Terry Gross

British writer Jonathan Raban. His new book "Bad Land: An American Romance" is based on memoirs, diaries, photographs and letters of immigrants who in the early 1900s traveled to Montana to homestead. Raban himself is something of an immigrant; he settled in Seattle in 1990.

Pacific Northwest Bureau Chief for the New York Times Timothy Egan. His two-part series on urban sprawl in the western United States recently appeared in the Times. Egan writes that cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, and Salt Lake are growing rapidly, with growth going mostly unchecked. In Phoenix, he writes that land is being consumed at the rate of "an acre an hour." But in Portland, Oregon city officials over 20 years ago set up guidelines to control rampant growth.

Branagh stars in the new film adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." There's a companion book to the new film "Hamlet" which includes the screenplay, introduction, and film diary. Branagh's other films include adaptations of Shakespeare's "Henry the Fifth," with himself in the title role, Othello, playing Iago, "Dead Again," a psychological thriller starring Branagh and Emma Thompson, and "Much Ado About Nothing," also starring himself.