All Things Considered, February 3, 2010

In 1941, before the United States had entered World War II, a trio of Americans were embedded in London and helped to steer the United States' course to war. At this point, Britain's policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler had failed, and the old appeasers were out of power. Winston Churchill had taken over as prime minister, and Britain was at war with Nazi Germany. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was aiding the British, but faced a U.S. Congress skeptical of actually going to war. As London endured devastating German bombing raids, some Americans were there, assuring the British of support and agitating for American entry into the war.

Morning Edition, February 23, 2010 Adam Haslett likes old-fashioned novels that take a sweeping look into the corners of society, using carefully imagined characters to explore the relationships between the rich and poor, the powerful and powerless, the good and the bad. "The idea of the novelist in the world trying to tackle the complexity of contemporary life is something that I take seriously," Haslett says. And his own debut novel, Union Atlantic, sometimes reads as if Haslett was listening into the private conversations that led to the economic collapse and the bank bailouts that followed. Yet the remarkable fact is that Haslett finished the novel well before the real-life events took place.