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The scent of fresh pencils is in the air, and homework assignments are around the corner. In honor of back-to-school season, author Alexander Aciman recommends The Lost Estate by Henri Alain-Fournier.

"There's nobody like The B-52s," Pierson says. "But doing stuff on my own, I can also express more personal songs."

"All my songs are personal on some level; it's just a matter of how much that personal thing is buried." Bird says that on the new album Are You Serious, his private world has bubbled to the surface.

Twenty years ago, author and literature professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina was looking for an undiscovered classic for her African-American-fiction class. What she found was Ann Petry's The Street, and she's been teaching it ever since.

In The Quick and the Dead, Joy Williams fixes a gaze of cold but evocative detachment on the lives of an eclectic cast of characters living in the arid Southwest. Writer Sarah Braunstein says the surreal novel uses wit, candor and virtuosic prose to delve into "our subterranean selves."

Commentator Clancy Sigal was a sergeant in the American army of occupation in Germany, the only Jew in his unit. He remembers vividly his visit to the Nuremberg Trials.

German author Jenny Erpenbeck's new novel grapples with the classic question: What if? What if one choice, one event goes differently, and the whole course of your life changes?

When Time columnist Joe Klein travels the country covering politics, he likes to bring an extra set of ears. His recent road trip with musician Ry Cooder led him to an impromptu and apolitical jam session.

We listen to archival interviews with Michael Collins, of Apollo 11; Alan Shepard, the first American in space; Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield; and Chuck Yeager, who first broke the sound barrier.

Democratic presidential candidates will gather in California this weekend for a state Democratic Party convention. California's liberal policies have served as an inspiration for many.