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In the early 1990s, NPR journalist Scott Simon reported from war-torn Sarajevo. Those experiences formed the basis for his debut novel, Pretty Birds, the story of a 16-year-old girl who adapts to her violent times.

Food guru Mark Bittman and chef Chris Schlesinger have been at odds for years over just the right way to cook. They debate simple vs. fancy techniques for summer grilling.

George Johnson talks about his new book, Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe. Henrietta Leavitt, while working at Harvard College's observatory in the early 20th century, discovered a way to measure distances between stars, which led astronomers to calculate the size of the universe.

Wilt Chamberlain, a seven-foot-tall black man in a white man's NBA, changed professional basketball forever in one momentous night when he scored 100 points. Author Gary M. Pomerantz profiles a natural athlete with be-bop cool.

Melodrama is essential to any American soap opera, and the same holds true for their Chinese counterparts. Rachel DeWoskin talks about her role as an aggressive Westerner in a Chinese daytime drama, and her new book, Foreign Babes in Beijing.

Karen Grigsby Bates tours the South Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts with journalist Karl Fleming, who was nearly beaten to death during a racial protest in the summer of 1966. Fleming's new book details his time reporting on the civil rights movement during the turbulent 1960s.

Tribal war veterans in Kenya are seeking restitution for atrocities they say were committed against them in the 1950s. At that time, hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were held in British detention camps, where they say they were tortured, executed and used for forced labor. A new book supports the Kenyan claims.

Michael Finkel discusses his new book True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, which documents his firing from The New York Times Magazine for violating journalistic ethics and his subsequent discovery that an accused murderer had assumed his identity while on the lam in Mexico. Finkel talks about his extraordinary correspondence with the killer, Christian Longo.

The highly anticipated sixth installment of J.K. Rowling's novel about a child wizard was released Saturday. NPR's Neva Grant followed two youngsters who spent the weekend immersed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

At 88, Phyllis Diller has published a memoir, appears in the film The Aristocrats and has a documentary out about her retirement from stand-up comedy.