Government & Politics

Sergeants Zack Bazzi and Stephen Pink were two of three soldiers on the frontlines in Iraq who were given cameras to record their experiences. Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd Infantry Regiment and were based in the Sunni Triangle. They filmed their entire year's deployment. The footage makes up the new documentary The War Tapes which was directed by Deborah Scranton. The film opens in New York and L.A. this weekend.

Journalist Bill Minutaglio's new book documents the career of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Minutaglio writes for many publications, including The New York Times, Outside and Details.

Alan Furst has a new historical spy novel called The Foreign Correspondent. His first one, Night Soldiers, came out in 1988, and he's written eight more since then. Critic at large John Powers, who says he always snaps up a new one, explains Furst's appeal.

Author and museum director James Cameron died last Sunday at the age of 92. In 1930, an organized mob of more than 10,000 white men and women dragged Cameron and two other black teenage men from a jail cell in Marion, Ind. The mob mercilessly beat the three young men and lynched two — Cameron was spared. He recounted this experience in his 1984 memoir A Time of Terror and later founded the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, which he modeled after the Jewish Holocaust museum in Israel. This interview originally aired on March 8, 1994.

Sandy Tolan talks about his book The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East. The account grew out of a 1998 NPR documentary in which Tolan reported on a friendship between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman that served as an example of the region's fragile history.

Dick Cheney's daughter was a campaign aide for her father during the 2000 and 2004 elections. The fact that she is a lesbian put a distinctive spin on the experience. She has a new memoir: Now It's My Turn.

Our book critic reviews Terrorist, the new novel by John Updike.

C.C.H. Pounder is best known for her portrayal of Detective Claudette Wyms on the FX TV show The Shield. Recently, her character got a much deserved promotion to captain. Pounder was raised in Guyana, and schooled in Britain. The Shield is one of this year's recipients of the prestigious Peabody Award, being handed out Monday night.

In a new documentary, soldiers on the front lines in Iraq capture their own footage of the experience of war. The War Tapes, directed by Deborah Scranton, opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend.

The film follows three men: Sgt. Steve Pink, Sgt. Zack Bazzi and Spc. Mike Moriarty, members of the National Guard who arrived in Iraq in March 2004.

Hans Blix, the former director of the U.N. Inspection Commission, addresses the UN Thursday with a report on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Tackling the WMD Challenge. Blix is now chairman of the independent Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

For 17 years, former Vice President Al Gore has been on the forefront of warning against global warming. But in his new documentary, The Inconvenient Truth, he says that he "failed to get the message out." He's now getting the message out with his documentary and new book of the same name. The Washington Post calls the book "downright chilling." The documentary has been critically acclaimed.

The new documentary Baghdad ER goes inside the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, the Army's premier medical facility in Iraq. Shot over two months in 2005, the film tells the stories of the hospital's doctors and wounded soldiers. The film debuted on HBO last week. Filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill discuss their project with Terry Gross.

Former Washington Post Congressional correspondent Juliet Eilperin says warlike tactics, manipulation and strategic takeovers have replaced compromise in the House. She drives home the point in her new book, Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the U.S. House of Representatives.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg comments on the recent controversy surrounding the Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Journalist Nicholas Kristof has just won the Pulitzer prize for his New York Times commentary on Darfur. He and John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group deliver an update on the continuing crisis and genocide still under way in the African republic of Sudan.

The popular NBC White House drama The West Wing wraps up seven years on the air on Sunday night with a final episode. Our TV critic has a retrospective of the series, and we feature previous interviews with some of the actors.

Forced out of New Orleans after Katrina hit last year, historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Tulane University, soon returned. He helped with rescue efforts and immediately began the task of collecting oral histories of the catastrophe.

The result is his new book, The Great Deluge, which offers a multi-perspective account of the storm and its aftermath. Brinkley is the author of three other historical narratives, including Tour of Duty.

Our film critic reviews Mission: Impossible III, starring Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

National Guard Lt. Paul Rieckhoff is the founder and executive director of the organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (formerly Operation Truth). One of the group's aims is to see that troops in active duty and veterans are properly provided for.

He has written a memoir about his tour in Iraq shortly after the occupation: Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington.

Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, talks about her book The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs. Her previous book is Madam Secretary: A Memoir.