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In a new book, Nick Turse says the pressure on U.S. forces to produce a body count during the Vietnam War led to mass civilian deaths. "The idea," he says, "was that the Vietnamese, they weren't really people."

2012 was a very jittery year — what with the presidential election, extreme weather events and the looming "fiscal cliff." Fresh Air critic Maureen Corrigan found that her favorite fiction and nonfiction this year directly confronted the atmospheric uncertainty of the age.

In Drinking with Men, Rosie Schaap chronicles the taverns she has called her own and the friends she has met along the way. It's a wonderfully funny and openhearted book from a generous, charismatic writer.

A college student charged in the U.S. Capitol riot was known on campus for his far-right views, which were nurtured by an online extremist. How do colleges confront extremism in their midst?

Rachel Wainer Apter, currently head of the state’s civil rights division, would be the 41st justice of New Jersey’s highest court if confirmed.

While Dr. Seuss, David Rakoff was not, the author, it's clear, cared a whole awful lot. This book — his last — is a rhymed, pensive story: A triumph, says Heller McAlpin, in all its sly glory.

Spanish novelist Javier Marías is well-known in Europe, but not as popular in the United States. Critic John Powers says Marías' latest work — an unsettling, slightly sinister twist on the mystery novel — ought to raise the author's profile here in America.

In The Right-Hand Shore, Christopher Tilghman returns to the racially charged landscape and the crumbling plantations of his book Mason's Retreat. Fresh Air critic Maureen Corrigan calls the prequel "the real deal."

Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan draws on her childhood experiences under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. It follows Raami, a young polio survivor, from her idyllic home to the depths of totalitarian exploitation.

Set in the Rocky Mountains after an epidemic has killed off most of society, The Dog Stars, by adventure writer Peter Heller, casts an unusual mood as it alternates between elegiac reflection, lyrical nature writing and intense, high-caliber action. The Dog Stars will be published on Aug. 7.