Ms. Wineapple talked about her book, Hawthorne: A Life, published by Knopf. The book is a comprehensive biography of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and a number of other books and stories. Hawthorne was also a contemporary and friend of such well-known figures as Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and U.S. President Franklin Pierce.