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New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman just returned from a trip to Israel, Jordan and Syria. He talks with us about the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and where Syria fits in. Friedman's most recent book is The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.

John Ridley's comic-book series The American Way has just been collected into a graphic novel; it takes place in 1961, when the government has created a team of super-heroes to battle foreign super-villains. But it's all just a show created to pacify the public. Ridley previously wrote the screenplay for Three Kings and the novel A Conversation with the Mann.

When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, the Nixon White House tried to discredit him. Among other things, Nixon loyalists burglarized the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Bud Krogh went to prison for his role in the Ellsberg affair — and he has a new memoir.

Philip C. Winslow has worked for the Christian Science Monitor and ABC radio, but he hasn't always been a journalist: His new memoir detailsthe time he spent working with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the West Bank. It was during the second Palestinian intifada.

A fellow at Oil Change International and at the Institute for Policy Studies, she argues that the oil industry's grip on policy and government has never been stronger. She documents her concerns — and argues for remedies — in a new book.

Unitarian minister Forrest Church was diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer last February. He has written and edited over 20 books since 1985. His latest, Love and Death, is a memoir that confronts the fact of death and, in the process, offers readers a meditation on the end of life.

The Library of America has just published the first of a two-volume collection of the novels and stories of the late writer William Maxwell, whose writing voice John Updike once described as "one of the wisest and kindest in American fiction."

In her book Unveiled, Deborah Kanafani recounts her marriage and divorce to a high-ranking Palestinian diplomat — and the cultural rift between her "American" upbringing and her married life.

Taylor Branch spent nearly 24 years researching and writing a three-volume biography of Martin Luther King Jr. He joins Fresh Air to disccuss the struggles and triumphs of the last three years of King's life.

In One Party Country, journalists Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten explain what they call "The Republican plan for dominance in the 21st century." The Republicans, they argue, are "firmly in the lead when it comes to the science and strategy of attaining power — and keeping it."

In 1977, historian James Reston Jr. helped prepare journalist David Frost for a series of interviews with Richard Nixon that resulted in the former president's tacit acknowledgment of his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Reston later chronicled the exchange in his book The Conviction of Richard Nixon.

The award-winning mystery writer died from a heart attack on Dec. 31 at the age of 75. Westlake wrote more than 100 novels and numerous screenplays, including the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for The Grifters.

Journalist Michael Weisskopf is the senior correspondent for the Washington bureau of Time magazine. In 2003, while on assignment in Baghdad, he threw a live Iraqi grenade from the back of an open Humvee. He saved himself, four soldiers and Time's photographer, but lost his hand. Weisskopf's new book is Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich's new book is The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina. Rich has been with the Times since 1980, when he was named chief theater critic.

Poet Jehanne Dubrow shares several poems from her third poetry collection, Stateside, about her experience as a Navy wife, trying to understand her own life while waiting for her spouse to return from war.

Author Larry Tye discusses Satchel Paige, a negro league pitcher who helped integrate baseball by touring the country and playing exhibition games with white players.

Historian Drew Gilpin Faust writes that Civil War deaths — both their number and their manner — transformed America. Her new book is This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.

Richard Russo's novel, Bridge of Sighs, is a story about unexceptional people in an unexceptional upstate New York town. Maureen Corrigan says the novel is pound-for-pound the best new fiction on shelves today. Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls, a story about the relationships between people in a small town in Maine.

When Bob Morris' widowed father decided to start dating again — at the age of 80 — guess who found himself sorting through the personals? In Assisted Loving, Morris chronicles the search for Dad's new Ms. Right — and his own misadventures in the romantic jungle that is Manhattan's gay ghetto.

Weekends at Bellevue is psychiatrist Julie Holland's account of her years treating patients in a New York City psychiatric ER. She says one of the hardest parts of her job was figuring out which patients were manic or schizophrenic and which were high on cocaine or methamphetamines.

Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's American Life In Poetry is a free weekly column providing a brief poem and description as a way to bring verse to the masses. Monday, Kooser won a Pulitzer Prize.

The National Guard's Fighting 69th infantry, based in New York City, had been neglected until the events of Sept. 11, 2001. That day's terrorist attacks, and the Bush administration's march to war in Iraq, drove the unit to transform itself into a battle-ready force.

Suketu Mehta's new book is Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. It's an exploration of Mehta's hometown, where he returned after a 21-year absence. Born in Bombay, one of the world's most populous areas, Mehta still believes it's the city of the future.

Journalist and novelist Philip Caputo's new novel, Acts of Faith, is set in Sudan during that country's civil war. It depicts the consequences — intended and otherwise — the conflict has on aid workers and missionaries involved in relief work.

The comic whose Beyond the "Seven Dirty Words" routine that sparked a famous obscenity case in the 1970s, George Carlin has been an icon of American humor for decades. Now he has a new HBO special, Life is Worth Living — a parody on life, death and suicide. The show, Carlin's 13th HBO special, will air on Nov. 5.