After ‘The Last Lecture’: Jai Pausch’s ‘Dream New Dreams’

In 2006, Jai Pausch's husband Randy, a professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon, was stricken with pancreatic cancer at the age of 46.

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Given only a few months to live, his life was prolonged for two years by heroic measures, including a dangerous operation followed by an experimental program involving radiation and three different chemotherapy drugs.

Randy is notably known for giving the speech at Carnegie Mellon titled “The Last Lecture,” which also went on to become a New York Times bestseller he co-wrote with ...

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Biology and Geology Meld in ‘The Story of Earth’

Just one year after the Apollo 11 moon landing, Robert Hazen, then a student at MIT, had the good fortune to work with a team of geologists studying the moon rocks that the astronauts had brought back to earth.

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In The Story of Earth, Hazen describes how this early experience led to his deepening understanding of the co-evolution of the earth and the moon, and led him and his colleagues at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Geophysical Laboratory to study how life may have originated on earth ...

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Marianne LaFrance: ‘Lip Service’

Don't be deceived by the title. Lip Service: Smiles in Life, Death, Trust, Lies, Work, Memory, Sex and Politics is not about the benefits of positive thinking on the idea of “smile and the world smiles with you.” Yale social-psychologist Marianne LaFrance gathers the latest research from psychology, brain science, biology and even computer science to explain the complex nature of something so seemingly simple as a smile. In our review, we praised the author for providing “surprising insights into culture and psychology,” including the startling information that during the last two months of development, babies in the womb ...

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Nursing and Life in ‘Beautiful Unbroken’

Mary Jane Nealon became a nurse by default because her grades didn’t qualify her for a university scholarship, but she always felt that she wanted to write. The author of two books of poetry, here in her memoir, Beautiful Unbroken: One Nurse's Life, Nealon relates how her younger brother’s death from cancer devastated her close-knit Irish American family. We talk to her about her experiences as a health practitioner and a writer.

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You write that for years you nursed young, fatally ill adults like your brother. Was this ...

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Robert Lifton, ‘Witness to an Extreme Century’

A pioneer in the field of psycho-history, National Book Award winner and psychiatrist Robert Lifton explores why fundamentally decent individuals commit atrocities. As the author of more than 20 books, Lifton has covered such topics as the effects of Hiroshima on its survivors and the Nazi doctors who served in Hitler's death camps. Here, Lifton tells us about his book, a memoir entitled Witness to an Extreme Century, which Kirkus said was a “a call for a moral awakening by a deeply compassionate chronicler of our times.”

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What was your purpose in writing ...

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'Green is the New Red,' offers a glimpse of social activism 'under siege'

In 2002, Will Potter was a Chicago Tribune reporter who, on a whim, agreed to hand out leaflets exposing the abuse of dogs and cats at the Huntington Life Sciences research laboratory. His memoir, Green Is the New Red, reveals how his life was changed by a visit from two FBI agents who demanded that he agree to inform on fellow animal-rights activists.

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What was your purpose in writing this memoir?

I made an effort to not write about the actual questions surrounding animal rights and environmental issues. What I want people who read ...

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