Search results for

There are 100,000 private military contractors in Iraq. Mercenary John Geddes explains why he thinks this is a good thing. His new book Highway to Hell is an account of his experiences in Iraq as a soldier for hire.

In her new book, Animals Make Us Human, Temple Grandin examines common notions of animal happiness and concludes that dogs, cats, horses, cows and zoo animals — among other creatures — possess an emotional system akin to that of humans.

Martha Stewart turned her lifestyle advice into a billion-dollar business: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. In addition to her magazines, Stewart has a new book, The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business. She also has new shows on television and radio this fall.

In 1993, a freighter with 300 terrified, half-starved Chinese immigrants went aground off the shore of Queens, New York. Author Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the incident in his new book The Snakehead.

Rafael Yglesias' novel is inspired by his wife, Margaret, who died in 2004. A Happy Marriage spans their three-decade relationship, from their courtship to her battle with cancer.

In her new book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of A Great Victorian Detective, Kate Summerscale revisits the gruesome 150-year-old murder that helped catapult British mystery fiction into being. Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan offers a review.

Four years ago, novelist Ayelet Waldman sparked a controversy — and wound up on Oprah to defend herself — when she wrote in an essay that she loved her husband more than her children.

The political columnist gets personal in a new collection of essays — on topics from Web-stalking a cheating boyfriend to what she learned about her parents using the Freedom of Information Act.

Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger are nontraditional tourists who explore missile silos, test sites, and bomb shelters. The two just published A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, a chronicle of their travels to nuclear landmarks across ten states and fives countries.

In his new book, The Devil We Know, former CIA operative Robert Baer argues that Iran is an up-and-coming — and often misunderstood — superpower, with strong influences throughout the Middle East.

The new Medicare prescription drug plan is complex, confusing, and irrational, according to health policy expert Jonathan Oberlander. A month after the rollout of the new Medicare prescription drug plan, many seniors are finding it difficult to get the drugs they need.

Flynt Leverett is a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. A veteran expert on Middle East policy — from the National Security Council to the CIA, Leverett has also written a book, Inheriting Syria: Bashar's Trial By Fire, about Bashar al-Assad's rule of Syria.

Author Jonathan Lethem's new novel is You Don't Love Me Yet. He is also the author of the semi-autobiographical novel, The Fortress of Solitude, about a white kid growing up in an African-American and Latino neighborhood in New York.

The Pulitzer-winner's newest is a "murder-mystery speculative-history Jewish-identity noir chess thriller," in the words of Publishers Weekly. It's a private-eye story set in a fictional community of Jewish exiles — "the frozen chosen" — displaced to a temporary settlement in Alaska by World War II.

Journalist and historian Burton Hersh has followed the Kennedy family for more than 35 years. His latest book is Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover that Transformed America.

Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. His new book is called Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Ricks is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter. He talks about the possibility of U.S. involvement in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. This is the first of a two part interview.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg has made a living out of parsing phrases. His new book, The Years of Talking Dangerously, analyzes the buzzwords, stock phrases and metaphors that were made popular during the Bush administration's tenure.

Forty years ago, Joel Rosenman and John Roberts were in their 20s when they came into a large inheritance. They decided to take the money and promote a rock concert in upstate New York — an event that later became known as Woodstock.

Surgeon and medical historian Ira Rutkow's new book is Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. Rutkow is also the author of Surgery: An Illustrated History, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

When journalist Pete Earley's son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, it sent him on an effort not only to get his son properly diagnosed and treated, but to understand the nation's mental health system. Earley's book about the experience is Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness.

National Guard Lt. Paul Rieckhoff is the founder and executive director of the organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (formerly Operation Truth). He has written a memoir about his tour in Iraq shortly after the occupation: Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington.

Writer Stewart O'Nan has nearly 20 books to his credit, but his name isn't too well known beyond a community of loyal readers. Book critic Maureen Corrigan O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster may change all that.

Brothers David and Anton Treuer are members of the Ojibwe nation from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. Both professors, they work to preserve the Ojibwe language, one of the few Native American languages in active use.

New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin has covered climate change and climate politics for 20 years. His new book The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World is geared toward young adults.

Americans consume more bananas than apples and oranges combined. Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, gives us a primer on the expansive history — and the endangered future — of the seedless, sexless fruit.