A new book investigates Operation Condor, the secret alliance between six Latin American military dictatorships in the 1970s. It was formed to track down the regimesâ enemies and assassinate them. Author John Dinges is a former managing editor of NPR News, and has written for The Washington Post and Time. He teaches journalism at Columbia University. His book is The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.
He's a former senior producer for CBS News and CNN with three Emmys to his credit. For the past 30 years he's lived with multiple sclerosis, even continuing to work in a war zone shortly after the diagnosis and with failing eyesight. He's written a new memoir called Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness/A Reluctant Memoir.
Sheffer is the founder, conductor and artistic director of the New-York based orchestra. The group is known for the diversity of its musical program and rediscovering neglected works. They've performed works by Wagner, George Gershwin, Franz Schubert, Philip Glass and Paul Bowles. In March, the orchestra will perform the U.S. premiere of the Jonathan Dove adaptation of Wagner's The Valkyrie.
His new book is The Working Poor: Invisible in America. Shipler is a former reporter for The New York Times. He's also written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. His book Arab and Jews: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land won the Pulitzer Prize.
His songs include "By The Time I Get to Phoenix," "Up Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," "Macarthur Park," "Galveston," "Didn't We," "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "All I Know." His songs have been recorded by Glenn Campbell, Johnny Cash, Joe Cocker, Linda Ronstadt, Art Garfunkle and the Fifth Dimension. At one point in the 1960s, he had five Top 10 hits within a 20-month period.
Health and Science writer Carl Zimmer's new book is Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How it Changed the World. It's about Thomas Willis, the scientist whose research on the workings of the brain during the 17th century became the basis of modern neurology. Zimmer's work appears regularly in The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, Discover, Natural History, and Science. He is also a John S. Guggenheim Fellow and received the Pan-American Health Organization Award for Excellence in International Health Reporting.
Artist and photographer Joseph Scheer is a professor of print media and co-director of the Institute of Electronic Art at Alfred University in New York. Over the last few years he's collected more than 20,000 specimen of moths. He then photographed them up close, capturing the varied colors and patterns not visible to the naked eye. He's collected them in the new over-sized book, Night Visions: The Secret Designs of Moths. It includes an introduction by Marc Epstein, a Lepidopterist (moth expert) at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institute.
Saturday, Feb. 7 marks the 40th anniversary of the Beatles arrival in the United States. We celebrate on the show: TV critic David Bianculli remembers their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, 40 years ago.
He is the editorial page editor of The Rutland Herald in Vermont, where he won that paper's first Pulitzer for his series of editorials in support of same-sex unions. He's the author of the new book, Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage. Vermont became the first state in the country to make civil unions legal for gay and lesbian couples. In 1999, the state Supreme Court ruled that gay couples were due the legal rights of marriage, and told the state legislature to decide how best to do that.
Lewis is The Boston Globe's state House reporter. He'll discuss the ruling by the Massachusetts high court yesterday that gay couples in that state will be accorded full equal marriage rights rather than civil unions. The ruling is a clarification of the court's November decision that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. The state Senate asked for clarification on the decision, because they felt it was worded vaguely.
As an actress, she's best-known for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies. She's also the author of the bestsellers Postcards From the Edge (which she adapted into a screenplay for the film of the same name), and Surrender the Pink. Like Postcards from the Edge, Fisher's new book The Best Awful is based on her own life. In it, Hollywood actress Suzanne Vale's husband leaves her for another man, and then she is diagnosed with bipolar illness.
Saudi Arabian-Born Ambah is participating in the five-day Muslim pilgrimage (known as the "hajj") to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It began on Jan. 30. She is traveling with her two sisters. Over the weekend, 244 people were crushed to death in a stampede. Ambah is writing about her journey for The Christian Science Monitor. She now makes her home in Arlington, Va.
Groopman is author of The Anatomy of Hope. Groopman teaches at the Harvard Medical School and is chief of experimental medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He also writes about medicine and biology for The New Yorker.
Critic David Bianculli reviews "Tanner '88" — the fake documentary series about a fictional candidate for president rubbing elbows with actual candidates. It was created 16 years ago for HBO by director Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury. The 11-part series will be rebroadcast on Tuesday nights, beginning today, on the Sundance Channel.
