Places & Travel

Book critic Maureen Corrigan picked out two debut books by young writers that mix personal history and social commentary

Barack Obama has been portrayed as an outsider candidate — an idealist not mired in the political game. But Ryan Lizza says that a look at Obama's political history in Chicago might offer a different view of the candidate. Lizza is the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, and has been tracking the Obama campaign.

Fresh Air's film critic reviews Jonathan Levine's film — a comedy, starring Ben Kingsley and Josh Peck, about a drug dealer, his shrink and the difficulty they both have growing up.

Martinis, misogyny and men behaving badly: AMC's drama series remembers an era's excesses in stunning style. The setting: a Manhattan ad agency, circa 1960. The first season has just been released on DVD.

With plenty of nods to The Great Gatsby Joseph O'Neill's Netherland explores dreams and ambition in post-Sept. 11 New York City. Maureen Corrigan calls the novel "marvelous."

From jazz concerts and cabaret acts to multimedia art installations, Theo Bleckmann has made a name for himself in new York. Now, the vocalist and composer looks back to his native Germany.

Hopkins, which premieres tonight, is the sequel to a 2000 ABC documentary series that told intimate, very real stories about medical staff and patients at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University. Fresh Air's TV critic has a review.

Inspired by Sinn Sisamouth and other Cambodian stars of the '60s and '70s, brothers Zac and Ethan Holzman created a fusion cover band — complete with a former Cambodian pop star who had recently moved to Los Angeles.

The debut short-story collection by Nigerian writer and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan offers a sobering view of a world in which atrocity is commonplace, and the unthinkable is the everyday.

Adam Sandler's all-potent Israeli hero is a Biblical warrior, a sex god, and a take-no-prisoners hair-burner with a Paul Mitchell fetish. Juvenile he may be — but there's something mesmerizing about him, too.

Journalist Ahmed Rashid's new book, Descent into Chaos, examines the Unites States' nation-building efforts in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Rashid argues that U.S. efforts have failed — and served to destabilize the region further.

Four years after Sex and the City's TV finale, Carrie Bradshaw and her posse return — a little older, a little more settled, but with Cosmos still in hand. If you loved the TV show, the movie will fly by; if you hated it, brace yourself.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli reviews DVD collections of British TV shows, including a few series that have never before been televised in the U.S.

Reverend Carroll Pickett was the death-house chaplain at the Walls prison unit in Huntsville, Texas for 13 years. During his tenure, he ministered to 95 inmates executed by lethal injection. He is the subject of a new documentary, At the Death House Door.

Air travel keeps getting more confusing, frustrating and expensive, says columnist Scott McCartney. McCartney, who's covered the industry for 12 years at The Wall Street Journal, writes the paper's "Middle Seat" column.

Artist Suze Rotolo — the woman walking beside Bob Dylan on the album cover for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan — was Dylan's girlfriend in the '60s. She's written about the relationship, and about that era's New York, in a new memoir.

Iran's president was relatively unknown on the international stage before he was elected, but he's a standard-bearer for a new generation of hardliners. In a new biography, journalist Kasra Naji explores Ahmadinejad's rise to power, his complex character and his motivations.

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.

The celebrated Irish memoirist, who had been battling lung cancer, died May 9. Her 1996 memoir — about growing up poor in the Ireland of the '40s and '50s — became a best-seller. Terry Gross talked to her in 2001.

Veteran peace negotiator Padraig O'Malley worked on the conflicts in Northern Ireland and South Africa. Mac Maharaj played a role in the latter nation's anti-apartheid movement. Both took part in recent closed-door negotiations in Finland, aimed at bringing reconciliation among rival factions in Iraq.