Kate Ascher in her new book exploring the inner workings of skyscrapers.