American history

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Homeward Bound," historian Elaine Tyler May's look at family life in the 1950s.

Television critic David Bianculli previews a new ABC docudrama based on the Challenger disaster. It stars Karen Allen, Peter Boyle, and Barry Bostwick. Bianculli says the movie is helped by the limits it keeps.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews The Real Thing, by Miles Orvell. Corrigan says the book is one of those works that attempts to explain just about everything in terms of one theory. Orwell's theory is that American culture has been driven by the tension between imitation and the desire for authenticity.

Television Critic David Bianculli reviews the CBS program "Try to Remember," a pilot for a new series hosted by Charles Kuralt. The program draws on archival footage and explores the events of one week, in this case August 10, 1969, the week of Hurricane Camille, Woodstock and a ticker tape parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Book Critic John Leonard reviews two new biographies of Roy Cohn, the counsel for the Senate committee conducting the McCarthy trials, and McCarthy's aide and confidante.

Book critic John Leonard reviews The Year of the Barricades: A Journey Through 1968 by the English journalist and historian David Caute.

Book Critic John Leonard reviews The Fords, by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, the biography of the family that built the automobile empire. The Fords follows Horowitz' and Collier's books on the Rockefellers and Kennedys.