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Rewriting Homer, With Some Lurid Twists

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Credit Emily Schurr

Annalisa Quinn graduated from Georgetown University in May with degrees in classical languages and English.

By Annalisa Quinn

Originally published on Wed October 24, 2012 8:49 am

Annalisa Quinn is the Books intern at NPR.

During my senior year of college, I plowed through all 27,803 lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greek, with a lot of coffee and a reasonable amount of crying in library cubicles.

6:03 am

Wed October 24, 2012

¡No Más! 'Back To Blood' Is Much Too Much

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Credit Mark Seliger / Little, Brown and Company

Tom Wolfe is the author of several books, including The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Bonfire of the Vanities.

By Luis Clemens

It took cojones for Tom Wolfe to write about Miami for his latest novel, Back to Blood. In the "Republic of Fluba" where Florida, Cuba and the rest of Latin America are shaken and mezclado, truth trumps fiction each day of every year. This is the city where, a few months ago, a man ate another man's face on a downtown causeway in broad daylight. Police shot and killed the wannabe zombie.

5:01 am

Wed October 24, 2012

Google's Street View Goes Into The Wild

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Credit Steve Henn / NPR

Before Steve Silverman helped Google build its new Trekker, he built cameras for NASA to photograph the surface of Mars. Silverman says the Trekker is built to survive in intense conditions. It will boot up at 10 below zero Celsius or at 110 Fahrenheit. It will even work after being fully submerged in water.

Credit Steve Henn / NPR

The Google Trekker team hikes down the Bright Angel trail heading toward the base of the Grand Canyon.

Credit Steve Henn / NPR

Google's Craig Robinson and James Hoffacker prepare to hike into the Grand Canyon. Robinson is wearing the new Google Trekker — a Street View camera mounted to a backpack. The Trekker's two lithium ion batteries can last eight hours and power 15 cameras. The pack — designed and built by Google — weighs 40 pounds.

By editor

Originally published on Sat October 27, 2012 8:23 pm

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Google's Street View maps are headed into the backcountry. Earlier this week, two teams from Google strapped on sophisticated backpacks jammed with cameras, gyroscopes and other gadgets, and descended to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But this is just the first step in the search giant's plan to digitally map and photograph the world's wild places.

Luc Vincent — who runs Google's Street View — met up with a small group of reporters on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon this week.

4:04 am

Wed October 24, 2012

U.S. Eager To Step Aside; Are Afghan Forces Ready?

Credit Rahmat Gul / AP

Afghan soldiers stand at attention during a ceremony transferring authority from NATO-led troops to Afghan security forces in Afghanistan's Kunar province. The transfer of responsibility for security from NATO-led ISAF forces to Afghan troops is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014.

By Tom Bowman

Originally published on Wed October 24, 2012 6:30 am

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America's exit strategy in Afghanistan is to have Afghan forces take the lead in fighting for their country. But too often these days, the job still falls to U.S. troops.

A senior officer in Afghanistan tells NPR that Americans continue to coddle Afghan forces and that this must stop. Tough love is in, the officer says. He says the Afghan forces are far more capable than the U.S. estimates and have simply grown accustomed to the U.S. doing everything for them.

That pretty much sums up the situation in southern Afghanistan earlier this year.

4:03 am

Wed October 24, 2012

Vet Walks On New Legs, With A Little Help From Mom

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Credit David Gilkey / NPR

Nick Staback, who lost both of his legs to a bomb in Afghanistan, talks with his mother, Maria Staback, in Scranton, Pa. Maria Staback took a leave of absence from her job to move in with her son while he was recuperating at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, D.C.

Credit David Gilkey / NPR

Staback takes aim with a replica sniper rifle on his back porch in Scranton, Pa. After a year at Walter Reed, he's moving into an apartment with a friend near the hospital in Bethesda, Md.

By Quil Lawrence

Originally published on Wed October 24, 2012 1:58 pm

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On furlough from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this summer, 21-year-old Nick Staback lounges on his parents' back porch in Scranton, Pa., taking potshots at sparrows with a replica sniper rifle. The long plastic gun fires pellets that mostly just scare the birds away.

It's been a tough year for Staback since his last foot patrol in Afghanistan.

"We [were] just channeling down a beaten trail, of course, you just don't know what's on it," he says. "We had the mine sweepers out front and everything like that."

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