NPR's Book of the Day

Content warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual abuse.

In 2024, Gisèle Pelicot waived her right to anonymity as the victim during her own rape case in France, demanding a public trial. Soon after, she became an international feminist icon for her self-sacrifice. In A Hymn to Life, Pelicot recounts the unconscionable horrors she suffered at the hands of her husband and 50 other men—but she also establishes herself as a witness rather than simply a victim. In today’s episode, Pelicot joins NPR’s Michel Martin to discuss her new memoir, and her complex relationship with the hope that remains.

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Rock climbing is a great sport for thrill-seekers. In Gabriel Tallent’s Crux, main characters Dan and Tamma fit the bill perfectly. At just 17 years old, they bond over the side of a mountain where one miscalculated inch of movement could mean life or death. However, risk doesn’t disappear once they make it safely to flat ground. For Dan and Tamma, risk exists in growing up, and growing out of their physical and emotional comfort zones. In today’s episode, Tallent joins NPR’s Juana Summers to discuss his newest novel and how rock climbing can widen more than one type of human perspective.

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Next year marks the 100th anniversary of the first drilling at Mount Rushmore, the iconic American landmark in South Dakota. But Matthew Davis, author of the new book A Biography of a Mountain, says the project is actually unfinished. In today’s episode, he joins NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer for a conversation about the original vision for Mount Rushmore, which was intended to diversify a struggling South Dakota economy after World War I.

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The Super Bowl is over, but the NFL season is set to ramp up again in just a few months.  Today’s episode features two nonfiction books that delve into the world of football. First, Chuck Klosterman’s Football is a critical reading of the sport. He spoke with NPR’s Juana Summers about why football became dominant in American culture and why he believes it’ll lose popularity over the next decades. Then, Danny Funt speaks with NPR’s A Martínez about his new book Everybody Loses, which charts the sports gambling boom and the NFL’s role in the popularization of prop bets.

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About a decade ago, professor and historian Ethelene Whitmire was presenting research on the experiences of African Americans living in Denmark. At that talk, she met – by chance – a relative of Reed Peggram, one of her research subjects. That relative directed Whitmire to a trove of letters written by Peggram, a queer, Black translator who found himself in Europe on the eve of World War II. In today’s episode, Whitmire joins NPR’s Scott Simon for a conversation about her book The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram, the project that emerged from his family’s archive.

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