Government & Politics

Journalist Scott Anderson. He traveled with a platoon of elite Isreali commandos into the West Bank and wrote about it in the article "An Impossible Occupation" which was the cover story of last Sundays New York Times Magazine.

Journalist John Burns is the Islamabad Bureau Chief for the New York Times. He will talk about reporting on Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the past, Burns has been posted in China, Bosnia, South Africa and Russia. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, one of them in 1997, for his reporting on the Taliban.

Mark Malloch Brown heads the United Nations Development Program. He'll discuss their efforts in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza to help with reconstruction. Brown is also the chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee of the heads of all U.N. development funds, programs and departments.

Correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter John Allen. He covers the Vatican for the paper and has a regular column, "The View From Rome." This week American cardinals are meeting in Rome to discuss the sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in the United States.

Journalist Jeffrey Rosen's article in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine is about the CIA's effort to partner with Silicon Valley to develop new anti-terrorist technologies. The CIA has founded a venture-capital firm that funds the development of cutting-edge technologies that may be useful for national security, in particular new techniques for finding terrorists. Rosen will talk about some of these technologies — and what civil libertarians think of them.

Journalist Jeffrey Toobin discusses his profile of Attorney General John Aschroft, published in this week's issue of The New Yorker. Toobin is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a legal analyst for ABC News. His books include Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election (Random House); A Vast Conspiracy; and The Run of His Life.

Journalist Mark Bowden discusses Saddam Hussein, the subject of his cover story for the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The story is –Tales of the Tyrant: The private life and inner world of Saddam Hussein. Bowden is also author of the bestseller Black Hawk Down, which was made into a film. His book Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the Worlds Greatest Outlaw, about the U.S. government's role in bringing down Colombian cocaine kingpin and terrorist Pablo Escobar is now in paperback. It won the Overseas Press Club Award for best non fiction book on foreign affairs.

Journalist Christopher Dickey. He is Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor for Newsweek magazine. He'll talk about the situation in the Middle East.

Writer Gerard Jones is the author of the new book, Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy Games, Superheroes, and Make Believe Violence (Basic Books). A former creator of comic books, he's written text for Batman, Superman, X-Men, and Pokemon. This is his fourth media studies book. He lives in San Francisco.

Writer Bharati Mukherjee's new novel is Desirable Daughters (Theia Press). Mukherjee is an Indian-born writer who emigrated to the U.S. as an adult. Her new novel is about a traditional Brahmin family transformed by contemporary culture. Mukherjee is the author of five novels, two nonfiction books and two collections of short stories, including The Middleman and Other Stories, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an article in the current New Yorker Magazine about Saddam Husseins 1988 chemical attacks on the Kurds . There is also new evidence of Husseins ties to al Qaeda. Goldberg has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2000. His specialty is foreign reporting with an emphasis on Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Goldberg came to The New Yorker from The New York Times Magazine, where he reported from Africa and the Middle East.

Writer and retired New York city firefighter Dennis Smith arrived at the site of the World Trade Center towers on the day of the attacks to volunteer with the rescue effort. His new book Report from Ground Zero (Viking) is composed of first-person testimony of rescuers who were there when the towers were attacked and fell, and who helped in the efforts afterwards. Smith spent 18 years with the fire department. He is the author of nine books, including the bestseller Report from Engine Co. 82 about his years in the city's most dangerous and active firehouse.

Srdja Popovic is one of the founders of the nonviolent student group which helped bring down Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The group known as Otpor (the Serbian word for "resistance") had a clenched fist as its symbol, but used humor and theater to ridicule Milosevic and other government officials. The new PBS documentary Bringing Down a Dictator tells their story. Popovic is now a member of Parliament.

Journalist James Bennet of the New York Times. Hes been in the Middle East covering how the crisis there is affecting both Israelis and Palestinians.

Father Donald Cozzens is the author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection on the Priest's Crisis of Soul. He is president-rector and professor of pastoral theology at Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland. He is also the editor of The Spirituality of the Diocesan Priest. Father Cozzens will talk about the church's current sexual abuse scandals, and other crises facing the priesthood.

His book Reaching for Glory: The Secret Lyndon Johnson Tapes, 1964-1965 (Simon & Schuster) is now out in paperback. It is Beschloss’s second volume on the LBJ tapes. Beschloss will talk about the tapes, and we will hear excerpts, including some recordings of conversations about Vietnam, Civil Rights, and with Jackie Kennedy. Beschloss has written 5 previous books on American presidents. He is also a regular contributor to The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews A is for American, the new book by historian Jill Lepore.

Journalist David E. Hoffman's new book is called The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia. He profiles a group of men who became leaders in post-soviet Russia, taking over industry, commanding private armies and buying up television stations. Hoffman is the former Moscow Bureau chief for the Washington Post. Now he is based in D.C. as the newspapers Foreign Editor.

Human rights leader Jeri Laber. Shes one of the founders of Helsinki Watch, which eventually became Human Rights Watch. Her new book, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement is a memoir that is part personal history and part history of the human rights movement. Laber was executive director of Helsinki Watch from 1979 to 1995 and has written many articles for newspapers and magazines. She's been awarded the Order of Merit by President Vaclav Havel on behalf of the Czech Republic, and she's also won the prestigious MacArthur Grant.

His book is called Them: Adventures with Extremists. (Simon and Schuster). He traveled around the world interviewing different types of extremistsfrom Islamic fundamentalists in a Jihad training camp, to Ku Klux Klansmen at rallies. Them was first published in the U.K. in the spring of 2001.