Jarhead tells the story of a Marine sniper whose unit is sent to the Middle East for the Iraq conflict of 1991. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, who narrates the film; Jamie Foxx; and Peter Sarsgaard. It was directed by Sam Mendes, who won an Oscar for American Beauty.
Henry Winkler plays a doctor on the new CBS sitcom Out of Practice, which premiered last month and can be seen Mondays at 9:30 p.m. Winkler also spent two seasons playing a lawyer on the TV series Arrested Development.
The Tulip and the Pope is the new memoir from Deborah Larsen. The story explores young women on the road to becoming nuns in the 1960s. Larsen's previous work includes the novel The White.
Stuart Bowen is the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. His office has just released its seventh Quarterly Report to Congress. The report documents how $30 billion set aside for Iraqi reconstruction was spent — and how to prevent waste and fraud. Bowen has served in the post since October 2004. Formerly, he served in the White House and was a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Patton Boggs LLP. Bowen's ties to Bush go back to the early 1990s, when he worked in the Texas governor's office. Bowen was also an intelligence officer in the U.S.
Blurring the line between church and state threatens civil liberties and privacy, says former president Jimmy Carter. That's the case he makes in his new book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis.
William Kristol is the founder and editor of The Weekly Standard. Kristol also wrote The War Over Iraq: America's Mission and Saddam's Tyranny. Kristol also led the Project for the Republican Future to help win Republican congressional seats.
Professor Cass Sunstein discusses the nomination of Samuel Alito to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Sunstein a professor at the Law School at the University of Chicago, is a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Writers Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon are the co-authors of The Next Attack: The Failure Of The War On Terror and a Strategy For Getting it Right. The book criticizes the Bush administration's responses to the terror attacks of Sept 11, 2001.
In several ways, the age of "infotainment" is foretold in Good Night, and Good Luck, set in the 1950s. The film tells of newsman Edward R. Murrow's fight against Sen. Joe McCarthy -- but it also details "the inherent debasement of mass news in a commercial culture."
Biographer Peter Guralnick's new book is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke. Guralnick follows the life of rhythm and blues legend Sam Cooke from his roots in gospel music through his legendary career as a singer and songwriter whose hits include "You Send Me," "Only Sixteen" and many others.
Singer and pianist Shirley Horn died last week on October 21st at the age of 71. In 1992, Horn took part in a concert and interview with Fresh Air. Playing with her was her long time drummer Steve Williams and bassist Charles Ables (who died in 2002).
Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz is also a horror movie fan. He reviews a new DVD collection of the horror films of producer Val Lewton. The films include The Leopard Man, Curse of the Cat People, and I Walked with a Zombie, along with six other films.
A need for foreign workers in Iraq -- and the flood of American dollars into the country -- have created a labor network that critics call misleading, illegal and even dangerous. Chicago Tribune correspondent Cam Simpson retraced the fatal journey of 12 men from Nepal.
As a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations, Richard A. Clarke often had to imagine worst-case scenarios. His first novel — a thriller — does just that: set five years in the future, it envisions the United States on the verge of another war in the Middle East.
From 1950 to 1956, the team of Martin and Lewis were America's favorite entertainers. A new memoir from Jerry Lewis details how their 10-year partnership was destroyed. Dean and Me: A Love Story details life behind the scenes of 16 films and numerous TV and club shows.
Peter Manseau's mother is a former nun; his father is a priest who remains under suspension. Manseau tells of their marriage — and his upbringing — in a new memoir, Vows.
A new collection of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers DVDs from Warner Home Video is out, called the Astaire and Rogers Collection, Vol. 1. It includes "Top Hat" and "Swing Time."
