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Since our country's founding, Americans have debated the speeches and tracts sacred to our founding, from the Exodus story to the Declaration of Independence. In this election year, politicians and pundits constantly debate the "true" meaning of America's core canon, asking what the founding fathers or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Eleanor Roosevelt would think of immigration reform, or affirmative action, or birth control. In his new book, author and professor Stephen Prothero has collected these core texts in his new book, "The American Bible."

Excerpted from "The Man Without a Face" by Masha Gessen

Encouraged by his former deputy’s meteoric rise, Sobchak decided to end his Paris exile and go back to Russia in the summer of 1999. He returned full of hope and even more full of ambition. As Sobchak was leaving Paris, Arkady Vaksberg, a forensics specialist turned investigative reporter and author with whom Sobchak had become friendly during his years in France, asked him whether he hoped to return to Paris as an ambassador. “Higher than that,” replied Sobchak. Vaksberg was sure the former mayor was aiming for the foreign minister’s seat: the rumor in Moscow’s political circles was that Sobchak would head up the Constitutional Court, the most important court in the country.

The "New Chapter" initiative lifts overdue fines for patrons under 18 at New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Library branches through October 31.

White House officials are already criticizing journalist Ron Suskind's book "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President," which just came out this week, despite having cooperated with Suskind for years. Among the book's more controversial passages are depictions of the Obama White House as dysfunctional, with mean, misogynistic economic advisers undermining a clueless president at every turn. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said, "I lived the original and the reality I lived, we all lived together, bears no relation to the sad little stories I heard reported from that book." White House Press Secretary Jay Carney went even further and accused Suskind of plagiarism, saying, "one passage seems to be lifted almost entirely from Wikipedia."

On Saturday, the sidewalk ends in Central Park. The author, poet, songwriter and cartoonist Shel Silverstein -- known to many for children's books like Where the Sidewalk Ends -- will be lauded in a, um, "Shelebration" as part of Central Park's SummerStage series.

In today’s world, it’s not unusual to wake up alone, drive to work alone, and eat our meals alone. It’s expected that most of our communicating will take place through machines, rather than face to face. And it’s not unusual for us to develop relationships with those machines, whether they’re our cell phones or GPS devices. But what does all this isolation do to us? And does technology make our isolation better or worse?

100 years ago this February, a ten-pound future president was born in Illinois, feet first. His name was Ronald Wilson Reagan. While he eventually came to be a household name, first as an actor, then as a politician, the details of Ronald Reagan's personal life have always been more or less private. Even his own son, Ron Reagan, wasn’t fully sure of his dad’s story, until he set out to learn more about him. 

“Zora and Me” fictionalizes the childhood of the Harlem Renaissance writer, folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. (Hurston was born in 1891, lived through the Jim Crow south, and died in 1960.) The young adult novel is the first in a planned trilogy which imagines Hurston as a girl detective in her all-black hometown of Eatonville, Florida, at the start of the 20^th century.

Israel, China, and Afghanistan figured in works presented at the Happy Ending Music and Reading series at Joe’s Pub on October 6^th. 

The opening night of this season's True Story: The KGB Nonfiction Reading Series—a, you guessed it, nonfiction reading series at KGB bar—explored memory, record-keeping and truth, with Joshua Foer (reading from his forthcoming book "Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remember Everything"), and Francine Prose (with a selection from "Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife"). The readers were introduced by one of the series' curators, Anna Wainwright.

Patrick Hennessey, Jr., gives an account of his coming of age as a young enlistee, staving off the tedium and pressures of army life in the Iraqi desert by creating a book club. In The Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, Hennessey captures how boys grow into men amid the frenetic violence, frequent boredom, and overwhelming responsibilities that frame a soldier's experience.

For most people living outside of the Gulf, Hurricane Katrina was a tragedy represented by tens of thousands of nameless faces. People waved frantically from rooftops or crowded into the Superdome, returning home only to find their houses and possessions destroyed. However, for fans of the award-winning graphic novel “A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge,” by Josh Neufeld, there are very specific names and faces attached to Katrina. Those people aren't just characters in a book either – they are real people. Five years after the hurricane, we follow up with two of them to see where their lives – and their city – are today.

Ricky Martin has picked an appropriate title for his autobiography: "Me."

Thomas Beller and Said Sayrafirzadeh visited The Brian Lehrer Show to discuss the new anthology Lost and Found: Stories from New York. Thomas Beller is the editor of the anthology and the author of three books, Seduction Theory, The Sleep-Over Artist, and How To Be a Man. Said Sayrafirzadeh is the author of When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood and a contributor to Lost and Found. Guest host Mike Pesca conducted the interview.

Listen to the whole interview:

You can read Sayrafirzadeh's stories and hundreds more at Mr. Beller's Neighborhood

Media thinker Doug Rushkoff discusses his new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back on the Brian Lehrer Show.

David Denby, the pointed but never snarky film critic for The New Yorker, talks about his new book Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining Our Conversation. Denby and Lehrer review some well-known quips and ask "Is This Snark?"

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Part visionary, part mad scientist, and absolute genius, Tesla should be as famous as Edison – but he’s been largely forgotten. Kurt talks with Samantha Hunt about her novel The Invention of Everything Else. Tesla is the protagonist, and despite the outlandish biographical details all ...

So get this: the world's first novel came from Japan -- and it was written by a woman -- and it's all about sex.

Japanese literary buffs and commoners alike are celebrating the 1000th anniversary of The Tale of Genji. The author Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973 - c. 1014 ...

They feed off our blood, they live forever, and they don't pay taxes. Peter Crimmins explains why no stake to the heart can kill off the public's thirst for the fashionably undead.