David Brock is the author of the best-selling memoir Blinded by the Right: the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. Brock defected from the Republican Party in the latter half of the 1990s and came to renounce the anti-Clinton movement in which he took part. His new book is The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy. He now heads a nonprofit media watchdog organization in Washington, D.C.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan gives us her picks for the best holiday books of 2004. Her choices range from literary thrillers to a new biography of Ben Franklin.
Imam Khalid Latif is one of the people profiled in The Secret Life of Muslims, a digital series about Islamophobia. He is also the first Muslim chaplain at New York University.
Bloom talks to Fresh Air's Ann Marie Baldonado about the CW musical comedy series, now in its second season, that she co-created and stars in. Bloom plays a woman who follows an ex across the country.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich says that for Mormon women living in 19th century Utah, "plural marriages" were empowering in complicated ways.
Sixty-three years after the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, many schools across the country either remain segregated or have re-segregated. Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that when it comes to school segregation, separate is never truly equal.
The German film centers on a prankster father who barges into the life of his business consultant daughter. Critic David Edelstein says Toni Erdmann keeps you guessing — in a good way.
New Yorker writer Michael Specter discusses emerging biotechnologies that will make it possible to remove disease and change the characteristics of life by rewriting the genetic code in cells.
Set in 1979 Santa Barbara, Mike Mills' new film is the story of a teenage boy and the three women who teach him about life. Critic John Powers calls it an "amusing, deeply-felt work."
Buck's new memoir details his experiences in sports and life, including his addiction to hair-plug transplants. When it comes to announcing, he says, "I don't have a rooting interest for either side."
Brzezinski has reported on the nation's homeland security since Sept. 11, for magazines including Mother Jones and The New York Times Magazine. His new book is Fortress America: An Inside Look at the Coming Surveillance State (out later this fall).
After writing No. 1 hits for various country stars, Hemby now has an album of her own. Critic Ken Tucker says Puxico mixes country sentiments with a folksy sound.
Norman Podhoretz is considered the grandfather of the neoconservative movement, which had its birth in the 1970s. The former editor of the monthly magazine, Commentary, Podhoretz subscribes to what some call the "Bush Doctrine" of foreign policy, favoring pre-emptive action against potential threats. Podhoretz wrote a 37-page defense of the Bush administration's foreign policy, published in Commentary called "World War IV: How it Started, What it Means, and Why We Have to Win."
