History

Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot, says the new commission will keep alive the idea that voter fraud is rampant — despite the fact that "all the studies show the opposite."

A new documentary focuses on a group of emergency volunteers in Syria's largest city known as the White Helmets. Critic David Edelstein says Last Men In Aleppo is a powerful and affecting work.

The reissued album features the sound of the South African musician once known as Dollar Brand. Critic Kevin Whitehead says: "When Abdullah got a-rumbling, his piano was like a force of nature."

In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America's housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a "state-sponsored system of segregation."

Bruce Weber and Margalit Fox have written obituaries for thousands of people, ranging from heads of state to the inventor of the Etch-a-Sketch. They are featured in the new documentary Obit.

In 1978 cult leader Jim Jones led about 900 of his followers to commit mass suicide in the colony he set up in Guyana. Investigative journalist Jeff Guinn has written a new book about how Jim Jones became a cult leader and demagogue.

TV critic David Bianculli says the new documentary series Five Came Back, based on the book of the same name, "leaves you hungry to seek out more (films) from the briefest documentary short to the subsequent Oscar-winning postwar features.

Barris, who died Tuesday in New York, created The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and The Gong Show, and later wrote the autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Originally broadcast in 1986.

Peter W. Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, and is now professor of national-security studies at the National War College in Washington, D.C. Since the late 1980s he has been studying Iraqi war crimes and has also worked closely with the Kurds, who control a small territory in northern Iraq. He'll talk about the effect of a war on the Kurdish people.

His story in the April edition of the magazine is "A Tale of Two Colonies." Kaplan traveled to Yemen and Eritrea to investigate how the war on terrorism is forcing the United States to be involved with each. Yemen is believed to have the largest al Qaeda presence outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Kaplan is best known for his book Balkan Ghosts, which former President Clinton turned to before the U.S. involvement in the Bosnian crisis.

In 1944, World War II was dragging on and the Nazi forces seemed to be faltering. Yet, in military briefings, Adolf Hitler's optimism did not wane. His generals wondered if he had a secret weapon up his sleeve, something that would change the war around in the last second.

Despite ordering an "influence campaign" to help Donald Trump in last year's election, the Kremlin is scrambling to respond to a win it didn't expect, New Yorker editor David Remnick and staff writer Evan Osnos tell Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews new ten-part documentary series on the history of jazz by Ken Burns. It premieres on PBS, January 8th.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as anti-communist sentiment gained ground in the United States, paranoia and persecution swept through Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities (HUAC) began interrogating some of the country's most talented filmmakers and actors, accusing them of being communists or communist sympathizers.

Moore, who died Friday, was seen as a hero for his role in the first major land battle in Vietnam. He later co-authored the book, We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young. Originally broadcast in 1992.

Historian Bernard Weissberger. He’s the author of “America Afire,” (William Morrow 2000). The book chronicles the political tumult surrounding the Presidential Election of 1800 between Adams and Jefferson. As in this election, a voting glitch caused confusion. Neither candidate was willing to concede. Weissberger compares the events then, at the birth of the Constitution, to the Gore v. Bush controversy now. He has written more than a dozen books and works on documentaries with Bill Moyers and Ken Burns.

George Crile is a veteran producer for CBS's 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II. He's the author of the new book, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. It's about the CIA's secret war in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, and its support of the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Ammunitions and weapons were smuggled across the border and at one point over 300,000 fundamentalist Afghan warriors carried weapons provided by the CIA.

Charlie Wilson is a retired congressman and the subject of the book Charlie Wilson's War. It's about the secret CIA operation arming the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Wilson left office in 1996 after 24 years in office. He is now a lobbyist and one of his main clients is Pakistan.

Journalist Stephen Kinzer's book, True Flag, explains how the Spanish-American War launched an ongoing debate about America's role in the world. Kinzer has also been writing about President Trump.