Society & Culture

Critic Edelstein looks at The Best of Youth, a six-hour drama first shown on Italian television.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Diary of a Mad Black Woman, starring Tyler Perry and Cicely Tyson.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new Japanese film Nobody Knows.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) recently made headlines with her tough questioning of Condoleezza Rice during her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State. Boxer was also the only senator to object to the certification of Ohio's electoral votes.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the term "love-child" and other euphemisms.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new German film Head-On about a marriage of convenience in Hamburg between two troubled Turks. It won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival

Robert O'Harrow, Jr. is a reporter for The Washington Post and an associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting. His new book is about how the government is creating a national intelligence infrastructure with the help of private companies as part of homeland security. Huge data-mining operations are contracted by the government to gather information on our daily lives. Information technology has enabled retailers, marketers, and financial institutions to gather and store data about us.

Essie Mae Washington-Williams is the daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond. While her mother, who was black, served as the maid for the Thurmonds, she had an affair with the future senator, at the age of 15. Thurmond was a long-time senator from South Carolina and an opponent of integration. Washington-Williams did not reveal her true identity as Thurmond's daughter until after his death at 100 a little more than a year ago. Now 78, she has written a new memoir, Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on the popularity of grammarian Lynne Truss's book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Novelist Mary Gordon's new book, Pearl, is about a mother's struggle to understand her daughter's public act of martyrdom. Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments and The Company of Women), and four nonfiction works.

Robert Redford is an actor, a director -- and the founder of the Sundance Institute. He discusses the Sundance Film Festival, which is under way this week.

Critic-at-large John Powers reviews Mikey & Nicky, a film first released in 1976 written and directed by Elaine May starring John Cassavetes and Peter Falk. It's now out on DVD.

Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs for US Airways, Christopher Chiames responds to comments made last week on the show by Scott McCartney, who writes about the Airline industry for The Wall Street Journal.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg discusses political language and the word democrat, with a small "d."

In the new film, The Woodsman, Kevin Bacon plays a sex offender just released from prison. Bacon was first recognized in the 1982 film Diner, and went on to roles in Mystic River, A Few Good Men, Flatliners, and Footloose. He's made over 50 films and inspired the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, in which players try to link another actor with Bacon in as few steps as possible. He is married to the actress Kyra Sedgwick, who also co-stars in The Woodsman.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews In Good Company, starring Dennis Quaid and Topher Grace.

What's going on with the airline industry? We talk to journalist Scott McCartney, who follows the airline industry and writes the weekly column "The Middle Seat" for The Wall Street Journal.

Peter Singer's new book, Children at War, takes a look at the use of children as soldiers -- which happens much more than many of us would like to think. From Afghanistan, Thailand and Lebanon to Sudan, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, Singer examines how children are recruited and indoctrinated into warfare.

Director Jean Pierre Jeunet's new film A Very Long Engagement is set during the end of World War I and is based on the novel by Sebastien Japrisot. It stars Audrey Tautou, who also played the title role in Jeunet's previous film, Amelie.

Miriam Toews has written her third book, A Complicated Kindness. One reviewer called it "a kind of Catcher in the Rye for Mennonite girls."