Talk of the Nation, November 16, 2009

A When CBS correspondent Byron Pitts was 12 years old, he had a debilitating stutter and a terrible secret: he couldn't read. In his new memoir, Step Out on Nothing, Pitts describes how, with faith and the help of family and friends, he overcame illiteracy to become an award-winning correspondent holding one of the top jobs in broadcast journalism.

Morning Edition, November 27, 2009 On a gray morning in August 1974, a man stepped off the edge of the yet-to-be completed World Trade Center and into history. That morning, Philippe Petit crossed a wire stretched between the towers eight times. He danced, ran and lay down, performing for the crowd that had gathered more than 100 stories below his feet, before dismounting into the custody of New York police officers. The tight-rope walk is the event around which a new novel, Let the Great World Spin, revolves. The book, by Colum McCann, won the National Book Award for fiction earlier this month.