Places & Travel

Bahamas is the stage name used by Canadian singer-songwriter Afie Jurvanen, who put out his first album in 2009. His second album, Barchords, is a measured look at the end of a lengthy relationship.

The Israeli government wants America's support and help for any possible attack on Iran. U.S. officials have said this isn't the right time for airstrikes. New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger explains what's at stake for both sides.

Why did the flushing toilet take centuries to catch on? When did strangers stop sharing beds? And how did people brush their teeth with fish bones? Historical curator Lucy Worsley details the intimate history of the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen in her new book.

Media suppression, corruption and murder have marked the regime of Vladimir Putin, who is running for hi third term as president in Russia's election next week. His rise to power is spelled out in journalist Masha Gessen's new book, The Man Without a Face.

A new book follows an American basketball veteran as he coaches a struggling Chinese pro basketball team. Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Yardley has a courtside seat from which to observe China's frantic capitalist expansion and its ambivalent fascination with all things American.

Journalist Craig Timberg, the former Johannesburg bureau chief for The Washington Post, says international AIDS organizations working in Africa went off in the wrong direction in fighting the spread of HIV across the continent.

New York Times war correspondent Anthony Shadid, a frequent guest on Fresh Air, died Thursday after apparently suffering a fatal asthma attack in Syria, where he was reporting on the political uprising. Fresh Air remembers Shadid with excerpts from his December 2011 appearance on the show.

Helen Simpson once said that when it comes to short stories, "Something's got to happen, but not too much." Her latest short story collection, In-Flight Entertainment, may seem bleak and mundane — with subjects like mortality, infidelity and climate change — but it's also bursting with British wit.

In What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander writes about his own faith — and what it means to be Jewish — in stories that explore religious tension, Israeli-American relations and the Holocaust.

The protests that led to the Egyptian revolution last year were organized in part by Wael Ghonim, who used an anonymous Facebook page to coordinate the demonstrations. In his new book, Ghonim explains how social media helped transform his country.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo spent more than three years in Mumbai's Annawadi slum. In her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, she profiles people living in extreme poverty — right in the shadow of luxury hotels.

Yoga can be extremely beneficial, but it also can be quite dangerous. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist William Broad examines the pleasures and pitfalls of the practice in his latest book, The Science of Yoga.

Both Close and co-star Janet McTeer have received Academy Award nominations for their roles in the period drama. Set in Dublin before World War I, it centers on a woman who finds more freedom by living life as a men.

Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut adapts Shakespeare's Coriolanus, about a Roman general with his eye on political office. Critic David Edelstein says that in Fiennes' hands, the modern-day update makes for thrilling moviegoing.

Gerardo Naranjo's gripping film about the Mexican drug war is Mexico's submission this year for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Critic John Powers says it deftly illuminates a society plagued with fear.

The Iranian film A Separation won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film on Sunday. Critic John Powers says the remarkable film takes viewers inside a country that is far more complicated and fascinating than news headlines indicate.

Meryl Streep stars as Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd's biopic about the former prime minister of the United Kingdom. Film critic David Edelstein applauds her performance, calling it "one of the greatest impersonations I'd ever seen."

Shalom Auslander's Hope: A Tragedy takes on genocide, identity politics and Anne frank (now elderly and squatting in a farmhouse in upstate New York) with grim humor and daring irreverence.

It's hard to believe today, but in the mid-1950s, Los Angeles didn't mean much in terms of popular music. But the coming of rock 'n' roll meant an infusion of tiny record labels -- and one was Dore, run by a happy-go-lucky guy named Lew Bedell. Ed Ward tells its short, crazy story here.

In New York Diaries, editor Teresa Carpenter presents 400 years of diary excerpts written by people who've lived in or just passed through one of the greatest cities in the world.