Nunberg's new collection of commentary (originally written for broadcast and print) is Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times. Nunberg is senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University and consulting full professor of linguistics at Stanford University. He also writes for the Sunday New York Times Week in Review.
Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the new DVD of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. The production was shown on TV in with Angela Lansbury, 25 years ago.
She co-directed the new film, Control Room, a behind-the-scenes look at Al Jezeera, the popular and controversial Arab news channel. The footage was shot before and during the Iraq war last year. The critically acclaimed film has been making the film festival circuit. It opens at the film forum in New York City on Friday, May 21. Also, hear Al Jazeera producer Samir Khader.
Guitarist and singer Marty Grosz and cornet player Randy Reinhart join us for a special in-studio performance in honor of the 100th birthday of Thomas "Fats" Waller. He would have been 100 on May 21. Grosz and Reinhart will perform songs composed by the great pianist and vocalist. Waller wrote many hit songs, appeared in films in the 1930s and 1940s, and wrote Broadway musicals.
In addition to editing The Weekly Standard, Kristol chairs the neo-conservative group called Project for the New American Century. Kristol is also one of the architects of the blueprint for regime change found in the document Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources For A New Century. He advocated regime change in Iraq before Sept. 11.
Gen. Romeo Dallaire was commander of the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Rwanda 10 years ago during one of the worst massacres in modern history. Some 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days. Most of them were Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians. During that time Dallaire and his troops were denied authority to intervene. The experience changed him, tormented him, and filled him with guilt. He suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, was suicidal and depressed. He's written a new account, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.
His new book, Moyers on America (The New Press) is a first-ever collection of his essays and speeches. Moyers is the host of Now with Bill Moyers on PBS. He was one of the organizers of the Peace Corps, spokesperson for President Lyndon Johnson, a senior correspondent for CBS News, and producer of many public TV series. Moyers has won 30 Emmy Awards.
Wilson is a former career diplomat, serving from 1976 to 1998. He had diplomatic posts throughout Africa and was ambassador to Gabon. Wilson was the acting ambassador to Baghdad when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. President George W. Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union address, stated that "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." But in February 2002 Wilson investigated reports of Iraq's attempt to buy uranium from Niger, and found no evidence of such an attempt.
Singer, an analyst at The Brookings Institution, is the author of the book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. He'll discuss the use of private military contractors in Iraq, especially in light of the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison where civilian military contractors were involved in interrogations. Singer is an Olin Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and coordinator of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World.
In 1949, when he was 24, Greenberg joined the Inc. Fund, which would later be called the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He worked on some of the most important civil rights cases, including representing Martin Luther King, Jr. He also led the Fund's campaigns to help integrate the University of Alabama and the University of Mississippi. With others, he tried the Delaware and Topeka cases of Brown v. Board of Education. His memoir and history of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is called Crusaders in the Courts: Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement.
Patterson's book Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy looks at the historic Supreme Court case and its aftermath. Patterson also wrote Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974.
The demand for oil increases each year, but the supply is not inexhaustible. Experts predict that within 30 years our oil energy sources will be depleted. In his book, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World, Roberts looks at the implications for the world in terms of the economy, politics and the environment, and what alternatives exist for oil. Roberts writes about the energy industry for Harper's magazine and for other national publications.
Underhill studies and tracks the habits of shoppers in order to learn the best way to lead them to make purchases. His retail consulting firm, Envirosell, has helped big-name companies such as McDonald's, Levi Strauss and Blockbuster to study their customers' browsing and buying habits. He's the author of the book Why We Buy, and the new book Call of the Mall.
