History

A new film dramatizes the '40 Allied retreat from the beaches of France as the Nazis close in. Despite strong action sequences, Dunkirk relies too much on fragmented storytelling and obvious plotting.

James Forman Jr., son of civil rights activists, says that African-American leaders seeking to combat drugs and crime often supported policies that disproportionately targeted the black community.

Tales from the American West are marked by heroism, romance and plenty of cruelty. Among those stories, the saga of the Donner Party stands alone — a band of pioneers set out in covered wagons for California, and eventually, stranded, snowbound and starving, resorted to cannibalism.

Author Mark Bowden says the capture of Hue, Vietnam, was part of a wave of well-planned Communist attacks that shocked American commanders and helped turn U.S. public opinion against the war.

The new documentary about Cary Grant is a fascinating look at the contrast between Grant's personal unhappiness, and onscreen persona.

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.