The Thread® - Books and Literary News

The Thread from MPR News

The Thread® is your source for book recommendations and other literary news.

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Big Books and Bold Ideas is a weekly series hosted by Kerri Miller every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

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A book inspired by bad stand-up comedy
David Grossman's unsettling new novel takes place over the course of a two-hour comedy set, as what seems like just a bad performance evolves into something truly strange, painful and urgent.
Cannibalism: It's 'perfectly natural,' a new scientific history argues
It's gruesome, but from a scientific standpoint, there's a predictable calculus for when humans and animals go cannibal, a new book says. And who knew European aristocrats ate body parts as medicine?
Are cyborgs in our future? 'Homo Deus' author thinks so
Yuval Noah Harari expects we'll soon engineer our bodies in the same way we design products. "I think in general medicine ... will switch from healing the sick to upgrading the healthy," he says.
The story of Dorothy Day, her 'disorderly years' and her possible sainthood
A new biography of social justice advocate Dorothy Day, written by her granddaughter, reveals the life story of the woman whose legacy lives on in dozens of homeless shelters.