Retired CIA field officer Larry Devlin was appointed CIA station chief in Zaire in the Congo in 1960, following the Congo's independence from Belgium. It was also a time when the Congo was a significant pawn in the Cold War.
Devlin has written a memoir about his experiences, Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone.
Journalist Jeffrey Rosen is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. His article titled "The Brain on the Stand: How neuroscience is transforming the legal system" appeared in the March 11 issue.
It's about an emerging field of study called "neurolaw," which combines neuroscience and the law. He writes about how evidence from brain-scanning technologies are being used in the courtroom to explain away criminal behavior.
Journalists Lisa Chedekel and Matthew Kauffman of The Hartford Courant have been awarded the George Polk Award for their series from May on flaws in the military's mental health system: Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight.
Author Jonathan Lethem. His new novel is âYou Donât Love Me Yetâ (Doubleday). He is also the author of the semi-autobiographical novel, "The Fortress of Solitude" (Doubleday 2003) about a white kid growing up in an African-American and Latino neighborhood in New York. His novel, "Motherless Brooklyn" (Doubleday 1999) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. His other books include "Girl in Landscape" (Doubleday 1998) and "Amnesia Moon" (Harcourt 1995).
The new movie 300 is adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. The movie centers on an ancient battle between the Spartans and the Persians.
Trumpeter Enrico Rava is one of Italy's best known and most recorded jazz musicians.
He's a true internationalist, working with players from all around Western Europe. Rava has also played with Americans such as saxophonist Steve Lacy, composer Carla Bley and trombonist Roswell Rudd.
In the 1970s, Rava made some memorable records for the ECM label. Now he's back with the company and one happy results is The Words and the Days.
Brothers Rob and Nate Corddry are both former correspondents on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Now Rob Corddry has a new Fox sitcom, The Winner (by the creators of The Family Guy), about a 32-year-old virgin who still lives at home. It airs on Sunday nights.
Nate Corddry currently plays a TV performer and writer on the show Studio 60, which airs Monday nights on NBC.
The Stooges rock band, led by singer Iggy Pop, have just released their first album in almost 35 years. It's called The Weirdness.
These days, Iggy Pop's best known piece of music may be the riff for his song "Lust for Life," which was used prominently in the movie Trainspotting and, more recently, in a TV commercial for a cruise ship line.
But when he was with the Stooges in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Iggy Pop helped define the path that punk and metal music would follow in the years to come.
Navy Cmdr. Richard Jadick earned a Bronze Star with a "V" for valor for his service as a doctor during the Battle of Fallujah, which featured some of the worst street fighting seen by Americans since Vietnam. His new memoir, written with Thomas Hayden, is On Call in Hell: A Doctor's Iraq War Story.
Singer Mary Weiss first found fame as a member of the Shangri-Las, with hits like "Leader of the Pack," "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" and "Give Him a Great Big Kiss." Now she's recorded her first album of new material since 1965. It's called Dangerous Game.
Filmmaker Mira Nair has just adapted Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 novel The Namesake to the big screen. Her previous films include Vanity Fair, Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala.
Journalist Dan Gilgoff is the author of the new book The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War.
Gilgoff — a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report — gained rare access for a reporter to the Focus on the Family organization. He writes about how Dobson's group became the most powerful group in the Christian Right.
Four women musicians from Bellingham, Wash., who call themselves "The Trucks" have released a debut album of the same name, with language and attitude that is not going to get them much airplay on mainstream radio.
The Trucks are another entry in a long line of female rock bands that know and find their audience.
The unsolved Zodiac murder cases of the late sixties and seventies became the inspiration for the modern serial-killer movie genre. There's a new thriller about the crimes: Zodiac. Director David Fincher's film stars Jake Gyllenhall, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo.
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Martha Raddatz has been to Iraq 12 times since the American invasion. She has a new book about a battle that was a turning point in the war, an April 2004 fight in Baghdad's Sadr City. Raddatz says it was then that American troops realized they were facing an insurgency.
The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family is about the soldiers who fought that battle, and their families. One of the soldiers in the battle was Casey Sheehan, the son of antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan.
Pulitzer Prize winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has died at 89. We listen back to an interview recorded with him at the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Schlesinger was a special assistant in the White House to President Kennedy.
Film director Marc Lawrence wrote and directed the new film Music and Lyrics, starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.
He also directed the film Two Weeks' Notice and co-wrote and produced the comedy Miss Congeniality. Previously Lawrence was a staff writer on the NBC sitcom Family Ties.
ABC news correspondent and former anchor Bob Woodruff was nearly killed by a roadside bomb on Jan. 29, 2006 in Iraq. He suffered a severe brain injury and was in a coma for over a month. He and his wife Lee have written a new memoir about his recovery: In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing.
Woodruff has just returned to work at ABC with the special report "To Iraq and Back." It tells the story of his recovery, and the plight of brain-injured Iraq veterans. He and his wife have also set up a new foundation to help soldiers recovering from brain
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's latest article is about the administration's efforts to undermine Iran. The article appears in The New Yorker magazine's March 5th edition and is titled "The Redirection: Is the Administration's New Policy Benefiting our Enemies in the War on Terror?"
