Zack Hample, an obsessive baseball fan, has by his own count snagged 3,123 baseballs at 42 different major league stadiums. And he's turned his obsession with the game into a career, giving tours of stadiums, appearing on TV and radio and writing books — including Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-Experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks.
Malcolm MacPherson's new novel is Hocus POTUS, a political farce about the shenanigans of White House loyalists in Baghdad's Green Zone, written from the point of view of an American journalist stationed there. The book draws on MacPherson's own experiences as a foreign correspondent for Time and Newsweek magazines, during which time he reported from Baghdad on Ambassador Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Jeffrey Blitz's new film Rocket Science is a partly autobiographical coming-of-age tale about a teenager who joins the high school debate team. Blitz won the Dramatic Directing Award at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival; he also directed 2002's Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound, along with several episodes of the hit NBC television series The Office.
In The Center Cannot Hold, lawyer and psychiatry professor Elyn R. Saks chronicles her own struggle with schizophrenia. The battle began with early symptoms at age 8 and has continued throughout her life; she had her first full-blown episodes during her terms at Oxford and Yale. Saks, who has for years controlled her condition with daily medication and therapy, is an expert in the field of mental-health law, and teaches at the University of Southern California.
Interview is an American remake of a film by Theo van Gogh, the outspoken Dutch director who was murdered in 2004 by an Islamic extremist. It's not politically incendiary, but it's dramatically charged. It's a psychological duel to the death. Steve Buscemi plays Pierre Peders, a war correspondent stuck doing puff pieces on celebrities; Sienna Miller is Katya, the gorgeous prime-time soap goddess and horror-film actress he's assigned to talk to. She shows up very late to the trendy restaurant, feigning ordinariness but radiating entitlement.
It's been a busy congressional season — contentious hearings with Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in the hot seat, revisions to the nation's domestic-eavesdropping laws, major ethics-reform moves and, of course, debate about what to do about Iraq. Journalist Carl Hulse, who reports on Congress for The New York Times, reviews the legislative session.
Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews a new reissue of Folk Songs for Far Out Folk, an obscure but iconic 1958 album created by jazz cellist Fred Katz — a student of classical giant Pablo Casals and a player in Chico Hamilton's legendary '50s quintet.
ABC is preparing to launch a four-week anthology series called Masters of Science Fiction; it's scheduled to air on Saturdays at 10 p.m. Fresh Air's TV critic says it's a modern-day Outer Limits.
The sun set on the British Empire 60 years ago this summer, on Aug. 15, 1947, when India officially gained its independence. A new work of narrative history called Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire probes the behind-the-scenes political machinations — and the potentially scandalous secret love affair — that facilitated the handover.
Singer Pegi Young has just released a self-titled debut album after many years of singing backup for her husband, Neil Young. Pegi wrote many of the songs on the album, too. Her main focus in life, however, has been the creation of the Bridge School for special-needs children like her son Ben, who was born with cerebral palsy. Now, with her kids grown (the Youngs also have a daughter named Amber), she's found time to get into the studio to record her own music.
Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer created the HBO series Big Love, now in its second season. It's about a man (Bill Paxton) and his three wives (Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Ginnifer Goodwin). They've broken from the Mormon church and still practice polygamy — a tradition disavowed by mainline Mormons. Olsen and Scheffer are credited as writers and producers on the series. This year, they won a Writer's Guild Award for their work.
Climatologist Kerry Emanuel, professor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, was named one of the world's 100 most influential people last year by Time magazine — in part because of a study he published, a month before Hurricane Katrina, that looked at thousands of hurricanes over several decades and found that the average power of the storms had doubled.
Critic Milo Miles reviews a pair of what he considers rarities — all-instrumental albums that don't belong to a clear school or style of music. But in the case of the band Massacre and the Claudia Quintet, he says that's a good thing.
Paul Rudd, who co-starred in Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, produced and stars in the new independent film The Ten — a series of irreverent vignettes that reinterpret the Ten Commandments for a modern audience.
Rudd also stars in the upcoming movie I Could Never Be Your Woman, with Michelle Pfeiffer. His other films include Clueless, Anchorman and The Cider House Rules, and he's been seen on TV's Friends and Reno 911!.
Forbes magazine writer Robyn Meredith talks about the economic realities behind her new book: The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us. Previously, Meredith wrote for The New York Times and USA Today.
Nancy Cartwright's work is widely heard and well loved, but not many people know it's her. She's the voice of Bart Simpson on TV's The Simpsons — and in the long-awaited feature film that hits theaters this week.
Al Jean knows Marge, Homer, Bart and the gang better than almost anyone. He's executive producer and writer for The Simpsons, and he's been with the show since it began. The new Simpsons movie, he's been heard to say, is about "what happens when a man doesn't listen to his wife."
Before The Simpsons, Jean worked on TV's A.L.F. and It's Garry Shandling's Show.
Min Jin Lee's debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, tells the story of a young Korean-American woman whose Ivy League education exposes her to a glitzy, glamorous lifestyle — one she's drawn to, but can't afford to maintain.
German filmmaker Werner Herzog discusses his new film Rescue Dawn, a Hollywood adaptation of his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Both the movie and the documentary are based on the true story of Dieter Dengler, the only U.S. pilot to successfully escape from a North Vietnamese-controlled prison.
