Recruiting the likes of Guy Clark and Vince Gill, the country singer and member of The Pistol Annies works within a tradition that extends back well beyond her twentysomething years. Monroe avoids the pitfalls of cliche, with sentiments on her new album that are nothing if not nicely ambivalent.
On the HBO series Enlightened, a naive corporate executive played by Laura Dern wants to change the world. The series' creator and writer, Mike White, says the show's whistle-blowing plot line was inspired, in part, by his own father's experience.
In the 1950s, as movie directors were trying to offer TV watchers something they couldn't get on a small screen, Cinerama films threw three simultaneous images onto a curved screen to create peripheral vision. Two classic Cinerama films — This Is Cinerama and Windjammer — are now out on DVD.
The film is ripe with a creepy-crawly feel that would be affecting if the tone weren't so arch. Directed by Park Chan-wook, written by Wentworth Miller and starring Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode, Stoker is a vile little chamber horror, says critic David Edelstein.
Marisa Silver's new novel imagines the meeting of a Depression-era photographer and her now-iconic subject. Giving the characters different names but similar stories to their real-life counterparts, Silver tackles big questions about the morality of art.
Director Dror Moreh interviews six former heads of Israel's Shin Bet security service in his Oscar-nominated documentary. The men look back on their work and conclude that continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinians will not resolve the conflict.
Known for his work in New Klezmer Trio, clarinetist Ben Goldberg has just released two new albums for different quintets: Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues and Unfold Ordinary Mind.
John Thavis covered the Vatican from Rome for nearly 30 years while working for the Catholic News Service. In his new book, The Vatican Diaries, he describes a place much less organized and hierarchical than the public imagines.
Franklin found her voice in songs such as "I Never Loved a Man" for Atlantic Records in the 1960s. Before Atlantic, however, Franklin recorded for Columbia, and in those early recordings you can hear the legend just beginning to emerge.
From food scientists who study the human palate to maximize consumer bliss, to marketing campaigns that target teens to hook them for life on a brand, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss' new books goes inside the world of processed, packaged foods.
We're living in an age obsessed with authenticity, says linguist Geoff Nunberg, but we often choose to nitpick the wrong details. Whether it's Downton Abbey, Mad Men, Lincoln or Argo, Nunberg argues, a historical novel or screenplay should give us a translation, not a transcription.
The debut album from the New York trio Guards is big on atmospherics, but also features a grandness of intent that connects the group to acts as varied as U2, Arcade Fire and The Beach Boys
Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, who covered Bulger for years for The Boston Globe, have a new book about the career criminal. Burger was wanted of 19 murders when was captured by the FBI in 2011. He faces trial in June.
The author of Swamplandia! has a new collection of short stories called Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the stories are daring and devastating, and with them Russell establishes herself as one of the great American writers of our young century.
Dr. Sam Parnia researches the experiences of cardiac arrest patient in the time between when their hearts stop and when they are brought back to life. Paranoia thinks of these experiences as actual-death experiences as opposed to near-death experiences.
In the Chilean film No, which is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, a young ad man devises a campaign to vote the dictator Augusto Pinochet out of office using rainbows and catchy theme songs.
In a new book, the CNN anchor tells the story of Combat Outpost Keating. The ill-fated American military base was in a remote Afghan valley, and on Oct. 3 , 2009, it became the site of one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops in the history of the war in Afghanistan.
In her new book, Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon explores teen bullying, what it is and what it isn't, and how the rise of the Internet and social media make the experience more challenging. "It really can make bullying feel it's 24/7," she says.
Blanco, who read his poem "One Today" at Obama's second inauguration, is the first immigrant, Lation and openly gay poet chosen to read at an inauguration.
Author and sociologist David Cunningham speaks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the origins of cross burnings and white hoods, and why North Carolina had more Klan members during the height of the civil rights movement than all other Southern states combined.
