The man who wrote "The Charleston" also had orchestral music played at Carnegie Hall. Baltimore Symphony conductor Marin Alsop retraces her detective work in uncovering lost symphonic works by jazz piano pioneer James P. Johnson.

Vermeer's famous Girl With a Pearl Earring has returned to the United States for the first time since 1995. Very little is known about the painting, so in honor of the visit, The Guardian newspaper asked its readers to come up with a backstory for the mysterious girl.

As India and Pakistan inch closer to nuclear war, statistician Sarita teams up with Jaz, who is gay and nominally Muslim, to find her missing husband. Author Manil Suri says he pushed the envelope with his latest novel, the third in a series roughly based on the Hindu trinity.

Restaurateur and food personality Eddie Huang spent time as a lawyer and a stand-up comic before getting into the food business. In his new memoir, Fresh Off The Boat, he talks about food, family, hip-hop and growing up Asian in America.

In Dave Barry's latest novel, a bachelor dinner goes off the rails, entangling the groom to be with a colorful cast of characters — everyone from Russian mobsters to Haitian refugees to the fourth-place finisher in the Miss Hot Amateur Bod contest. Oh, and an albino Burmese python.

Cristina Pato says the gaita, a traditional bagpipe from her native region of Galicia, is defined by its "beautiful limitations."

He's voted to allow guns in national parks and Amtrak trains, but Sen. Patrick Leahy rejects suggestions that he'll slow-walk gun control efforts through Congress. Leahy chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, which begins hearings on the issue at the end of this month.

MI6 may be the world's most legendary secret service, but fiction and film can't uncover its actual history. For that, you need BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera and his new book, The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6.

Everyone has relationship problems, even God — at least, according to humorist Simon Rich. His funny, surreal new collection, The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories, explores dating and relationships, but also magic talking goats and rocket ships.

In Words From the White House, linguist Paul Dickson looks at the ways presidents have used the office to create and shape American language. Presidents, Dickson says, must be eloquent and spontaneous, but they also need to communicate in a way that gives listeners something to latch onto.