Terry Gross

Writer Michael Oren's new book is Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. (Oxford University Press) Oren was raised and educated in the United States, and emigrated to Israel more than 25 years ago. He is a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based institute for Jewish social thought and public policy. He is also the head of the Middle East history project.

Writer John Ridley wrote the screenplay for the new film Undercover Brother, which began life as a Web site animation. The film is an action comedy replete with 1970s fashions. Ridley has also just published a novel, A Conversation with the Mann, about a black comic in the civil rights era of the early 1960s.

Writer Michael Pollan. His book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World takes a look at four plants cultivated by humans: the apple, the tulip, potatoes and marijuana. Pollan demonstrates that plants and humans have developed a reciprocal, co-evolutionary relationship: do we plant potatoes, or do potatoes seduce us into planting them? Pollan questions the assumption that we are in charge of our agriculture. The book is now in paperback.