Terry Gross

The Complete Far Side 1980-1994 hits stores this week. It's a two-volume hardcover set that includes every Far Side cartoon ever syndicated. The Far Side thrived for 14 years and appeared in more than 1,900 newspapers worldwide. Larson has published more than 20 books featuring his cartoons. In 1994, Larson completed his first animated film Gary Larson's Tales from the Far Side. His second animated film, Gary Larson's Tales From the Far Side II, has appeared at the Telluride Film Festival. He lives in Seattle.

Parsons examines the science of cooking in his book How to Read a French Fry: And Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science. It's just out in paperback.

Steinfels is a former senior religion correspondent for The New York Times. He now writes the Beliefs column for the paper. Steinfels is the author of the new book, A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America.

A talk with foreign correspondent Elizabeth Rubin. Rubin writes for The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and The Atlantic Monthly. She has reported from Afghanistan, the Middle East and Iraq.

Co-founders Larry Page And Sergey Brin discuss the history and workings of Google.

She earned wide critical and popular acclaim and an Emmy for her work on The Garry Moore Show (from 1959-62). The Carol Burnett Show debuted in 1967 and won 22 Emmys in a run of more than a decade. She has starred or appeared in a number of TV movies and specials. In December, she'll be a Kennedy Center honoree for her body of work. In 1981 she struck a blow for fellow celebrities by winning a lawsuit against The National Enquirer tabloid. Her memoir One More Time was recently republished in a paperback edition. There's also a DVD collection of The Carol Burnett Show.

His new book is The New Great Game. The book is about the battle over the world's largest reserve of untapped oil and gas resources, located in the Caspian Sea and surrounding Central Asian republics. The oil alone is said to be worth $4 trillion. Kleveman claims that the United States, China, Russia and Iran are now engaged in a power struggle for control of the region's vast reserves and pipeline routes. Lutz Kleveman was born in Germany and studied at the London School of Economics.

Milhollin is director the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a non-profit research group in Washington, D.C. that has been tracking the spread of weapons of mass destruction since 1986. He will talk about who has nuclear weapons, who is developing them, who has intelligence about them and who poses the biggest threat. Milhollin is also professor Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin Law School. His op-ed pieces about nuclear weapons have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times.

He's written five novels featuring the working-class Boston private detective team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. They include A Drink Before the War, Darkness, Take My Hand, Sacred, Gone Baby Gone and Prayers for Rain. Lehane abandoned the duo for his book about the effect of an abduction on a group of boys. It's a thriller, Mystic River, and it's been made into a new film directed by Clint Eastwood.