Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, discusses this week's long-awaited progress report from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the top two American officials in Iraq.
Ricks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of the best-selling book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. It's just come out in paperback.
Fresh Air's critic-at-large tells us about the wartime aviation novels of British writer Derek Robinson, who served in the Royal Air Force. His books include Goshawk Squadron, Damned Good Show, A Good, Clean Fight, and Piece of Cake.
We love low prices, sure, but we frown at the things companies do to get us good deals — like paying low wages. In his book Supercapitalism, economist Robert Reich looks at the divided mind of the consumer and citizen.
Charles Reynolds teaches at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and directs research into late-life mood disorders; now he has co-written a book about depression in the elderly and how to treat it. It's titled Living Longer Depression Free: A Family Guide to Recognizing, Treating, and Preventing Depression in Later Life.
Journalist and historian Burton Hersh has followed the Kennedy family for more than 35 years. His latest book is a study of the behind-the-scenes power struggles among the Kennedys and longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
Hersh writes that as attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy did his best to keep Hoover — technically his subordinate — on a short leash. But knowledge of Kennedy family secrets gave Hoover, always a master manipulator, the upper hand.
Following up on their platinum debut album, Into the Rush, the sister act Aly & AJ serves up an album heavy on the teen-relationship tunes.
Insomniatic is just the latest in a multimedia onslaught from the sisters Michalka that includes TV roles, Aly & AJ books, a clothing line, an Xbox game, dolls and the inevitable calendar.
Fresh Air's rock critic has a review of the album.
Fresh Air's book critic reviews Away, an extraordinary novel of immigration and epic adventure from Amy Bloom, the author of Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You.
Fresh Air's TV critic previews a new series, a new special and a season premiere — all on HBO this weekend. They are, respectively:
Tell Me You Love Me, about a therapist and the couples she counsels
Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, in which Sopranos star James Gandolfini (the special's executive producer) interviews 10 injured war vets
Curb Your Enthusiasm, which begins its sixth season.
As head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith led the team of lawyers that advises the presidency on the limits of executive power. During his tenure, he battled the Bush White House on the now-infamous "torture memos," as well as on issues of surveillance and the detention and trial of suspected terrorists. Goldsmith resigned his post after nine months.
Executive producer and actor Jeff Garlin and actress Susie Essman discuss the upcoming season of the HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Garlin plays Larry David's affable best friend and agent. Essman plays Garlin's wife and as such is known for her vitriol, no-nonsense attitude and foul mouth.
The evangelist minister and broadcaster played a critical role in the rise of conservative Christianity. Kennedy founded the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida, which now has 10,000 members. His radio and TV shows were broadcast around the world. Kennedy stated that one of his goals was to "reclaim America for Christ," closing the gap between church and state.
We listen back to an interview with Kennedy from May, 2005.
Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews two new CD reissues originally recorded in the fall of 1958.
Everybody Digs Bill Evans, featuring the legendary jazz pianist, includes a track left off the original issue of the recording.
We Three, featuring the Tennessee-born pianist Phineas Newborn, showcases his phenomenal technique alongside the contributions of drummer Roy Haynes and bassman Paul Chambers.
Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for a series detailing how often President Bush used "signing statements" — controversial assertions of a chief executive's right to bypass provisions of new laws.
Now Savage has written a book describing how the Bush-Cheney administration has expanded executive power. It's called Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.
The well-known beer expert Michael Jackson died Aug. 30 after a heart attack; he was 65 years old. Jackson wrote The Pocket Guide to Beer, The Great Beers of Belgium and The World Guide to Beer, and starred in the documentary series The Beer Hunter. He spoke to Terry Gross in 1991.
In The Deadliest Lies, Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman responds to The Israel Lobby, arguing that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's work "serves merely as an attractive new package for disseminating a series of familiar but false beliefs" about Jews and Israel.
In The Israel Lobby, which grew out of a controversial 2006 article in the London Review of Books, Stephen Walt and co-author John Mearsheimer examine the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. They argue that American support for Israel cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds.
Walt teaches international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
During his heyday in the early 1970s, shock-rock icon Alice Cooper dressed like a ghoul with a gaunt face and mascara-streaked eyes. His hits included "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "Welcome to My Nightmare." In a memoir — Alice Cooper: Golf Monster, he recounts how he used his obsession with golf to overcome his addiction to alcohol.
This interview was originally broadcast on May 17, 2007.
Novelist Bill Flanagan wrote the comedy A&R about the smooth operators and the scatty artists who make the music business so entertaining. Now he's lampooning the cable-TV industry in his novel New Bedlam. The source for his send-ups? His day job as an MTV networks exec.
With the rise of the TV-series box set, more shows are earning fans who devour episodes one after another. Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli reviews two newly released sets: the debut seasons of Heroes and Friday Night Lights. The former is a seven-disc set packed with deleted scenes and the unaired original pilot; the Friday Night Lights set includes deleted episodes and a making-of featurette.
