Unlike a lot of people I know, my summer reading doesn't differ significantly from the reading I do the rest of the year. I'm always looking for new authors, older titles I might have missed, books I want to reread, and a nice mixture of fiction and nonfiction. While I understand the concept of beach reading, for me it doesn't mean light reading, but rather choosing books whose ultimate destruction by sand and water won't concern me overly much because I know that I can easily replace them. (For example, I've now bought — over the years — four copies of Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan, because I take it with me each summer to reread and it always ends up too grit-stained to take home.)

The latest deadline for the presidential candidates and the major superPACs to disclose their finances was Sunday night. The public and the press can find out who's been giving to the candidates, and how that money was spent.

But there's a lot of political spending that isn't being reported. Outside money groups are spending millions of dollars, and the donors remain anonymous. Two recent court rulings could force those groups to file public disclosures, but there already seems to be a way around that.

Unlike superPACs, these big-spending groups don't disclose their donors. They operate mostly as tax-exempt, advocacy organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. It's a status that lets them hide the sources of their money.

In the lull between the Supreme Court arguments over the federal health overhaul law and the decision expected in June, we thought we'd ask Americans who actually use the health system quite a bit how they view the quality of care and its cost.

Most surveys don't break it down this way.

When the results came back, we found that people who have a serious medical condition or who've been in the hospital in the past year tended to have more concerns about costs and quality than people who aren't sick. No big surprise there.

But what was notable: 3 of 4 people who were sick said cost is a very serious problem, and half said quality is a very serious problem.

Karlton Hill was only 12 years old when when he found out he had diabetes. Even though he was only in seventh grade, Karlton knew what diabetes was; he had watched the disease destroy his great-grandmother's life.

"I was really upset. I cried," he says. "I didn't want any of this to happen to me. I was like, 'Why is this happening to me?' "

Public health experts have been worrying for years that the obesity epidemic would lead to an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes among kids.

May 20, 2012

Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees has died.

Gibb died after a long battle with cancer and intestinal surgery, according to a statement on his official website.

"The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this very difficult time," the statement said.

Robin and his brothers Barry and Maurice Gibb racked up dozens of hit songs in their five decade career. Robin Gibb, who had cancer, was 62.

The Bee Gees might be forever linked to the 1970s, the era of polyester outfits and blow-dried hair, thanks to the songs they wrote and performed for the movie Saturday Night Fever.

The Russian government is about to put a dead man on trial.

Sergei Magnitsky was a tax lawyer for the investment fund Hermitage Capital, at one time the largest foreign investment firm in Russia.

In 2007, Hermitage Capital was seized by the Russian tax police, and through a number of shady maneuvers, they extracted more than $230 million in illegal tax refunds for themselves.

Magnitsky decided to investigate, angering those who had stolen the company. They had him arrested, and he died in prison in 2009.

More trouble for the prosecution in the perjury trial of baseball star pitcher Roger Clemens. He is charged with lying to Congress when he said he had never used performance-enhancing drugs. But under cross examination, the key witness has himself admitted to lying and the key evidence has been called into question. NPR's Nina Totenberg explains all to weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

Sunday is the first day of the NATO summit in Chicago. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz talks with the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder about the Alliance's future, and with Vijay Prashad, a professor of international studies at Trinity College, who argues NATO is bad for the world. We also hear reports on the kickoff of the summit from NPR's Jacki Northam and on the protests from Cheryl Corley.

At first, Deborah Kogan of New York says, she thought it would pass. Her 4-year-old son's fever had been on the rise for hours, and he was looking puffy. Kogan took Leo to the pediatrician, who thought it might be strep throat. It wasn't.

A few days later, Leo "woke up and he looked as if he was one of the characters in the Nutty Professor. His face ballooned about twice its normal size." She posted a photo of Leo on Facebook. That's when the crowd-sourced diagnosis took shape.

On Facebook, a cousin wrote, "Look, I really think you should check and make sure it's not Kawasaki disease." A pediatrician from the Bay Area posted, "I hope the doctors have ruled out Kawasaki disease." And so it continued.