logo
episode-header-image
Oct 2021
8m 52s

Amor Towles' new book is about a road tr...

NPR
About this episode
Amor Towles' new book is quite the joyride — The Lincoln Highway follows four kids in a 1948 Studebaker who set out along the real-life Lincoln Highway, the first highway to cross the country. Two of them are trying to head for San Francisco to find their mother — the other two want to go the other way, looking for a promised inheritance. Needless to say, things don't go as planned. Towles talked to NPR's Scott Simon about the book — and also about the way the world moves so much faster now than it did in the 1950s, and how that affects the stories kids hear and see and create.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy
Up next
Today
Introducing: Books We've Loved
Welcome to Books We've Loved, a new limited series from Book of The Day. Every episode, we will dig into some of our favorite books, to make the case for picking up a book from the past. Hosted by Book of the Day’s Andrew Limbong and Code Switch’s B.A. Parker, they will be your g ... Show More
2m 10s
Today
Introducing: Books We've Loved
Welcome to Books We've Loved, a new limited series from Book of The Day. Every episode, we will dig into some of our favorite books, to make the case for picking up a book from the past. Hosted by Book of the Day’s Andrew Limbong and Code Switch’s B.A. Parker, they will be your g ... Show More
2m 10s
Yesterday
These new mystery novels are 'whodunits' that might as well be called 'whydunits'
Today’s episode features two mystery novels with special twists. First, The Killer Question is a story told via emails, WhatsApp messages and texts. When a new trivia team becomes suspiciously successful, egos are hurt and a body is found in the river. In today’s episode, author ... Show More
17m 34s
Recommended Episodes
Jul 2021
A Heartbreaking Novel About Mothers, Daughters and Secrets
The latest pick for Group Text, our monthly column for readers and book clubs, is Esther Freud's “I Couldn’t Love You More,” a novel about three generations of women grappling with secrets, shame and an inexorable bond. Elisabeth Egan, an editor at the Book Review and the brains ... Show More
56m 44s
Aug 2021
The Road Less Traveled
August 2, 1915. The poem appears in print for the first time this week, from Kentucky to Pennsylvania to Vermont. Every reader is transported to that same leafy path: “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost becomes an immediate hit and will go on ... Show More
27m 44s
Aug 2023
Amor Towles Sees Dead People
The novelist Amor Towles, whose best-selling books include “Rules of Civility,” “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway,” contributed an essay to the Book Review recently in which he discussed the evolving role the cadaver has played in detective fiction and what it says ... Show More
52m 50s
Dec 2021
Simon Van Booy, "Night Came With Many Stars" (Godine, 2021)
Night Came With Many Stars (Godine 2021) ebbs and flows with people who only take or destroy, balanced by those who give or heal. And everything centers on a family. A Kentucky father treats Carol, his thirteen-year-old motherless daughter like a servant up to the moment he loses ... Show More
26m 41s
Jan 2024
Our Early 2024 Book Preview
It's gonna be a busy spring! On this week’s episode, Gilbert Cruz talks with Tina Jordan and Joumana Khatib about some of the upcoming books they’re anticipating most keenly over the next several months.Books discussed in this week’s episode:“Knife,” by Salman Rushdie“James,” by ... Show More
25m 20s
Dec 2021
C. K. McDonough, "Stoking Hope" (D. X. Varos, 2021)
Stoking Hope (D.X. Varos, 2021), C.K. McDonough’s debut novel, opens in an early 1900’s southwest Pennsylvania coal town. Nineteen-year-old Martha gets pregnant, her father banishes her, and she’s sent to a home for unwed mothers in neighboring West Virginia. She gives birth, and ... Show More
24m 41s
Jan 2018
En el camino
Fabián Mauricio Martínez discovered his love for travel through his other passion – literature. So when he first read Jack Kerouac’s novel, "On the Road," he dreamed of crossing the United States from coast to coast as the main characters in the book had. One day, he decided it w ... Show More
15m 53s
May 2024
Colm Toibin on His Sequel to 'Brooklyn'
Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel “Brooklyn” told the story of a meek young Irishwoman, Eilis Lacey, who emigrates to New York in the 1950s out of a sense of familial obligation and slowly, diligently begins building a new life for herself. A New York Times best seller, the book was also ... Show More
44m 19s
Apr 2022
Fiction About Lives in Ukraine
While a steady stream of disturbing news continues to come from Ukraine, new works of fiction highlight the ways in which lives there have been transformed by conflict. On this week’s podcast, the critic Jennifer Wilson talks about two books, including the story collection “Lucky ... Show More
48m 48s