Government & Politics

Lincoln Chafee, former U.S. senator from Rhode Island, was often called the most liberal Republican in the Senate. In office, he bucked his party on a number of hot-button issues, including same-sex marriage and the war in Iraq. His book Against the Tide challenges the Republican Party on its rightward drift.

With both the cost of and demand for oil rising, nations with large energy reserves are redrawing political and military alliances, and oil-rich countries like Russia and Venezuela are enjoying greater influence. Michael Klare, author of Rising Power, Shrinking Planet, calls it the "new international energy order."

While on assignment in Sudan, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Paul Salopek was captured by pro-government militias, then charged with spying and imprisoned for 34 days. He writes about his experience in April's edition of National Geographic.

Film critic John Powers reviews Lust, Caution, the new film by Taiwanese director Ang Lee. Set in 1942, during the Japanese occupation of China, the film tells the story of a resistance fighter who has an affair with a Chinese collaborator.

As chief of high-value targeting for the Pentagon, Marc Garlasco helped plan the targets of laser-guided bombs during the invasion of Iraq. Now a senior analyst with Human Rights Watch, Garlasco visits war zones where he assesses the damage being done to civilians by bombs and lobbies for greater deliberation in the use of air power.

In 2005, The New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency had performed wiretaps and other surveillance without court orders. It was a story the Bush administration hoped to keep under wraps, says reporter Eric Lichtblau. Lichtblau's new book is Bush's Law.

Author Steve Coll details the complicated family history of Osama bin Laden, one of 54 children born to Mohamed bin Laden. The elder bin Laden transformed himself from an illiterate bricklayer into an immensely wealthy and powerful businessman.

In the upcoming issue of the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh writes that the United States may be closer to armed conflict with Iran than previously imagined.

Fresh Air film critic David Edelstein reviews Stop Loss, a film about a decorated Army sergeant (Ryan Phillippe) who resists an order to serve another tour of duty in Iraq on the grounds that he has already fulfiled his contract with the military.

In Blake Nelson's novel, Paranoid Park, a 16-year-old skateboarder is implicated when a transit cop is killed at the local skate park, and withdraws into silence as a way of dealing with it. Director Gus Van Sant recently released a film version of the novel.

"Bush's War," a two-part special from the PBS series Frontline, investigates the lead-up to — and the justification for — the U.S. war in Iraq. Journalist and Frontline producer Michael Kirk joins Fresh Air to discuss the program.

Foreign correspondent Charles Sennot recently returned from Iraq, where he witnessed the U.S. military's "troop surge" first-hand as an embedded reporter with the Army's 28th Infantry Regiment.

Secularist Shiite politican Ahmad Chalabi was for years part of an opposition group dedicated to overthrowing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. He's also the subject of the new book The Man Who Pushed America to War.

In Michael Haneke's new film, a wealthy American family opens the door of their secluded vacation home to two strangers — who proceed to torture them in a series of sadistic games. David Edelstein has a review.

Bassam Aramin and Zohar Shapira, the co-founders of Combatants for Peace, are on a mission to end the cycle of violence in Israel and Palestine by bringing together individuals who previously fought against each other. So far, around 450 former enemies have joined the group.

David Simon, creator and executive producer of HBO's series The Wire, joins Fresh Air to talk about his career and the genesis of the show. Simon writes many of the episodes — and some story lines come from his former job as a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

Novelist and screenwriter Richard Price discusses his new novel, Lush Life, about the repercussions of a shooting on the Lower East side. Price has written extensively about the realities of inner city life; he is a writer for HBO's The Wire which ends a five-year run on Sunday.

As the United Nations' former under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland has tracked down violent guerrilla leaders, confronted warlords and addressed humanitarian crises around the world. His new memoir is A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity.

William F. Buckley, Jr., died Wednesday. He was 82. Fresh Air remembers the founder and longtime editor of the National Review with excerpts from a 1989 interview.

Director Brett Morgen joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to discuss his new film, Chicago 10. The film mixes trial footage and animation to tell the story of the "Chicago 8" — protesters held accountable for violence that erupted with police outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.