Scott Shane, a national security correspondent for The New York Times, speaks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the drone-related stories he has helped break, including the revelation that President Obama personally approves targeted strikes against suspected terror suspects.
In a new memoir, James Lasdun describes how a former-student-turned-friend stalked and slandered him online. Give Me Everything You Have is a meditation on what it means to control your reputation on the Internet -- and the book is Lasdun's attempt to fight back.
To some, Detroit may be a symbol of urban decay; but to journalist Charlie LeDuff, it's home. In Detroit: An American Autopsy, he says the city's heart beats on. "We're still here trying to reconstruct the great thing we once had," he tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies.
In Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's new film, Caesar Must Die, a group of prisoners put on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It's barely an hour and a quarter, and it's physically small-scale, but it's so compressed it wears you out -- in a good way.
The actor, nominated for an Academy Award for his role in David O. Russell's film, talks about watching movies with this father as a kid in Philadelphia, his childhood fascination with soldiers and being up against Daniel Day Lewis for an Oscar.
On her latest album, Claroscuro, the jazz clarinetist explores influences that range from Louis Armstrong to Brazilian music to that of her native Israel. It's the desire to adapt the instrument to so many musical traditions that has earned Cohen such acclaim.
Reporter-turned-novelist Gene Kerrigan sets his story in Ireland after the 2008 financial crisis. The Rage is a boundlessly readable portrait of a country in which ordinary citizens have been hit the hardest and all the old certainties have vanished.
Every seven years since 1964, the director has caught us up on the lives of 14 everyday people in his acclaimed 7 Up series. Apted was 22 when the series began, and the subjects were 7. In the latest episode -- 56 Up -- the subjects are well into middle age.
The Broadway star has a new album, I Got Love: Songs of Jerome Kern, which features songs by the great Broadway composer. The collection came out of a live show Luker performed at the Manhattan club 54 Below.
In her new book, Andrea Stuart explores the intersection of sugar, slavery, settlement, migration and survival in the Americas. Stuart's personal history was shaped by these forces -- she is descended from a slave owner who had relations with an unknown slave.
The indie-rock favorite's new album, Fade, demonstrates that the group is all grown up but not at all study. The album's music and words add up to our affirmation of life and living.
The Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Dror Moreh is not a defense of Israeli security policy, but a critique. The six Shin Bet heads Moreh interviews may believe in the tactics they devised, but it's the overall strategy they think is flawed.
Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey and Oscar-winning director David Fincher team up for a new Netflix original series that premieres Friday. House of Cards follows a Machiavellian politician as he schemes to take down the president of the United States.
As the alcoholic paterfamilias Frank Gallagher on the Showtime series Shameless, the actor enjoys portraying a man with a dark side. But he says it's Frank's better qualities that make him sustainable as a character.
A British singer with classic R&B and pop influences, Faith draws comparisons to Amy Winehouse and Adele. If she keeps doing what she's doing, she's going to have lots of fans following her every musical and social cue.
Two new dramas fueled by intrigue premiere this week: The Americans on FX and House of Cards on Netflix. While The Americans has its moments, House of Cards is the show that's going to make television history.
In a new book about Gen. David Petraeus, author and journalist Fred Kaplan looks at how theories of counterinsurgency have shaped U.S. military policy in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The veteran journalist died on Sunday at age 87. He was famous for his reporting on the Vietnam War, and in 1989 he spoke with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about another war: The Spanish-American War and U.S. involvement in the Philippines.
In a new book, Nick Turse says the pressure on U.S. forces to produce a body count during the Vietnam War led to mass civilian deaths. "The idea," he says, "was that the Vietnamese, they weren't really people."
