Without a doubt, the United States military mission in Iraq is facing an unprecedented challenge facing an insurgent that was completely unexpected when the conflict began. One just-published response is “The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual” (University of Chicago Press, 2007). We’ll talk this hour with Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, Military […]
There was once a great culture in this hemisphere known as the Maya. But how did their success contribute to their failure and what can our culture learn from their mistakes? We’ll spend this hour with Guy Gugliotta, whose three-part cover story, “The Maya: Glory and Ruin” appears in the August, 2007 issue of National […]
We’ve all heard about the sacrifices that mothers must make in order to pursue a successful career. But Leslie Bennetts, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, wonders if stay-at-home moms might be making un-necessary sacrifices too. She’ll join us this hour to discuss the issue and her book “The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too […]
Archive from 7/16/07 – Got pets? Jon Katz does – four dogs, four donkeys, a cat, several chickens, a herd of sheep, and a giant steer named Elvis – although he considers some of them livestock. Katz, who frequently writes about his menagerie for the online magazine Slate, was our guest last month to discuss […]
Archive from 7/16/07 – It’s often said that the English language is the hardest to learn. What makes English so strange and why does it seem that the language was created without any plan or rules? We talked last month with Seth Lerer, Avalon Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University and author of “Inventing […]
Archive from 7/12/07 – What would motivate a “sweet, soft-spoken nurse” to begin murdering her patients? Skip Hollandsworth waited years to find out. He interviewed Nocona nurse Vickie Dawn Jackson for his July, 2007 Texas Monthly cover story “Angel of Death.” Hollandsworth joined us for an hour last month.
Archive from 7/12/07 – Is there a path to peace? Where does it begin? According to the organizers of the 3rd International Women’s Peace Conference – in Dallas last month, “the power to make peace happen begins with you.” We spent an hour with Professor Jody Williams, founding Coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban […]
Archive from 7/6/07 – How are art and war related? During World War II, the Nazi’s looted European art treasures by the thousands. Author and film producer Robert M. Edsel tells the story of this theft and the subsequent Allied recovery in his book “Rescuing Da Vinci” (Laurel, 2006) and the documentary film “The Rape […]
Archive from 6/13/07 – Everyone wants to do a good job, but doctors are under constant pressure to perform perfectly. Dr. Atul Gawande knows first hand what it’s like to work under stressful conditions. The 2006 MacArthur Fellow and general surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is the author of “Better: A […]
Archive from 6/28/07 – What makes a country? What makes America what it is today? Author Andro Linklater argues that changing territorial markers and frontiers played an important role in the creation of our country’s personality. His book is “The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National […]
