With the markets in flux and a massive government rescue package in the works, New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson looks into potential conflicts of interest in the nearly $700 billion deal.
Crime novelist James Crumley's detective tales were filled with sex, drugs, violence and profanity, and inspired comparisons to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, among others. Crumley died Sept. 17 in Missoula, Mont. He was 68.
On Sept. 21, the AMC series Mad Men became the first basic cable program to win an Emmy Award for outstanding drama. Executive producer Matthew Weiner and actors Jon Hamm and John Slattery discuss the madness of Madison Avenue circa 1960.
NBC's 30 Rock cleaned up the major comedy prizes, but the big drama awards went to basic-cable breakouts like AMC's Mad Men and FX's Damages. TV critic David Bianculli recaps the evening.
Film critic David Edelstein reviews two new coming-of-age movies: Towelhead, which features a young Arab-American girl who is sent to live with her father in Texas, and Hound Dog, about a troubled girl who takes comfort in the music of Elvis Presley.
In the ABC series, Pushing Daises, co-executive producers Barry Sonnenfeld and Bryan Fuller combine romance, fantasy and mystery to tell the story of a man who can bring the dead back to life. The first season of the show is now out on DVD.
Maher Arar, a telecommunications engineer with dual Canadian and Syrian citizenship, was detained during a stop-over in JFK Airport in 2002 and deported to a Syrian prison, where he was locked up and beaten for almost a year.
The War on Terror was meant to prevent another terrorist attack on the United States, but author Jane Mayer says that policies like extraordinary rendition have compromised American values.
The bankruptcy of financial services giant Lehman Brothers and the 500-point drop in the stock market on Sept. 15 have sent shock waves through the financial community. Law professor Michael Greenberger discusses the potential ramifications of the recent turmoil.
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews Hold Up The Sky, Andy Zwerling's first album in 37 years. Zwerling's previous album, a retrospective called Somewhere Near Pop Heaven, became a surprise hit in Croatia in 2003.
Dick Cheney is arguably one of the most powerful vice presidents in American history, but much of his work is done behind the scenes. In his new book, Angler, journalist Barton Gellman details the forty-year political career of Bush's second in command.
When Barack Obama trotted out a well-worn, folksy phrase about cosmetics and swine, the political world developed a sudden rash. Linguist Geoff Nunberg asks what all the shouting was about.
The novelist and essayist was found dead in his home Sept. 12, reportedly a suicide. Fresh Air remembers him with an interview first aired in 1997, the year he won the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grant.
Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, and New York Times journalist Paul Tough discuss the project, an audacious integrated poverty-eradication effort in New York City.
Fresh Air music critic Milo Miles reviews Classic African American Gospel, a Smithsonian Folkways "Classic" that spans over a half century of recordings. Featuring Reverend Gary Davis, Sonny Terry and others, the compilation illustrates a truly American musical tradition.
Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a retired Army colonel, discusses his new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
Joel and Ethan Coen's new black comedy sets its dim-bulb characters careening through a blackmail-and-infidelity plot. The cast is top notch, but the directors seem so little invested, they might as well be on autopilot.
First he created Six Feet Under, the HBO series about a family that runs a funeral home and is steeped in death. Now he's created an HBO series about the undead: True Blood, about vampires who've emerged from the shadows.
The surge in Iraq is one of the issues that divides the presidential candidates, but Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within, reveals that it also divided the Bush administration and the military.
