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Remembering cool words that are no longer cool — or even used much.

In the second installment of our book series, "Back Story," Steve Inskeep talks with author Bonnie Jo Campbell. Her latest book, American Salvage, is a short story collection that explores the lives of people at the bottom of American society.

Although the economy has been growing since mid-2009, the pace has been too slow to absorb the nearly 14 million people without jobs. Today, 46 million Americans receive the federal government's help when buying food, which is roughly 15 percent of the population.

Americans have cut back what they're buying at gas stations and grocery stores in response to rising prices. But their spending overall has remained fairly steady.

The Vatican this week strongly criticized a book on sexual ethics by Sister Margaret Farley, a prominent American Catholic theologian. The rebuke from the Vatican comes as leaders of an organization of American nuns are in their own dispute with Rome. John Allen, of the National Catholic Reporter, talks to David Greene about the disputes.

Slopestyle snowboarder Sage Kotsenburg has won the first gold medal in the Sochi Olympics, as the American women's ice hockey team gets off to a good start.

Author Kurt Vonnegut called himself a free-thinking humanist. Others said his unerring moral compass, colloquial style, and ability to mix sadness and humor made Vonnegut the Mark Twain of his generation. The author's readers clung to his pointed observations of society and its shortcomings.

A posthumous album from the great behind-the-scenes man sets a retrospective, autumnal focus on songs which gave rise to Toussaint and his city — and thus to a bigger American music canon.

From 1935 to 1939, an army of folklorists and writers went in search of tales both real and tall. These stories of America in the Great Depression were gathered by literary giants like Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Jim Thompson. A new book revisits the project.

American journalist Roxana Saberi has been freed after more than three months in an Iranian prison.