American Politics

Ambassador Dennis Ross talks about his role as chief Middle East peace negotiator during the Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations. His new book is Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World.

Journalist Scott Shane writes for The New York Times about terrorism and the CIA's interrogation techniques. His article "Soviet-Style 'Torture' Becomes 'Interrogation'" describes how the United States has adopted interrogation techniques that it decried when they were used by the Soviet Union.

Author Tara McKelvey interviewed former prisoners from Abu Ghraib for her book Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War McKelvey is senior editor at The American Prospect and a research fellow at the NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security.

Writer and editor David Talbot founded the online journal Salon.com; he was editor-in-chief from 1995 to 2005, and still serves as board chairman of Salon Media Group. He's written a book about Robert and John F. Kennedy called Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years.

Journalist Marcus Stern and his colleagues at the San Diego Union-Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for uncovering the bribery scandal involving former U.S. Congressman Duke Cunningham. Cunningham funneled tens of millions of dollars in post-9/11 contracts in exchange for millions in bribes.

Now Stern and his team have written a book about the scandal: It's called The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, The Most Corrupt Congressman.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder and pastor of Lynchburg, Va.,'s Thomas Road Baptist Church and an outspoken leader of the religious right, died yesterday at age 73; we remember him with an interview recorded in the early days of Fresh Air's national broadcast. In 1979, Falwell founded a movement he called the Moral Majority and helped return the Republican Party to power with the election of President Ronald Reagan. Falwell also founded Liberty University, an evangelical institution believed to be the largest of its kind. Rebroadcast from March 14, 1986.

Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe. He's been writing about a Christian law school, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, whose graduates have become influential in the Justice Department.

One of those Regent University graduates is Monica Goodling, former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Savage writes that Goodling has "drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations."

The man in charge of Regent Law is a graduate of the University of Chicago's law school and the author of a 1999 book titled Is Higher Law Common Law? Readings on the Influence of Christianity in Anglo-American Law. Brauch talks to Terry Gross about Regent Law and about Savage's reporting.

In Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, historian Michael Beschloss takes a look at nine crucial moments when a president risked his political career for the good of the country, often by taking an unpopular or controversial stand.

A new biography of Justice Clarence Thomas explores some of the paradoxes of his life and career; it's called Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas. Authors Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher, both reporters at The Washington Post, say the book grew out of a Post article exploring "both the racial vehemence that has hounded Thomas and the roots of his ascension to the judicial mountaintop."