Terry Gross

Academy Award-winning writer and director Woody Allen discusses his life and his films — and why audiences shouldn't confuse the two. His latest movie, Whatever Works, tells the story of a "genius" professor in New York who marries a much younger woman.

In Descent into Chaos, Ahmed Rashid examines the United States' failures in Central Asia, where, the author says, Washington has helped create an unstable Pakistan, a reinvigorated Taliban and a entrepreneurial al' Qaeda that is profiting off the opium trade.

In 2008, Dr. Maria Siemionow and a team of doctors made history when they performed the first near-total face transplant in the United States. Siemionow writes about the procedure in the memoir Face to Face.