With nearly 40 films to his credit, including Days of Heaven, American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman, The Cotton Club, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Richard Gere knows an iconic character when he sees one.
In his latest film, The Hoax, Gere plays a scam artist who lands a seven-figure book deal with a major publisher. It's based on the true story of Clifford Irving, who claimed to be an authorized biographer of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.
In a single monologue, the protagonist of Mohsin Hamid's sophomore novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, tells his life story to an American stranger over dinner in a Pakistani cafe. Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
New cancer-fighting techniques, including drugs designed to target cancer cells, mean thousands of patients are surviving cancer. Researcher and author David G. Nathan explains The Cancer Treatment Revolution.
Novelist A.M. Homes writes about her real life — including her reunion with her biological parents, 31 years after they gave her up for adoption — in a memoir called The Mistress's Daughter.
Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader make up the Axis of Evil Comedy group. (They're of Iranian, Egyptian and Palestinian descent, respectively). Their special premiered on Comedy Central last month. It's out on DVD this week.
In the new film Blades of Glory, comic actor Will Ferrell plays a boorish figure skater forced to team up with another man in a pairs skating competition. The role is Ferrell's latest in a series of characters that have parodied macho men.
Geneticist Francis Collins is director of the National Human Genome Research Project. He is also an evangelical Christian, and author of the book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.
As Time magazine reinvents itself for the Internet age, the editors announced they'd be dropping some old features of the magazine's distinctive verbal style. There was once an age when Time's style helped remake journalism — and the English language itself.
In his most recent book, British scientist Richard Dawkins writes about the irrationality of a belief in God, examines God in all his forms and sets down his arguments for atheism. The book is The God Delusion.
Dawkins is a professor of "the public understanding of science" at Oxford University.
The New York Times Book Review has hailed him as a writer who "understands the issues so clearly that he forces his reader to understand them too."
Amy Winehouse is a 23 year-old British singer-songwriter who takes much of her inspiration from American soul and R&B. Her American debut album, Back To Black, topped the British charts and hit the American charts at number seven.
Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren is an expert on bankruptcy and is an outspoken critic of consumer lenders.
Recently she appeared before the Senate Banking Committee to discuss the abusive lending practices by credit card companies. She considers the interest charges and late fees imposed by credit card companies to a "hidden tax" on cardholders.
Warren is also the author of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke.
Saxophonist and clarinetist Ned Rothenberg has always been a musical cosmopolitan.
Early on, he studied jazz with George Coleman and shakuhachi flute in Japan. Later, Rothenberg put together his North African-influenced Double Band, and toured in duos with the Tuvan throat singer Saimkho Namtchylak, the shakuhachi virtuoso Katsuya Yokoyama and English saxophone improviser Evan Parker.
Rothenberg's new album, Inner Diaspora, sends him back to his roots.
With his band the MGs, Booker T. Jones created the classic instrumental "Green Onions." But they were also the studio band for Stax Records, making music with soul artists such as Otis Redding, Ray Charles and Wilson Pickett. A new two-CD box set features Stax highlights and Booker T. is now back on tour.
Mike Binder has directed nine feature films, although before his last, The Upside of Anger, he was best known as an actor and for the television series The Mind of the Married Man.
In Reign Over Me, he gives a serious — an extremely serious — part to the comic Adam Sandler, who plays a man whose life is destroyed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Middle East policy expert Daniel Byman talks about the effect of the war in Iraq on state-sponsored terrorism.
Byman is the director at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he is also a professor.
Journalist George Packer's article in the March 26 issue of The New Yorker magazine is called "Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America the Most."
He reports that men employed by Americans as interpreters, construction workers, drivers and office workers are now being marked for death and hunted down as collaborators.
Packers most recent book is The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq.
Weapons expert Joseph Cirincione's new book is Bomb Scare: the History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. He talks about how nuclear threats will evolve in coming years.
Cirincione is senior vice president for national security and international affairs at the Center for American Progress. He also teaches at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. And he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Comedian and actor Andy Richter's new sitcom is Andy Barker, P.I. Richter plays an accountant who is mistaken for the detective who formerly occupied the office he is renting. He reluctantly takes on the role of private investigator and discovers he likes it.
The show just premiered on NBC and airs Thursdays at 9:30 p.m.
