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Poor diet, lack of exercise, stress and trauma, all drive America's declining life expectancy and high rates of chronic disease. So how can we live better in America? NPR looks for answers.

In 1966, a couple months before he was set to graduate, Otis Taylor was told he needed to cut his short afro or he'd be kicked out. Now, 57 years after he left, he has received a diploma.

New research shows that the U.S. is making progress in preventing new HIV infections but the gains are happening unevenly across racial and ethnic groups.

Daphne Merkin's new essay collection straddles the high/low cultural divide with aplomb. Reviewer Heller McAlpin says Lunches is unfailingly intelligent, but should be enjoyed in small bites.

Adam Begley says Updike created an everyman in his Rabbit book series, and inhabited him fully, "allowing that everyman's senses to be totally open to the American experience."

In Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace, Kate Summerscale reconstructs the everyday private life and very public shaming of Isabella Robinson, a wife sued for divorce over her scandalous diary entries in the early days of England's divorce court.

A fierce playwright, a fiery socialist and a pioneering feminist, Lillian Hellman lived unapologetically. But today she's remembered as a fabulist and a rabble-rouser — if she's remembered at all. A new Hellman biography, A Difficult Woman, hopes to set the record straight.

Claire Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs, delves into the inner life of the quiet, friendly — and secretly furious — woman upstairs, a frustrated artist named Nora who becomes obsessed with a glamorous immigrant family.

Professional Scrabble fan John D. Williams' new memoir is chock full of interesting tidbits (like lists of important words with Q, X and J) but gets bogged down in tedious biographical detail.

Climate change is making insuring crops more risky, but the federally subsidized crop insurance program's payouts are up 500%. With a new Farm Bill coming, critics want to rethink the program.