Historian Garry Wills won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America and now he's back with a new book about how the atomic bomb transformed our nation. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State explores the ways in which the bomb helped expand the power of the American presidency and turn the United States into a national security state.
There's a basic tension in the true-ish docudrama Extraordinary Measures that lifts it above the formula disease-of-the-week picture. Brendan Fraser plays John Crowley, a Bristol-Myers Squibb executive with a daughter and son born with the rare Pompe disease, a cousin to muscular dystrophy that fatally weakens muscles — including the biggie, the heart.
Jonah Lehrer decided to write a book about it. In How We Decide, Lehrer explores the science of how we make decisions and what we can do to make those decisions better. Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. He joins Terry Gross for a conversation about his book, the cereal aisle and paralysis by analysis.
Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle died Monday after a lifetime of making music with her family and friends. She was 63. McGarrigle grew up singing old French and Irish tunes with her parents and sisters, and went on to perform in a duo with her sister Anna.
Have you ever wondered about the personal life of the man who developed the theory of evolution? On today's Fresh Air, the conservationist Randal Keynes — Charles Darwin's great-great grandson — talks about the man behind the science: his relationship with his wife, Emma, and how they handled the death of their daughter. In 2002, Keynes wrote a book on the subject called Annie's Box, which shares personal letters and diaries documenting how Darwin cared for his daughter in the last months of her life. The book is the basis for the new film Creation.
Once word got out about Sen. Harry Reid's recently reported 2008 remarks about then-candidate Barack Obama's skin color and speech, just about everybody thought he needed to apologize — not least Reid himself. But people had different stories about why.
You often hear the '50s called the Golden Age of Television. If so, we're deep into the Platinum Age. There have never been more sophisticated shows, from ambitious dramas such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Big Love to delirious conceptual series such as 24, Lost and Flash-Forward.
It was in 1967, on her first day in New York, that 20-year-old aspiring poet Patti Smith met fellow artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Their friendship, romance and creative collaboration began on that day and lasted until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989.
Fresh Air's guest host and TV critic recaps the best of last night's salvos from the talk-show wars — which are getting fiercer with every passing hour.
broke into the R&B world in the 1970s as a drummer for The Cadillacs, then as a singer for Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. When he went solo, Pendergrass became known for the love ballads "I Don't Love You Anymore," "Close The Door" and "Turn Off The Lights," and for playing "for-women-only" shows. Pendergrass died Wednesday following a battle with colon cancer. He was 59. After a 1982 car accident left him paralyzed, Pendergrass continued to perform and make music. He released his last album of new material, You and I, in 1997.
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal join Fresh Air to talk about their film The Hurt Locker. Set in Baghdad, the movie follows the story of three men who are part of the Army's bomb unit, charged with the task of disarming IEDs and other roadside bombs.
In November of 2009, journalist Aram Roston published a story in The Nation titled "How the US Funds the Taliban" about how U.S. military contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. Roston is an award-winning investigative journalist who has reported from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. His 2008 book, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi, is about the relationship between the U.S. government and one privileged Iraqi.
Late-night television is at war ... with itself. The Tonight Show's Conan O'Brien has drawn a line at 11:35 p.m. and says that he won't cross it — not for Jay Leno and not for NBC.
Singer, songwriter and producer T-Bone Burnett says his approach to making music is simple: "Just listen until it sounds right."
Burnett has been getting it right for a long time, and his latest project is the critically acclaimed film Crazy Heart, for which he wrote several songs for the main character — a broken-down musician played by Jeff Bridges. Bridges is not a trained singer.
Jonathan Cohn traveled the country in search of ordinary Americans who had been affected by America's health care crisis. The stories he found — of heart attack victims becoming casualties of overcrowded emergency rooms and diabetes patients going blind because they can't afford treatment — earned him the Harry Chapin Media Award for coverage of poverty-related issues, as well as praise from both journalism and health care professionals. They also became the core of his book Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price.
Mary J. Blige has a classic R&B instrument: Her voice has that mixture of gospel assurance, soulful rawness and dynamic range that enables her to make her best performances into short stories with a beginning, a middle and an often cataclysmic end. Her ninth studio album, Stronger With Each Tear, is an uneven effort that finds Blige shifting her tactics between commercial calculation, gut-instinct music she just wants to sing the heck out of, and some ineffable combination of the two.
T. Christian Miller doesn't shy away from trouble. He has reported on conflicts in Kosovo, Israel and Iraq, among others, and the Web site he founded, ProPublica, is dedicated to covering stories with "moral force" — providing in-depth coverage of environmental, defense, and human rights issues. One story Miller has been following closely, in a series of articles titled "Disposable Army," is the fate of employees who worked for private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
