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A new book argues that Motown was a step in the evolution of the American popular song, a tradition reaching back to songwriters like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

Shirley Bassey, famed singer of James Bond's "Goldfinger," releases a CD revamping some of her classic hits and introducing new songs, including a cover of Pink's "Get the Party Started."

The sound of New Orleans Jazz is unmistakable. If you're in the Crescent City, there's one place you're sure to find it: Preservation Hall. A new, jam-packed box set celebrates the Preservation Hall Jazz Band master tapes that survived Hurricane Katrina.

Many Muslim-Americans say the current political climate is worse than the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Many Muslims who once voted Republican, say don't feel like they have a home in that party.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says the government is reviewing a proposal to stop making the penny. It actually costs nearly 2 cents to make a penny, so the government loses money.

Pilot Chesley Sullenberger's wild ride started this year when he landed a US Airways jet plop-solid perfect onto the icy surface of the Hudson River on Jan. 15, saving all 155 passengers on board. He's a hero to the nation, but Sullenberger says his story is really more about a nation in need of a hero.

During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people across New York City — many of them tenement-dwellers. In Hot Time in the Old Town, historian Ed Kohn describes the disaster — and how a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat.

When people ask me, "What was it like to grow up on Long Island?" I give them a copy of Alice McDermott's novel That Night. "Read this," I say.

Writer Jonathan Hayes was escaping a painfully dull Boxing Day dinner when he was introduced to Dorothy Sayers' The Nine Tailors for the first time. Hayes says Sayers helped nudge the English mystery novel out of the drawing room and into the real world.

David Remnick has a nearly impossible task in his new biography of Barack Obama: writing "the most complete account yet" of the most famous man on the planet. The well-written and well-researched book may be ahead of its time; the events in it are so familiar right now that its scholarship may resonate better in 20 years.