Mark Clayton Southers has been working on "The Gammage Project" for two years and directing the play through rehearsals as it readies for a Thursday opening. There was a moment when he let his actors do some freestyle acting, just to have a little fun, before getting back to the play. "That's going to be the most fun we have," he said. "It's a real tough piece." (Today)

Considering how many books on pro football are released every year, it's eye-opening that a definitive biography of the best man ever to take a snap from center has never been published. That man, of course, is Bart Starr, and if you didn't know that, then it is especially important that you read "America's Quarterback" by Keith Dunnavant, the most important book on pro football this season. (Today)

Maya Lin entered the national consciousness in 1982 when she won a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., while an undergraduate at Yale University. Three decades later, Ms. Lin has moved well beyond that early honor to become a globally engaged environmental advocate. (Today)

Krys Lee's stories in her debut collection, "Drifting House," occupy spaces between, and her characters -- immigrants and refugees, families and lovers -- are nomads of time, place and culture. They make a keen observation of the layers of Korean society the past few generations, and of the dualities that have shaped the peninsula and its people (Today)

The cover image of Georgia Pellegrini's "Girl Hunter" is fashioned after those old master portraits, the purpose of which is not so much to show what someone looks like, but to display who they are. (Today)