Places & Travel

James Bennet just completed his 3-year stint as Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times. He wrote the cover story for this week's New York Times Magazine: "A Nation Unto Himself: Where is Ariel Sharon Leading Israel?"

Journalist Jon Cohen recently finished a four-part series on HIV and AIDS in Asia for the Science Magazine. In researching the series, he traveled to six countries and talked to doctors, patients, public health officials, sex workers and drug users. Cohen has been writing about the AIDS epidemic for 15 years. His book on the search for a vaccine is called Shots in the Dark.

Graham Allison is an expert on nuclear weapons and national security. In his new book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, he argues that avoiding a catastrophic nuclear event needs to be a higher priority for the U.S. government.

Filmmakers Josh Marston and Orlando Tobon discuss Maria Full of Grace, their film about a Colombian girl who swallows pellets of narcotics and travels on a plane to New York. In real life, Tobon runs a travel agency that arranges transport back to Colombia for dead smugglers, who have died when the pellets burst.

Lisa Scottoline's Killer Smile was inspired by a secret in her family's past: Her immigrant-Italian grandparents were listed as "enemy aliens" during World War II, and the FBI raided their house. But her grandparents did nothing wrong and were never accused of anything.

(Rebroadcast from Nov. 5, 2002.) Worden was director of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. She died on Aug. 2 at the age of 57, from a brief illness. She turned the little-known medical museum into a museum with a worldwide reputation. The museum was founded in the 19th century. It originated with the collection of Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter who gathered unique specimens for teaching purposes. It exhibits medical deformities, pathologies and medical anomalies, like the horned woman, the man with the giant colon, deformed fetuses and a plaster cast of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker.

Carmen bin Laden is the sister-in-law of Osama bin Laden. In 1974 she married Yeslam bin Laden; they separated 14 years later. Carmen only met her brother-in-law a few times. She's written a new memoir, Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia.

His colorful, chaotic, bold, vibrant and often comic paintings of New York City feature the spectrum of life from prostitutes, thieves and gamblers to tourists, shoppers and moms and dads. When he was 20, nearly 50 years ago, Grooms moved to New York City from Nashville, and his visceral reaction to the city has informed his paintings since. There's a new book of his work (the first major book on Grooms in 20 years), Red Grooms.

His new book, I, Fatty tells the story of vaudeville and early film actor Fatty Arbuckle. In the early 1900s, he was more popular than Charlie Chaplin and became the first screen actor to make $1 million a year. But in 1921, Arbuckle was accused of the rape and murder of a young actress. Many have called the crime, Arbuckle's presumed guilt, the subsequent trial, and his eventual acquittal Hollywood's first celebrity scandal. Stahl is also the author of the best selling memoir Permanent Midnight, which was adapted into a film by the same name.

Los Angeles Times journalist Greg Miller and military interrogation supervisor Chris Mackey talk about The Interrogators. The book provides an inside look at methods used to extract information from prisoners in Afghanistan.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews Pioneer Recording Bands 1917-1920, a new collection of jazz recorded before 1920 by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and the Earl Fuller Orchestra.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews An Unfinished Season, by Ward Just. He's known for weaving American history and politics into his fiction. This book is set in Chicago during the Eisenhower years.

Exum's new memoir, Man's Army: A Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism, recounts his experiences fighting in Afghanistan. In 2002, Exum fought with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, where soldiers were often fighting a brutal guerilla war against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Diamond is a professor of political science and sociology at Stanford University and an expert on democratic development and regime change. He is the coordinator of the Democracy Program of the new Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford's Institute for International Studies. Diamond spent three months earlier this year advising the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

He'll address the strict drug regulations that put Elaine Bartlett, the subject of the book, Life on the Outside, in jail. The regulations are known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Clyne is the son of Albany County judge John Clyne, who handed Bartlett a sentence of 20 years to life in state prison.

Journalist Jennifer Gonnerman's new book is Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett. It's an account of Bartlett's struggle to get out and stay out of jail. Bartlett spent 16 years in prison for a single sale of cocaine. Gonnerman follows Bartlett as she is released from prison at 42.

Pritchard is a retired U.S Army colonel and the former point man on North Korea for Colin Powell. He worked on North Korea issues in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Pritchard resigned from the Bush administration in August 2003 and has criticized the administration for lacking an effective strategy. This week the United States is participating in six-party talks in an attempt to freeze North Korea's nuclear programs and restart inspections.

In his new book, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate he charts the history of the relationship between the powerful Texas oil industry and politics. His last book, Pipe Dreams, documented the infamous rise and fall of Enron. Bryce's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Guardian.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the music of the 1956 film Around the World in 80 Days now on DVD (Warner).

She's starring in her one-woman show, Bridge and Tunnel. The play about the immigrant experience in America has been critically acclaimed. Margo Jefferson of The New York Times writes, "Humor, compassion and daring have more often found a place in solo performance. This free form frees gifted artists to change sex, race, age, body type and personality in an instant. It takes great craft and generosity. Sarah Jones has both."