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Which New Books To Read This Fall

As cooler weather sets in, we’ll find out what’s new in books suited for coming days in front of the fireplace. There’s a history of Wonder Woman from New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore, a memoir from actor and director Lena Dunham, and a new book examining the old debate over vaccinations. (digital post by Faith Meixell)

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Flickr/CC

GUESTS:

TOP PICKS from Michael and Dan:

Secret History of Wonder Woman- Jill Lepore: Read the author's articles on the topic in the New Yorker and Smithsonian magazine. "The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a tour de force of intellectual and cultural history. Wonder Woman, Lepore argues, is the missing link in the history of the struggle for women’s rights—a chain of events that begins with the women’s suffrage campaigns of the early 1900s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later." (Penguin Random House)

Against Football Steve Almond: We talked to Steve recently on The Exchange during our NFL controversies show. "Steve Almond's blistering book Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto is exactly what it advertises itself to be: an exasperated, frustrated, wide-ranging argument that the time has come to abandon football — particularly but not exclusively the NFL — as a sport built on violence, racism, economic exploitation of poor kids, corrupt deal-making with local governments over stadiums, and a willingness to find it entertaining to watch people suffer brain damage." (Linda Holmes, NPR)

What If?Randall Munroe: Listen to NPR’s interview with the author here. "Randall started a second Web comic–like series called “what if?,” where he answers readers’ weird questions by extrapolating the science as far as (and, many times, quite a bit farther than) it will go. The answers are always entertaining, funny, and display a sort of naked curiosity on Randall’s part I really admire." (Slate)

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel: "An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity." (Random House)

Complete List of Books Mentioned During Show:

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