Terry Gross

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.

It's the era of Twilight, and pop culture is swarming with the undead. Terry Gross talks to Academy Award-winning actress Anna Paquin, star of HBO's vampire series True Blood.