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Mark Helprin's sweeping midcentury novel, In Sunlight and In Shadow, describes a postwar New York in limbo. Helprin borrowed from his own experiences to write this tale of love and familial obligations. "It's all based on what I know and what I knew," he says.

Amid steady rain at a campaign rally in Cleveland Friday, President Obama had some sunny economic news to share. The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since he took office. NPR's Scott Horsley reports from the campaign trail.

Nearly two-dozen states are watching for new cases of a rare kind of meningitis, caused by fungal contamination in injections for back pain. The outbreak apparently started when a Massachusetts compounding company sent out 17,000 doses of infected injections for back pain. Daniel Potter of member station WPLN reports five people have died and dozens of others are sick.

Voting can be a chore, but getting more people to vote by allowing early voting may not be doing the candidates or the electorate any favors.

When Bashar Assad inherited the presidency of Syria in 2000, some in the West saw him as a potential reformer. Professor David Lesch of Trinity University met Assad several times. Host Scott Simon speaks with Lesch about his new book, Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad, a clear contrast to his earlier book, which touted Assad as "the new lion of Damascus."

To this day, getting a third-party candidate into a presidential debate is practically impossible. So we invited two of the third-party candidates — Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein from the Green Party — to a debate of our own.

This week, defense contractors said they would not issue layoff warnings, even though looming budget cuts could lead to big job losses in 2013. That's led to charges that the White House overstepped when it told the industry the notices are not needed.

The Labor Department announced on Friday the lowest unemployment rate since January 2009. Most big companies use software to screen resumes and ultimately move that unemployment number. These programs can be a big help for hiring departments, but a hindrance for job searches everywhere.

The unemployment rate has dropped to 7.8 percent — that's the lowest rate in President Obama's presidency. Numbers like these are calculated and released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and highly anticipated by not only politicians but money managers and traders around the world. In the run up to the release, the government office does everything possible to keep these numbers locked up. (This piece initially aired Aug. 3, 2012 on Morning Edition.)

Which housing programs would Mitt Romney eliminate? What would President Obama do to the tax code? NPR reporters read between the lines of the candidates' positions on housing and tax policies.